{"id":4282,"date":"2023-11-14T19:55:42","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T19:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2023\/11\/14\/unsafe-by-design-and-unsafe-by-default\/"},"modified":"2024-01-20T05:26:32","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T05:26:32","slug":"unsafe-by-design-and-unsafe-by-default","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2023\/11\/14\/unsafe-by-design-and-unsafe-by-default\/","title":{"rendered":"Mastodon and today’s fediverse are unsafe by design and unsafe by default \u2013 and instance blocking is a blunt but powerful safety tool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you have thoughts? \u00a0

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hoodieaidakitten, Mastodon\u2019s Complicated Relationship with Queer Activism<\/a>, July 2018<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Others remain active \u2013 and forks like glitch-soc continue to provide additional tools for people to protect themselves \u2013 but Mastodon’s pace of innovation had slowed dramatically by 2018.8<\/a><\/sup> \u00a0Mastodon lacks basic safety functionality like Twitter’s ability to limit replies (

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Mastodon administrator screen managing instance-level blocking<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Instance-level federation choices are an important tool for sites that want to create a safer environment (although need to be complemented by user-level control and other functionality).”<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u00a0

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Nathalie Van Raemdonck, The value of blocklists; tension field between federation and safe spaces<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For some instances, defederating from Gab was based on norms: we don’t tolerate white supremacists, Gab embodies white supremacy, so we want nothing to do with them. For others, it was more a matter of safety: defederating from Gab cuts down on harassment. And for some, it was both.<\/p>\n

Spamming #FediBlock is a good example of a situation where disagreement on a norm relates to Only Brown Mastodon’s point above about different views of defederation. Some people see spamming #FediBlock as interfering with a safety mechanism created by a queer Afro-Indigenous woman and used by many inntance admins to help protect people against racist abuse \u2013 so grounds for defederation if admins don’t take it as action. Others see spamming #FediBlock as a protest against a mechanism they don’t like, or just something to do for lulz, so see these defederations as unfair and punitive.<\/p>\n

Even when there’s apparent agreement on a norm, interpretations are likely to differ. Consider the situation Mahal discusses above. There’s wide agreement on the fediverse that anti-Semitism is bad; as Mahal says, people making real anti-Semitic comments and resorting to hate speech “absolutely deserve the boot.” But what happens when somebody makes a post about the situation in Gaza that Zionist Jews see as anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist Jews don\u2019t? If the moderators don\u2019t take the posts down, are they being anti-Semitic? Conversely, if the moderators do <\/em>take them down, are they being anti-Palestinian? Is defederation (or limiting) appropriate \u2013 or is calling for defederation anti-Semitic? To me, as an anti-Zionist Jew, the answers seem clear;16<\/a><\/sup> once again, though, opinions differ.<\/p>\n

And (at the risk of sounding like a broken record) in many situations, moderators \u2013 or people discussing moderator decisions \u2013 don’t have the knowledge to understand why something is racist. \u00a0Consider this example, from @futurebird@sauropod.win’s excellent Mastodon Moderation Puzzles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“You get 4 reports from users who all seem to be friends all pointing to a series of posts where the account is having an argument with one of the 4 reporters. The conversation is hostile, but contains no obvious slurs. The 4 reports say that the poster was being very racist, but it’s not obvious to you how.”<\/p>\n

As a mod what do you do?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I saw a spectacular example of this several months ago, with a series of posts from white people questioning an Indigenous person’s identity, culture, and lived experiences. Even though it didn’t include slurs, multiple Indigenous people described it as racist … but the original posters, and many other white people who defended them, didn’t see it that way. The posts eventually got taken down, but even today I see other white people characterizing the descriptions of racism as defamatory.<\/p>\n

So discussions about whether defederation (or limiting) is appropriate often become contentious in situations when …<\/p>\n