@Korendian This feature is on the side of some clients, not on the instance side. I see that you are using Racoon. It doesn't seem to have this feature. Subway Tooter definitely has it, but it's a pretty weird app.
Should there be more personalization on the fediverse? Specifically, I am talking about direct person to person and person to place connections. Groups for localities, pages that are "you" on the web, etc. Or should it remain mostly anonymous, and focused around ideas and interests?
The moderation policy changes at Meta are deeply troubling and should be a concern to anyone with a conscience. While the fediverse is a decentralized platform where different service providers have different moderation policies, at mastodon.social, hate speech is prohibited, and we will take action on any Threads account found violating our policies. I would strongly urge anyone with a Threads account to reconsider their alignment with the new direction at Meta and move to Mastodon instead.
there's the proverb about being in bed with an elephant. It doesn't work well since a Mastodon is a lot like an elephant. Anyway, fediverse integration with Meta and other large evil corporations is looking like a worse and worse idea. Meta is a very large elephant to sleep next to.
@davidaugust Yes. Sadly the interoperability on Threads' side is still lacking in this aspect, and they cannot move accounts between servers like Mastodon users can. However, at least those who migrate can re-follow their Threads contacts manually to help them make the transition to Mastodon. Maintaining interoperability from our side is important to enable this.
It got me to delete my Threads and Instagram accounts yesterday, even though I was mainly using them as placeholders at this point. My Facebook account has been deleted for many years.
Eugen, sorry, but, if now Threads has stated they will not comply with any common moderation policies, do you still think .social should federate with them?
it's with a heavy heart, but I am planning to suspend their federation in two weeks, unless they can explain the wording of their policy.
I simply cannot allow a service to federate which explicitly says targeting minority groups is allowed. It reads like Kiwi Farms.
I am generally extremely into open federation - my server has almost no blocks - but by far the largest ActivityPub service having these policies is - my opinion - not acceptable. And really sad. cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog…
Agreed that Meta's changes are troubling and concerning. So I would strongly urge you and any instance admin exposing their users to the harassment there to reconsider their alignment with Threads and defederate now .
That's expecially for you and mastodon.social. Think about the message that you're sending: "Instead of proactively protecting people on this instance, we'll wait for you to be harassed and then take action on individual harassers. And, we'll make that the default for new Mastodon users!"
There's a huge opportunity for Mastodon here if you take a courageous position. So please do!
The changes to the wording of the #moderation policies #Facebook and #Threads are deeply concerning to hear about, however, they feel more like they are openly admitting what has always been the case than any substantive change. The company has always had an internal policy, like most other corporate social networks, to allow #HateSpeech and other #misinformation to proliferate, as these drive the engagement metrics that drive revenue, on top of often aligning with the values of leadership.
At #TechHub, our policy has, so far, been a "wait and see" approach. We have not blocked Threads yet, but if the time comes when they do finally federate, if ever, we are committed to the plan of taking server level action should their lack of moderation become too much of a problem for us.
Either way, this only underlines the need to bring more people into the #Fediverse network, and away from the large corporate #SocialNetworking services.
Eugen, the OWNER OF THREADS and the entire platform guidelines violate "our policies". It's not about a single account.
Do they still meet the federation requirements? .online and .social already don't federate with many instances that explicitly allow and/or even target certain audiences and content.
so that means that for the moment you continue federating threads at the instance level? Is this subject to ongoing scrutiny in regards to metas behavior?
So the responsibility for moderating federated Threads posts/accounts passes to the (often unpaid, volunteer) moderators of instances that federate with them.
Shrewd move by Meta, then. 🙄
Any other instance with the lack of moderation that Threads has - and will have to a much, much larger extent after this change of policy - would have been defederated by the majority of other instances long ago.
With its open signups and federation with Threads, it seems likely that more and more instances will defederate from mastodon.social as time goes on.
That would be a great shame unless, of course, there are plans to sell it to Meta in due course.
I find negativity generally annoying and counterproductive, which is why I love platforms or apps that allow *me* to decide what to filter out. (I have numerous filters set up in Ivory because while I appreciate someone’s creativity and many things they share, I absolutely do not want to hear their political opinions, regardless of their “side.”) So while I understand your perspective here, I also wonder who determines what constitutes speech that is not allowed in any given category.
individual account blocking is fine and all, but does mastodon.social not have a policy to block entire servers, if their moderation policy (or practices based on observed evidence) systemically support those problematic accounts?
i wish most admins on fedi would make a strong distinction between any speech (hate, misinfo etc) and unwanted tagging. as part of the open web, people can post whatever they want on their blog. the problem arises when we force people to see stuff they don't want to. the fedi avoids most of this by not having algos or ads. mods should be harsh on bothering others & fediblocking servers that don't police abusive accounts is also appropriate imo. but threads can't even tag us yet.
Who decides what hate speech is anyways? Meta goes from one extreme to another. I have seen posts about the war in Gaza being deleted by these so called 'moderators'.
how can you possibly moderate all of Threads for all of mastodon.social under this new Meta policy? You and other admins have a small window of opportunity to respond meaningfully to that voice of conscience. Please show some good leadership and defederate from Threads.
That's why I'm here. As parent of a trans young person I'm genuinely scared about the consequences of faceplants changes. They were bad enough already.
I appreciate the approach, though. There’s still accounts (especially government ones) that I follow that I would hate to lose but I’m glad the team on mastodon.social is going to be moderating actively.
applied to the real world, this means users with accounts on mastodon.social are not allowed to use hate speech. Users on threads are, explicitly. Their admin has said there are almost no rules at all. This entire instance is now at risk of the bullying and harassment that drove me away from fb and Twitter years ago, and you're explicitly allowing it, possibly even approving it
I have been very happy with mastodon.online and have been good with the decision so far, but I think I'm going to have to look for another server in light of recent events unless this one defederates from Threads.
as a Queer person, Meta is no longer safe for me - it hasn’t been for a while, but things now explicitly against my community. It would really send a message to defederate Threads.
@Gargron if hate speech is so prohibited on fedi, i should be able to report it when i click on 'report this post' rather than having to find another way to specify that it is a violation.
please, make this place safer before patting yourselves on the back for being the better platform
@fubaroque At present we receive very few reports about Threads accounts. 68 in total since its launch. For comparison, we handle about 4.4K reports every month.
@fubaroque don't you think that might be partly due to pre-selection? It doesn't quite matter if you allow them access to the most vulnerable who don't understand all this stuff to moderate their own experience. But people that are predisposed to be hurt by threads and know how to protect themselves will have blocked threads already on their account. This doesn't mean your users aren't hurt more by it, but those people might not report their abuse for one reason or the other. I don't think there's a valid excuse to federate with an instance whose policy is "you can use slurs to gender minorities or gay people". You've defederated for less, I know you have. You've agreed to the server covenant, that states you agree this is a defederatable act. Please just look at this rationally, you've talked a big game about wanting to improve moderation, this is your chance to prove it and protect the fedi from more fragmentation. This is going to hurt us all if you don't.
I’ve already been kicked off of Facebook and some other ones so I’ve given up on the idea of free speech because it’s only free speech if you’re spouting the party line
I left mastodon.social because you chose to cooperate with Meta from the beginning despite clear evidence they are not trustworthy - and you continue to federate with them despite clear evidence they are not trustworthy.
I appreciate the work you have done on behalf of the fediverse and wish you would be more discerning in who you partner with.
been trying to get my friends to join here, no chance sadly...somehow they feel like it's too complicated or don't want yet another account...I do like it here on Mastodon very much, though. I've even recently moved from mastodon.online to social to be better able to invite friends...but it is to no avail yet....
Moderation policies in both facebook and instagram have been draconian in the level of unjust, but I cannot simply trust zuckerberg as he decides to undo the damage caused from such path, there are countless people that lost their accounts due to some word, there was even incidents of people getting banned over the usage of the word "dwarf" in public rpg themed groups, this level of unfairness was the principal reason why other platforms gained strength, in their quest to be as inclusive as possible they became the antithesis of it by punishing common users for not following the conventions of discourse due to their ignorance of the topic (which they reserve the right to disagree with anyways).
The point: zuckerberg can't expect people to believe his newfound pursuit of freedom when historically his platforms represented the opposite.
I've already added threads.net to my Mastodon server's Block List and Suspend list. Not interested in seeing any content or accounts from threads.net. My wording & terms might not be accurate but its 100% blocked on my server.
now would be the perfect time for Mastodon to prioritise features that marginalised communities have been asking for, around better privacy controls, retooting, etc.
I would love to see loud, affirmative commitment and action on these things from the Mastodon team
Free speech is not troubling. We're adults. We can think for ourselves and don't need nannies policing our content for anything that doesn't line up with an accepted narrative. Community notes is far from perfect but handing fact checking to the community is the only way you can promote both freedom AND the truth.
We are now two generations into 'reality tv', which set the ball in motion to conflate scripted conflict as reality which, in conjunction with religious fundamentalism, has fueled the ability of the conservative extreme to bend reality.
This is how deep fascism is nursed. What a waste, what a waste.
My instance is just me but I banned Threads immediately.
Meta's new policy of explicitly calling out gay/trans people as OK to insult is worse than even "free speech absolutism". It's the most extreme content policy I've ever read.
Honestly? I'm not surprised by Meta's decision to follow Twitter's path. That's why I'm now making the move to pixelfed over instagram(I never really liked instagram anyway)
Already moved over to Mastodon, along with Bluesky. These are my primaries, and I still use X, but I'm not in support of Meta apps, and anyone buying into Zuckerburg's "free-speech" community note rhetoric, clearly doesn't understand the end game.
Playing individual account moderation whack-a-mole with Threads' much larger userbase is a bad idea and exposes users of this instance to harm. It allows for all sorts of doxxing and dog-piling which individual users from these groups are not emotionally and logistically able to handle. Please reconsider and ban Threads outright. This should not be a "just manage it yourself" situation.
If you're waiting for @Gargron to do the right thing and defederate from Threads, maybe something that you can do personally is to migrate away from mastodon.social — there are better places to be, and if enough people start leaving maybe it will give Eugen the kick in the pants he seems to need.
My 12 year's on Twitters ended in January 2023 and I joined Mastodon. My 18 years on Facebook is being replaced by Bluesky. Pixelfed has replaced Instagram. I'm torn about WhatsApp, my last contact with many friends and real world social networks.
I wonder how many hate speech posts have to be cross posted before the it’s decided to block the entire service from the server. At some point that could be the rational decision.
I worry that the effort of moderating the rising tide of crap from Threads will become detrimental to this server. Do you have a plan that will result in threads being defederated? What is the threshold, and why is the stated direction from Meta enough to trigger severance?
Your platform banned me, for disagreeing with a trans person. I have no problem with trans people. She was simply illogical. The decision assumed malice. My appeal was ignored. I cannot recommend mastodon.social either.
I fully agree with your statement. However, the fun fact is that according to a survey of the Penn State University, 75% of the Facebook users share articles without even reading them. I suppose they wont't even notice the absence of the fact check links. So the appalling lack of social media literacy is the real bad news.
In an analysis of more than 35 million public posts containing links that were shared billions of times on the social media platform between 2017 and 2020, the researchers at Penn State found that around 75% of the shares were made without the poster…
I have a threads account but Its largely been abandoned for the last few months as I take a deep look at what those platforms deliver for their end users. Threads always had a way more corporate feel to it and towards the end of my usage of the platform, began to be filled with more AI Slop as meta desperately looked to keep the platform alive. This aligns with their current plans of AI personas on their platforms which I cannot support.
Alado
in reply to Korendian • •This feature is on the side of some clients, not on the instance side. I see that you are using Racoon. It doesn't seem to have this feature. Subway Tooter definitely has it, but it's a pretty weird app.
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