Add this to the pile of ideas I'm unlikely to ever make, not because it's super hard but just because I'm so constantly exhausted and out of spoons... steal away if you want to make it:

There's basically the "big server" problem on the fediverse, where a super large open registration server has so many people on it you don't want to block it and lose all those people... but it inherently is less effectively moderated. Or even on smaller instances there's so many cases of "this wouldn't be acceptable on my instance, but isn't bad enough to defederate a whole instance over".

It's manageable, but has limitations that get worse as the network grows. It's even one of the concerns people have with bridges and corporate platforms adding support (ie. bluesky and threads respectively).

But there's an idea in Bluesky I kinda like that feels like it could be tweaked and imported over here. Which is subscribable moderation.

I'm not proposing just subscribing to all sorts of block lists from strangers, but a way of having shared moderation that people can team up on.

Basic idea I had was an open source platform (so others can run it for both redundancy and cutting down on smaller censorship disputes). On that platform, someone can create and become the admin of a moderation group. Then they can invite other people to that group as moderators (or in the case of private groups, members).

Then basically have auditable moderation lists made by the groups (showing which moderator took which action and when... especially good for undoing things if problems arise, but also for checking the list before you import an update), then server admins and users can follow a list and subscribe/import it.

Was even thinking this could be improved with things like public reporting, where reporting it to the server would send the report to all lists that haven't already blocked them (servers could even share this between eachother easily enough). Additionally admins could piggyback their list off of others (basically lists that are less restrictive than yours, so you might pull from "We only block Nazis" because you know anyone they're blocking isn't going to be in question).

#FediMeta #Meta #Ideas #Idea #Suggestion #Suggestions #Moderation

With the nonsense about gup.pe getting hijacked, honestly has me thinking again about secondary tools for the network...

Bright spot is that they probably can't imitate the server, as far as I understand it AP has keys for the servers to prevent that (which is also part of why you can't readily swap platforms, want to run something different you need to use a different domain).

Still, it has me thinking about maybe some secondary registry to track instance information. Maybe make these sort of events less disruptive.

This is entirely off the cuff idea, so think of this as spaghetti at the wall:

I was just imagining a signed file on servers that gave extended, non-platform specific, meta for the server, kinda like robots.txt.

I was just thinking information like:
* My IP is static, so if the IP changes without an updated signed file, then it's not safe (or it's dynamic, so don't worry if it changes)
* Remember my nameservers and do the same if the nameservers change
* Here's a moderator email for reporting posts (because the system mastodon has for sending reports to other servers is non-standard and not universal... I have to find moderator emails on about pages when I need to report something...)
* Maybe some tags if someone wants to make non-platform specific server directories
* Some flags like robots for nicer more compliant services, like bridges allowed/denied

And then maybe a dns middle-man service to toss on your server that checks these things periodically. So if something happens like with gup.pe there's a notice to admins and maybe it doesn't get cut off immediately, maybe letting admins give some final notices in more permanent situations.

#fedimeta #ideas

One of the things that pisses me off the most is the people always saying "violence is not the answer".

Do you know why Nazi punching is a thing? Why it goes beyond just "fuck nazis"?

Let me break it down a little:

Is violence in self defense okay when someone is attacking you? Obviously, because they're attacking you and "please stop killing me" isn't going to make much difference to someone in the process of killing you.

How about when they're just pointing a gun at you but haven't fired? Yes, because if they pull that trigger you're going to die.

What about when they're just threatening you? Like if someone says "I have a knife and the moment no-one is looking I'm going to stab you"... do you just ask them nicely not to? Do you wait for them to start stabbing before you think it's okay to fight back? You probably recognize that words can be violence then.

Let's go a bit further... let's say someone is stealing and destroying a diabetic's insulin? This is a life saving drug, do you think it's valid to use violence to stop them even though it's not directly killing them? Then you probably recognize that violence isn't just physical attacks on a person.

How about someone rallying people to get together and kill someone? Do you just debate them or do you stop them?

So if someone says they believe trans people shouldn't be allowed to exist? That we shouldn't have access to basic rights like being ourselves in public, or access to our medications? These are people rallying others to attack us, to destroy the things that keep us alive. They may not be actively stabbing us in the moment, but it's still violence against us.

Nazi speech, Terf speech, etc. IS violence. And violence is the appropriate response to violence.

Note how we're not talking about punching someone for just being capitalist, for shouting about free market bullshit. We're talking about punching people calling for our eradication.

Again: violence is the appropriate response to violence.

#PunchNazis #MakeNazisAfraidAgain #LGBT #LGBTQIA

Reminded yet again how I'm pissed at people surrendering and calling it victory...

A reminder: if you're part of the "Block Bluesky/Threads By Default" crowd, you're just handing over victory.

Enshittifying the fediverse because you're afraid of big corpos and think everyone who isn't already here can just die in the hellhole fire of the other networks, "How DARE People Suggest We Build Fire Exits!".

So yeah, screw that self absorbed bullshit.

People are leaving the fediverse for Bluesky, why? Because people over here demand purity to random ideals, because people over here think it's unreasonable that someone might want to connect with friends and loved ones who made a different choice of network.

This is part of a much bigger problem... pissed that I'm surrounded all my life by people who think holier than though infighting and rejecting anyone who isn't pure enough in their ideals, instead of y'know actually pushing for changes that protect people.

I'm staring down the barrel of a gun in my life as my country falls apart to fascism and I'm in the top two of most hated and most at risk minorities... but at least y'all kept people on Bluesky from realizing the fediverse even exists...

#AngryRant #LGBT #LGBTQIA #Bluesky #FediverseMeta #FediMeta

Copying myself because I'm irritated yet again by people with their head up their ass assuming that their tiny view of the fediverse represents the whole and it's history...

This was set off by another person, yet again, complaining about bridgy-fed and thinking Snarfed is some untrustworthy asshole because he was following the actual norms and standards of the fediverse because the Twitter expats thought Mastodon was some bastion of personal control and ownership....

For context, opt-out (via just blocking the bridge) has been the norm since pretty much the beginning of federation... which the people complaining about the nature of the bridge don't realize how old federation and the community is.

For context (of the ones I'm aware of):
* The first federated protocol was introduced in 1980
* The first federated chat protocol was introduced in 1999
* The first federated social networking platforms that I know of started coming out about 2010. The platform I'm on (Friendica) came out that year.
* the second major federated chat protocol was introduced in 2014 and quickly bridges were built between it and the first (all only opt-out via blocking)
* Mastodon wasn't released until 2016, originally on the ostatus network (Friendica supported and still supports ostatus)
* Snarfed starts working on bridgy-fed around 2018
* Activitypub came out in 2018, mastodon and friendica both transitioned to Activitypub as their central protocol with Mastodon eventually dropping ostatus.
* Bridges were established between Activitypub and previous social networks, all opt-out bridges (and again via blocking)
* 2022 Elon Musk buys Twitter and do to good PR Mastodon becomes the instance platform of choice for most of them to the point that most of them think Mastodon is the network
* 2023, Snarfed has been writing bridgy fed for 7 years now, about as long as the activitypub network has existed, long predating Bluesky (because that's not the only bridge in the project), and all of a sudden people specifically overwhelmingly on Mastodon or younger projects think it's a deep offense to build something under the same social standards that have been the norm for decades. Even then long before the bluesky portion of the bridge was fully functional they relented and switched to an approach that drastically hampered has caused countless bugs and technical difficulties just because a minority of people decided to dogpile him... and of course he's judged because other people essentially crashed a party he'd been at peacefully for years and decided to scream that he was being inappropriate when everyone who was hear already supported it...

#bridges #bridgy #FediMeta #Fediverse #Bluesky

99% of the time "Judeo-Christian" is antisemitic. And yes, I will absolutely elaborate on this if asked.

Credit: @Rabbit Cohen

Edit because this blew up far more than I expected and multiple people have asked for me to elaborate, here's a copy of my elaboration with follow up questions encouraged:

It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.

The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:

1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions)
2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)

Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.

Some highlight examples:
* We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is)
* We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before
* We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...)
* We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument)
* We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon
* We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.