Not sure I dig baking it into the code, that starts walking into the broken by design space. Feasibly the tankies developing Lemmy could do the same to any instance not painted the right shade of red.
I might propose instead a step in setup, or on demand, to select major instances to allow/deny federation from with a description of them. Impossible to keep a list of every new instance up to date, but catching the major hubs shouldn’t be impossible.
Edit: For all those who replied along the lines of it being optional not a hard coded block, point noted. I should expect no less misleading a post from a pool of people prone to leaving out vital facts.
My understanding as it being an opt-out default defederation is still a bit grating since I tend to think of software as a neutral tool rather than promoting specific ideals, but it’s far better than a fixed in state and does serve some purpose to shield new users from some of the most egregiously bad actors.
I might propose instead a step in setup, or on demand, to select major instances to allow/deny federation from
This is exactly how it works. I started a PieFed instance and made the decision (during setup) to trim the defederation list down to none. Users can block on the account level.
Just to confirm, what did you exactly have to do to trim the defederation list during setup? Did you just use instance.tld/instances or did you do it differently?
I’m on my computer now, so I’ll type out some more detail if you’re interested. To reiterate, I’m just going off memory and it was two weeks ago so I could very well be making stuff up…
The pre-filled input box asked for each blocked instance to go on a new line, so:
Agreed on the risk of having baked-in bans, though alternatively, maybe using the already available tool, per-instance defederation would be better. Or also as Lemmy allows, users defederating from instances they’d rather avoid.
Or also as Lemmy allows, users defederating from instances they’d rather avoid.
Lemmy does not do this, the devs implemented an incredibly broken block system that is nothing more than mute. Suspected to be done this way intentionally.
On an instance level, it does not block an instances’ users at all
On a per-user level, blocked users can still fully interact with your comments and posts, you just can’t see it. What’s more damning is that ActivityPubs spec’d block does do a proper block, but dessalines chose to roll their own broken system.
In both cases, it’s akin to this “one-way” federation they bring up.
The only true way to block an instance, is for an instance admin to fully defederate.
Actually, the ap spec warns servers not to deliver blocks to other servers, since those could be used to detect who blocked who. This was ignored by mastodon.
Pixelfed had the same blocking behavior as Lemmy.
That makes sense on a closed forum like Facebook or Instagram where its your own page and you can block people from seeing it, but I don’t know if you should be allowed to post misinformation or spam or snake oil on a public forum and then prevent that public from seeing anything in the comments that might contradict you. The room for abuse outweighs the potential benefits in my view.
The cons are pretty bad imo. It’s common on Reddit now for people to get into an argument, reply and then immediately block to prevent a response and make it look like that person didn’t care to respond. If someone is a poweruser and responsible for a meaningful portion of posts and spawned comment threads in a community, they can use the block function to strategically limit the ability of certain other users to participate, since a blocked person can not only not reply to them but also can’t reply to anyone else further down a thread. This effect is worse in smaller subs, it’s basically soft moderation powers granted just by blocking and writing things that generate engagement. And when this is happening, by its nature it is hard to even tell it’s happening.
Separating the communities from the users makes sense in some contexts, like blocking all of the communities of a NSFW type instance without blocking all their users. But there should be a additional option for users to block all the users of an instance without needing to do each one individually.
Not sure I dig baking it into the code, that starts walking into the broken by design space. Feasibly the tankies developing Lemmy could do the same to any instance not painted the right shade of red.
I might propose instead a step in setup, or on demand, to select major instances to allow/deny federation from with a description of them. Impossible to keep a list of every new instance up to date, but catching the major hubs shouldn’t be impossible.
Edit: For all those who replied along the lines of it being optional not a hard coded block, point noted. I should expect no less misleading a post from a pool of people prone to leaving out vital facts.
My understanding as it being an opt-out default defederation is still a bit grating since I tend to think of software as a neutral tool rather than promoting specific ideals, but it’s far better than a fixed in state and does serve some purpose to shield new users from some of the most egregiously bad actors.
You might want to take a look at this comment from a dev
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/21022924
Sane defaults make self-hosting approachable.
This is exactly how it works. I started a PieFed instance and made the decision (during setup) to trim the defederation list down to none. Users can block on the account level.
Hello,
Just to confirm, what did you exactly have to do to trim the defederation list during setup? Did you just use instance.tld/instances or did you do it differently?
FYI @jet@hackertalks.com
If I remember correctly, I was presented with a text box pre-populated with the list of bad guys. I just selected them all with Ctrl-A and hit delete.
Thank you!
@jet@hackertalks.com
I’m on my computer now, so I’ll type out some more detail if you’re interested. To reiterate, I’m just going off memory and it was two weeks ago so I could very well be making stuff up…
The pre-filled input box asked for each blocked instance to go on a new line, so:
lemmy.world lemmy.ml lemmygrad.ml hexbear.net lemmy.zip piefed.social etc...I deleted all of the defaults and that was it. I’ll put a screenshot of the settings page that’s available to admins below:
Even better, thanks
One of the main reasons I dont self host anything from the fediverse is because I dont want to monitor for abusive material.
Seems like the defed list is mostly known sources of abusive imagery.
It’s just a default ban that can be turned off if desired.
I don’t know if this is the answer, but it sure sounds like a step in the right direction.
Agreed on the risk of having baked-in bans, though alternatively, maybe using the already available tool, per-instance defederation would be better. Or also as Lemmy allows, users defederating from instances they’d rather avoid.
Lemmy does not do this, the devs implemented an incredibly broken block system that is nothing more than mute. Suspected to be done this way intentionally.
On an instance level, it does not block an instances’ users at all
On a per-user level, blocked users can still fully interact with your comments and posts, you just can’t see it. What’s more damning is that ActivityPubs spec’d block does do a proper block, but dessalines chose to roll their own broken system.
In both cases, it’s akin to this “one-way” federation they bring up.
The only true way to block an instance, is for an instance admin to fully defederate.
Actually, the ap spec warns servers not to deliver blocks to other servers, since those could be used to detect who blocked who. This was ignored by mastodon.
Pixelfed had the same blocking behavior as Lemmy.
What’s wrong with that? The alternative is how Reddit lets spam bots and misinformation block the replies calling them out.
While there are certainly some cons, block should mean block. If user A blocks user B, they should not be able to see each other, period
That makes sense on a closed forum like Facebook or Instagram where its your own page and you can block people from seeing it, but I don’t know if you should be allowed to post misinformation or spam or snake oil on a public forum and then prevent that public from seeing anything in the comments that might contradict you. The room for abuse outweighs the potential benefits in my view.
That’s what instance admins and comm mods are for
Anything less than full blocking leaves a much bigger room for harassment.
If a bad faith user has blocked people who might be critical of their misinformation or poor behaviour, there’d be no-one to alert the moderators.
Someone tested the consequences of this type of blocking on Reddit.
Piefed blocking should prevent the blocked person from replying to the blocker.
I tried it a while ago, it was functional on the same instance, I don’t remember between Piefed instance or between Piefed and Lemmy
The cons are pretty bad imo. It’s common on Reddit now for people to get into an argument, reply and then immediately block to prevent a response and make it look like that person didn’t care to respond. If someone is a poweruser and responsible for a meaningful portion of posts and spawned comment threads in a community, they can use the block function to strategically limit the ability of certain other users to participate, since a blocked person can not only not reply to them but also can’t reply to anyone else further down a thread. This effect is worse in smaller subs, it’s basically soft moderation powers granted just by blocking and writing things that generate engagement. And when this is happening, by its nature it is hard to even tell it’s happening.
Separating the communities from the users makes sense in some contexts, like blocking all of the communities of a NSFW type instance without blocking all their users. But there should be a additional option for users to block all the users of an instance without needing to do each one individually.
I dunno if you were talking about instance block, but a much more functional one has been merged and will ship with Lemmy 1.0.
I think it would be amazing if lemmyml blocked everyone
I think it would be amazing if lemmy.ml didn’t exist.