How to fix moderation on the fediverse
So there has been some talks recently about how fediverse handles moderation and some of its issues, and to see how we can improve moderation from a technical perspective. Now I have an idea that I want to share with you all, because so far I haven't seen anyone else talk about it, and I think this could solve a lot of issues with our current method of moderation. But before going into that, I want to explain the current situation and why this is important, so that you understand what issues I'm trying to solve.
Current situation
When it comes to moderation, Fediverse follows a more mainstream approach, where admins/moderators of an instance block users and other instances on behalf of you. And as a user you also have the tools to block/mute users or instances.
The issue
Compared to all of the other centralized platforms, there is something different here on fedi, and that is the ability to block entire instances, which will, on an instant, block a huge chunk of users that are on it. This can be a very powerful feature for moderators, but if not used carefully this can lead to problems. For example, if someone decides to block an entire instance just because of a few bad actors on it, then they're also blocking all of the other users on that instance who haven't done anything wrong to get blocked.
If you're a fediverse user and your instance admin blocked another instance from federating, that means you can't interact with anyone on that instance anymore, but you as a user is never notified of any of this so you won't know when it happens. Just think about that for a moment, this is equal to cutting the cord with that server, stopping the federation entirely. And if you had any friends on that instance, then you will lose contact with them.
Federation doesn't solve all problems
So what people usually say is that in the fediverse you can move instances, so if you don't agree with the moderators of one instance, you can simply move to a different one. While it is great that we have this option in the fediverse, it is not as easy as it sounds. And one project that I want to note here is Hubzilla because from what I've read so far they do it much better, they have this thing called nomadic identities which are independent from the server you use, and so you can very easily move from server to server and bring all your data with you. And furthermore, on Hubzilla you can even clone your account to different servers, so this will be the equivalent of being on several different instances at the same time and they all mirror each other, how cool is that?!
Centralization makes it worse
Email is another federated service just like our fediverse. And if you look at email the problem there is that most people are on a few servers like Gmail, Outlook, etc. And so this gives the ones in control of these servers more power over other servers on the network. And if you look at the fediverse now there is a similar problem arising here, most users on the entire fediverse are on a couple of popular instances, so if your instance got banned by these big instances then you're pretty much out of fedi. Centralization & censorship is a threat to federated networks, so keep that in mind.
And some people also say you can start your own instance, but you can't expect the average social media user to go through the process of setting up a server and maintain it, if you have the money and technical skills to do that then you can, but this is not a viable solution for the majority of people. Peer to peer apps are much better in this regard because there everyone is automatically made a node in the network, so they don't have to do anything for it. But on fedi this is not the case, you have to rely on servers.
Solutions
There is no simple solution to this problem, but I'll list some of the key points here that I think are important:
Transparency regarding moderation actions
So I've mentioned above how users are not notified when their admin blocks an instance, this is the first and foremost problem we should try to solve. All of the moderation decisions should be made transparent to the users of that instance, and the admin/moderator should also explain the reason why they chose to block these. So I've been informed that they recently found a solution for this on Friendica, so that's great 😀. What they did is that they implemented a notification system that notifies all users of an instance when their blocklist gets updated, and it'll show a link to that blocklist where they can check to see all the instances that are currently blocked and the reason for their blocking. This is how it should be done, and I want other fediverse platforms to do the same.
One thing that I want to add here is that it'd be nice if users are informed about it when someone they follow (or that instance) gets blocked. As a user I want to know when this happens, or else I will be in the dark about it, not knowing that I can't see/interact with that person anymore.
So the more transparent you make moderation, the better it'll be.
Different levels of blocking
This is an important one I think, moderators/admins should have the power to "hide" a user from the public instead of outright blocking them. There will be some edge cases when it comes to blocking, so the moderator may not want to outright block it, but just simply hide it from the public timelines or something. This feature might already be on some fediverse platforms, I remember opening a profile from my mastodon account and it blurred the profile and showed me a little warning saying "This profile is hidden because of sensitive content" or something like that, and I had to click on a button to agree to seeing that. I really liked this little thing, because the profile wasn't blocked or anything, but my moderators could show a warning instead.
So blocking shouldn't be an all-or-nothing strategy, there should be different levels of blocking, because this is better for moderators and users alike 🙂
My idea
So this is that big idea I had in my mind, let me explain. I mentioned in the beginning how fediverse allows its users to block/mute other users and even instances. So currently when you first join fedi your personal blocklist will be empty, even though your instance admin might have blocked some users/instances on your behalf. But what if we actually made it so that the instance blocklist syncs with the user blocklist? 😀 So in that case when you join fedi your blocklist will be filled with your default instance blocks, and every time the moderators block a new server it'll get added to the blocklist of all users. This kind of mechanism would allow moderators to create a safe space for everyone, but at the same time if someone wants to unblock any of these they can do that on the user level. So if I found out that I have some friends on an instance that is blocked for me, I can just unblock that specific instance so that I can still talk to my friends, and this is a user level action so I can only unblock it for me, not for other users on my instance.
So lets call this method of blocking as "soft blocking" because as a moderator you're simply just updating the default blocklist for your users, and if any of them really want to then they can unblock it for themselves. This should be the default way of blocking for fediverse moderators because I think it satisfies the needs of both moderators who want to create a safe space for their users, and also alleviate the concerns of people who are worried about censorship and losing contact with their friends.
Exceptions
There might be some exceptions where instance admins might want to apply a "hard block" so that users can't unblock it even if they want to. I'm specifically thinking of blocking illegal content here, because in that case there might be some laws that make it tricky, so if you're worried of legal issues then having the option of a hard block could be useful. One thing to note is, for the users they will still see these hard blocks on their personal blocklist, but there won't be that unblock button that allows them to unblock these.
P.S. Let me know what you think of this idea? Is it practical or doable? Is there anything else I missed?
Addendum
So far we've been talking only about the technical side of things, to see how we can improve moderation by giving more power and choice to the users. But looking at some of the replies I got on this post I felt like maybe a lot of people don't understand why we're doing it in the first place, why should we give more power to the users over admins? So I wrote a separate post, to answer that question, but also to make people understand how much of a complex topic moderation actually is, it isn't just simply "blocking bad content".
The social impacts of moderation & censorship - social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc4…
The social impacts of moderation & censorship
This post is related to these previous discussions we've had about moderation: https://social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc44-4262-df68-a596-611155190199 https://so...social.trom.tf
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Tio
in reply to Rokosun • •I agree with what you wrote. I do however think that the Fediverse is already difficult to grasp for most people and if they are now asked to manage a blocklist that is updated by the admin, can be super tricky. Also, what does soft blocking mean for the instance that is blocking? Display the blocked content only for the users that accept to see it? How to do that is it possible?
For me the most sane and simple approach is that of blocklists like adblockers. Say in your settings have lists called: Nazi, porn, bots, scams, etc.. And you can toggle them and that's all. And the fight and work goes in the backstage with us the admins and some vocal users trying to keep these lists sane.
The best would be to simply let the users do whatever they want in regards to blocking, and you as the instance admin can remove users from your own instance and keep it "clean". Stop trying to moderate other instances! This is a bad practice.
In any regards I strongly feel that we need to talk about these things now. I do not see any good approach currently, except for how Friendica
... show moreI agree with what you wrote. I do however think that the Fediverse is already difficult to grasp for most people and if they are now asked to manage a blocklist that is updated by the admin, can be super tricky. Also, what does soft blocking mean for the instance that is blocking? Display the blocked content only for the users that accept to see it? How to do that is it possible?
For me the most sane and simple approach is that of blocklists like adblockers. Say in your settings have lists called: Nazi, porn, bots, scams, etc.. And you can toggle them and that's all. And the fight and work goes in the backstage with us the admins and some vocal users trying to keep these lists sane.
The best would be to simply let the users do whatever they want in regards to blocking, and you as the instance admin can remove users from your own instance and keep it "clean". Stop trying to moderate other instances! This is a bad practice.
In any regards I strongly feel that we need to talk about these things now. I do not see any good approach currently, except for how Friendica handles the transparency as you mentioned. The rest is a wild wild west. A broken fediverse, and you have no clue where and how it is broken. And will never know...
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Rokosun
in reply to Tio • •@Tio
I don't know much about the technical side of this, but on platforms like mastodon they already allow users to block other instances, so this isn't really a new thing. If all users on an instance except a few blocked an instance, then only that few who has unblocked it will see that instance.
... show moreI have talked about this idea before and I also think this is the sane way, but now to me it seems like it'd be better suited for a peer to peer network where there are no moderators or instance admins, because there you would actually need such lists as there is no one else moderating for you. The important difference between these two is that in a p2p system all users are equal, but on a federated network like this users are relying on in
@Tio
I don't know much about the technical side of this, but on platforms like mastodon they already allow users to block other instances, so this isn't really a new thing. If all users on an instance except a few blocked an instance, then only that few who has unblocked it will see that instance.
I have talked about this idea before and I also think this is the sane way, but now to me it seems like it'd be better suited for a peer to peer network where there are no moderators or instance admins, because there you would actually need such lists as there is no one else moderating for you. The important difference between these two is that in a p2p system all users are equal, but on a federated network like this users are relying on instances that are run by other people, so from a technical perspective that gives instance admins more control over the network. Currently all of the moderation is done by instance admins, so if we implement an ad-block like approach then what will these admins do? What if an admin wants to block all Nazis from their instance? what could they do then? You could say this should be left to the users, but I don't think people running these servers would be comfortable with Nazi content federating with their instance, and also there can be legal issues. So the truth is that instance admins want that control, they don't want to leave everything to the users because they feel like they should have a say in how their server works, because they're the ones maintaining it, paying for it, etc.
And my idea of syncing instance blocklist with the user blocklist, that is actually an extension of this ad-block idea. But here instead of users subscribing to a blocklist maintained by someone else, their instance admin maintains it. This gives instance admins some say over what happens on their instance, as opposed to leaving everything to the user which is more suitable for p2p systems.
Tio
in reply to Rokosun • •I have an instance, right?! I control who registers (who is) on this instance....isn't that enough? Why should I control what others see from other instances via mine? It is like Firefox blocking certain websites. These platforms should be regarded as browsers for the users. Yes temporary data is stored from other locations on my server, but it is temporary and that's an important point. You can complain about the users that are registered on my platform, since I am the one allowing that, but you have no right to complain about remote content that is temporarily stored on my server. And if these man-made rules called "laws" do not see this difference, they should adapt.
As for your idea I get more of it now, but I'd very super uncomfortable to have an admin forcefully adding a list of blocked entities in my settings, even if I can undo that. Maybe ask them if they want to apply that blocked list...
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Liwott
in reply to Tio • • •I disagree. The browser does not serve you any content. An instance's federated timeline puts you in contact with the content from another instance, even when you did not ask for it. Conversely, if your instance federates with one containing undesired users, it shows them your content without them knowing you in the first place. Imagine what happens if a jewish person registers then publishes on an instance that federates with an instance full of nazi trolls.
Note that I am not saying anything against the shared blocklists solution here, I actually find it very interesting.
Tio
in reply to Liwott • •Then we should focus on that aspect. Admins should be able to remove that or restrict that. The visibility of it.
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Liwott
in reply to Tio • • •Tio
in reply to Liwott • •If you do not want to be exposed to "bigots" then you can simply not search for them. You can easily control your news feed to only see posts from your chosen friends. I think that's default in friendica for example. Like a search engine, you won't see content unless you search for it.
By the way when you comment it posts twice.
Liwott
in reply to Tio • • •@Tio
Oh yes I reacted wrongly to not being able to edit comments in this thread. Won't happen for the future ones, sorry !
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Liwott
in reply to Tio • • •@Tio
No, I was referring to my previous point :
So it is about bigots randomly seing your content and then deciding to target you.
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Tio
in reply to Liwott • •Rokosun likes this.
Liwott
in reply to Tio • • •True for that way, but in the other way (not wanting to be exposed to e.g. bigots), it is really about controlling how posts are transmitted to other instances, not just visibility on your own
Liwott
in reply to Tio • • •@Tio @Rokosun
I disagree. The browser does not serve you any content. An instance's federated timeline puts you in contact with the content from another instance, even when you did not ask for it. Conversely, if your instance federates with one containing undesired users, it shows them your content without them knowing you in the first place. Imagine what happens if a jewish person registers then publishes on an instance that federates with an instance full of nazi trolls.
Note that I am not saying anything against the shared blocklists solution here, I actually find it very interesting.
Tio
Unknown parent • •Rokosun likes this.
Rokosun
in reply to Tio • •@Tio @Émilie Fecteau
You are absolutely right Em, and there is the irony in that, I'll explain. So your point is that admins will abuse their power and do hard blocks more often than necessary. But.... If admins actually wanna do that, if they really are that power hungry, then how do you think instance admins will react if we didn't even give them an option to hard block? This is like taking power away from them and they're not gonna accept it, I don't even think Fediverse developers would be in favor of that decision if it upsets many instance admins.
So the truth is that you can't actually give all the power to the users as long as that user is relying on someone else. Self reliance doesn't exist on the fediverse, they're only possible on p2p systems, this is actually the reason why I talked a lot about p2p platforms before even when our di
... show more@Tio @Émilie Fecteau
You are absolutely right Em, and there is the irony in that, I'll explain. So your point is that admins will abuse their power and do hard blocks more often than necessary. But.... If admins actually wanna do that, if they really are that power hungry, then how do you think instance admins will react if we didn't even give them an option to hard block? This is like taking power away from them and they're not gonna accept it, I don't even think Fediverse developers would be in favor of that decision if it upsets many instance admins.
So the truth is that you can't actually give all the power to the users as long as that user is relying on someone else. Self reliance doesn't exist on the fediverse, they're only possible on p2p systems, this is actually the reason why I talked a lot about p2p platforms before even when our discussion was about improving moderation on the fediverse. Because if your aim is to give all power to users then federation is not the best approach for that.
Why I made this post is to show the best we could do within the restraints of a federated system, without forcefully taking away power from instance admins. And I gave 2 main points we can focus on:
And my idea of syncing user blocklist with the instance blocklist, that would actually fall in the second category because we're adding a different level of blocking here called "soft blocking" and are making it default so that they're less likely to use the hard blocking.
And BTW, I also really like what Hubzilla is doing, they're actually reducing the user's reliance on servers by using this thing called nomadic identities that are more or less independent from the server. And like I explained before, you could clone your account to different servers and stuff. I don't think Hubzilla supports p2p direct connections, so they're still somewhat reliant on servers, but its better than normal fediverse platforms.
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Rokosun
Unknown parent • •@Émilie Fecteau
Em, what you're referring to here is the ability to hide a user from public timelines so that only people who directly interact with them can see their posts. This might already be possible, IDK about that.
What I refer to as soft blocking is different, its an idea I came up with where the admin is able to set the user's blocklist, and the user is able to override these changes if they so wish. And I don't think any fediverse platforms currently support this.
@sтυx💙💛
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Tio
Unknown parent • •The long term consequences of this mindset are not pretty. You will decide for hundreds/thousands of users at once. Keep that in mind.
And let me give you an example: I know someone who tries to normalize nudity so she appears topless in many of her videos/photos. Most humans are afraid of the female nipple so she finds it hard to have a social presence. Now the only instances that allow nudity also allow all sort of crap: nazi, gore, etc.. She now makes an account there. You then see some of these crazy people interacting with your instance. I am a user on your instance and friends with this girl. You block that instance, and you have removed my contact with this person. Not good.
There are lots of saner ways to deal with this that won't ruin the fediverse.
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Liwott
Unknown parent • • •@Émilie Fecteau @Rokosun
It is not actually possible to impose any constraint to instance admins, as they could just use another software (or fork it) that does not have the constraint. Hence why, as you said in a later comment, one needs to find a solution to the reasons behing the existence of instance blocking.
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Rokosun
Unknown parent • •Not just transparent, but if any particular user wants to unblock an instance for themselves, then they could do that. This prevents them from loosing contact with friends in case if that instance got blocked. Remember when you unblocked Aaron's instance so that you could talk to him? You could do that because the blocklist you applied was a user level block, that's the advantage of it.
Rokosun
Unknown parent • •@Émilie Fecteau
I think maybe you might've misunderstood what I was trying to say. How this soft blocking works is that you as an admin can block an instance for all your users, just like before. The only difference is that users who really do want to can unblock it, but for only themselves. So if an admin soft blocks an instance then that instance will be blocked for almost all of the users, except for a few ones that decide to unblock it.
So this would still allow admins to moderate and create a safe space for the users, but at the same time users who choose to can still communicate their friends. So I think this would satisfy both their needs, the admin and user is happy because they all get what they want.
Rokosun
Unknown parent • •@Émilie Fecteau
Which problem does it not solve?
... show moreThis problem is solved because you can block the instance and then trolls can't interact with you or anyone on your instance. Maybe if a few users manually unblock the trolls then they'll be able to interact with those specific users, but that was their choice to unblock, so they should be fine with it I guess...... 🤷
In most cases users aren't gonna unblock trolls, they'll unblock things only when there is a reason to do so, such as loosing communication with one of their friends maybe.
@Émilie Fecteau
Which problem does it not solve?
This problem is solved because you can block the instance and then trolls can't interact with you or anyone on your instance. Maybe if a few users manually unblock the trolls then they'll be able to interact with those specific users, but that was their choice to unblock, so they should be fine with it I guess...... 🤷
In most cases users aren't gonna unblock trolls, they'll unblock things only when there is a reason to do so, such as loosing communication with one of their friends maybe.
Again, admins are able to moderate here, we're not removing any of the moderation tools. When it comes to soft blocking, only a small number of users who manually unblock these instances can still interact with them. So except these few users who explicitly choose to see these, others will be safe from these bad instances.
And if you think an instance posts illegal content and want to do a hard block, then that option is still there for the admins. So there is really no downside for this.
This sounds good in theory, but in practice these kind of things usually lead to censorship. When it comes to federated networks, servers with the most number of users will have more power over other smaller servers. Think of email here which is a federated network like fedi, I've heard multiple people complain that their self hosted email servers got blocked by Gmail and other big servers, and so now they can't communicate with anyone there. Mind you, Gmail is banning people left and right, without putting much thought into it, so you don't really have to be a bad actor to get blocked. A similar issue is present in the fediverse because most users are on a couple of popular instances, and if you got banned by these big servers then you're pretty much out of fedi.
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Bill Statler
in reply to Rokosun • • •Hello @roko@social.trom.tf -- I like your idea because it adds another option for moderation, and extra options are (usually) a good thing. I'm not a programmer, so I have no idea if it's feasible to implement it.
I don't think there's one single correct way to handle moderation. Some users will want complete control over who they block, and others will want to outsource part or all of this work to an admin/moderator. This is a matter of personal preference. And some admins will want to protect their community of users, and others would rather just block the illegal and legally-risky stuff. Your suggestion provides another option for everyone.
Given that your idea doesn't exist in software at present, I wonder if there's an easy way to share suggested blocklists, for either admins or individual users to use. Since everyone has their own idea of who to block, a single centralized "Fediblock" list might be doomed. But maybe just a Fediverse group open to admins, but readable by all, where someone could post their list of who they're blocking and why.
like this
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Rokosun
in reply to Bill Statler • •@Bill Statler
I'm glad you liked my idea, on this post I mainly focus on the concept of "soft blocking" that I came up with, but we've talked before about using blocklists similar to ones that are used by ad-blockers. You can read about the previous discussion here - social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc4…
Now the idea is to use a git repo for maintaining such blocklists so that anyone can make contributions to it. And its not just simply sharing your list, but also categorizing it into different types of content, so if someone wants to block nudity then they can just subscribe to that list and it'll get blocked, if someone don't mind seeing nudity then they can just simply not subscribe to it. There can be a list for bots, spammers, nazis, etc......
... show moreAnd just like on ad-blockers, this doesn't have to be a centralized blocklist, there can be many lists like this that users can subscrib
@Bill Statler
I'm glad you liked my idea, on this post I mainly focus on the concept of "soft blocking" that I came up with, but we've talked before about using blocklists similar to ones that are used by ad-blockers. You can read about the previous discussion here - social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc4…
Now the idea is to use a git repo for maintaining such blocklists so that anyone can make contributions to it. And its not just simply sharing your list, but also categorizing it into different types of content, so if someone wants to block nudity then they can just subscribe to that list and it'll get blocked, if someone don't mind seeing nudity then they can just simply not subscribe to it. There can be a list for bots, spammers, nazis, etc......
And just like on ad-blockers, this doesn't have to be a centralized blocklist, there can be many lists like this that users can subscribe to by simply using its URL, at least that sounds like a better idea to me, and it should be technically possible because ad-blockers already do that.
BTW, I have also just made a post about the social impacts of moderation - social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc4…
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Rokosun
Unknown parent • •I felt like I should make a separate post about the social impacts of moderation, and I've addressed your point there - social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc4…
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Rokosun
Unknown parent • •@Émilie Fecteau
We're not trying to make fedi into a peer-to-peer network, in fact I don't think its technically possible.
Okay, then explain some of the advantages that you see with moderators deciding for the users as opposed to users deciding for themselves. You're not giving me any information about this.
One of the main points of that post was to understand how difficult it is to recognize bad ideas from others. People usually just go with the social norms and don't realize what they've been doing was harmful until much later, ideas like slavery, sexism, etc. are some examples of how we've been wrong about what is good and bad, and I'm sure it'll happen again.
Rokosun
Unknown parent • •@Émilie Fecteau
What are you saying that I should be acknowledging?
Rokosun
Unknown parent • •@Émilie Fecteau
I'm sorry, but I don't know how to understand someone's point of view without them explaining that to me. I don't even know what you want me to understand or acknowledge, lol.
If people disagree so what? This doesn't mean you shouldn't be explaining your argument. If you don't tell me then I'm not magically gonna "get it" and come back saying you were right.
Rokosun
Unknown parent • •Oh, that makes more sense. Now I at least understand why you're not telling me anything, even though I don't think I'm gonna get your point.
Rokosun
in reply to Rokosun • •@Émilie Fecteau
BTW, if you really do have a good point and explain it well then this won't happen. Also its not like its a competition where we're trying to make the other person believe us, its more like we're explaining our point to others, that's why I made a separate post about it, because I wasn't really trying to change your mind, but I just wanted to explain about the social impacts of moderation so that others can read my post and share their thoughts about it.
Rokosun
Unknown parent • •@Émilie Fecteau
I just sent you a message about it, basically if you look at this like an argument then its not gonna work. I don't like having arguments to make the other person change their mind. Especially when I write about something online, that is for explaining some things and having a discussion about it. Did you see the conversation me and Tio had below that post? Did you see the replies of others below this post? That is how you have a proper discussion.
Rokosun
in reply to Rokosun • •And you also made some good points earlier, and that's what initially gave me the idea to write that post.
Liwott
Unknown parent • • •@Émilie Fecteau
If you want to pressure your friends into leaving (what you define as) bad instances, you still can decide to not unblock them, except you have to take responsibility for that.
There is still actually the pressure related to discoverability. There is also the question of what happens to boosts.
@Rokosun
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