I also just checked and this seems to have monumentally damaged the use count on the server.
I dont know exactly when this was enacted but in recent months the user count for the server plummeted from 80K to 20K and has month by month been continually decreasing since then as people flock away from the server. I suspect the use of this extremely abusive block list, and perhaps similar decisions are a large part of the reason.
🇳🇱
@freemo@social.cleverlibre.org
In the past they were actually kinda responsible about it. They used to do due dilligance and made responsible decisions. Seems around the time they got a new moderator on board everything went down hill and due dilligrance went out the window. No surprise that was when their use based went running to the hills and has decreased every day since then.
This is just the last step they needed to take to kill the server.
...not really.
I had an account on there. I asked one question which, I suppose, someone took offense to. Next thing I know, I'm suspended - cant see anyone. I questioned/appealed the decision and never heard back. 30 days later that account is toast and can't even talk to people who'd friended it in the first place.
This was late 2021 early 2022.
Then I made an account on infosec.exchange.. Jerry was very cool. Then I got the idea to spin my own instance up.. and here I am.
No, these bad decisions at universodon have been going on for at least two years.. It's only becoming APPARENT now.
@admin @freemo@qoto.org FWIW - Universeodon didn't exist until November 2022 and I didn't take over the running of it until the summer of 2023.
Unfortunately I suspect the previous ownership and staff didn't really review appeals given the quantity of them that were outstanding when I took over ownership.
@wild1145
My typos. I've corrected them.
Doesn't change the fact that it did happen, and now it's irreversible.
@admin I get that, I can't speak for why you were suspended or why you didn't get a response. The most I can do is apologise, it's not how we do things now, if someone has been banned and they appeal, we make sure to review and either approve it if we fucked up and got it wrong, or reject it if we see it as being a valid sanction.
@wild1145
And yet you're embracing an automatic "banlist" based on nothing except the say-so of people who, for the most part, shouldn't be deciding what to eat for supper on any given day, much less the suitability of a particular server (mine included...) for federation?
Or am I misreading all of the above.
@admin There's nothing automatic about it, it's a list that I import and then review as part of the import. My choice to use the list was based off months of reviewing the list and the way it was curated, and the fact it can't be swayed by one or even two of the instances's ban lists that contribute towards it.
I haven't got the time, capacity or funding to hire the people to review the quantity of instances that we federate with in order to make decisions in the proactice way we should be.
> My choice to use the list was based off months of reviewing the list and the way it was curated, and the fact it can't be swayed by one or even two of the instances's ban lists that contribute towards it.
Factually wrong. Each list contributes a vote to the final list, meaning every block list sways the final output.
The fact that the list of servers which constitute the list are themselves **highly** abusive and noted for such in some cases (such as mastodon.art being one of a small number of master lists) is exactly why it is abusive and negligent of you to support it. Any block list where mastodon.art doesnt just get a vote but is part of a hand selected small list of master lists which literally define the list... no sorry but that is absolute negligence on your part.
Have you considered instead of being lazy and trying to avoid moderating your server properly and literally admitting to refusing to do due diligence... maybe you should consider I dont know, moderating your server and if need be promoting enough moderators to do so? Crazy idea huh.
If you dont have time capacity or money to hire moderators then do a good enough job people are willing to volunteer their time because they believe in the community.
I am a horrible moderator because I dont have the time is pretty much your excuse here, and its a bad one.
@admin Very true and I'm grateful to our team that are already doing exactly that. However that means someone has had to see the content and report it before we can deal with it. The goal with bulk importing lists we have a level of trust in is to prevent that and to enable us to establish a quick baseline of servers we don't want to federate with at all which allows our mods to focus on everything else.
Seems to me this thought is "playing Der Fuhrer" to me..
People don't need to be protected from thoughts outside of their current positions - that's what the nazis did.
People do, however, need to learn how to determine whether those "outside thoughts" are just discussion points and whether they're ACTUALLY harmful to others.
Disagreeing with someone's position is not harmful. Wanting to discuss a point in order to learn the other side's position (no matter what that other side is) and maybe understand where they're coming from is not harmful. Discussing who and what to beat down IS harmful. Discussing how someone is going to <verb> a <noun> IS harmful.
People see something that's ACTUALLY HARMFUL, they should report it. then It gets reviewed and pulled (or not) by your volunteers and the job is done.
Child porn sites - absolutely block those. Anything that's exploitative of those who DO NOT HAVE THE CAPABILITY of defending themselves, sure, block that.
The block lists you're using have servers on there because one person didn't like the fact that another person didn't use an Oxford Comma, so they scream "NAZI!" and everyone follows along... so that whole server gets put on the Oliphant Excrement list.
The two concepts are not the same. Not even close.
I'll leave you with this thought: if you are working to "protect" your "citizens" from outside thoughts without giving them the choice to use their own account block functionality (which, oddly, has been built into Mastodon since nearly the beginning), you are, in effect, playing Hitler to your Nazi Masses.
Remember: If a Jew smells Nazis or Nazi-like behavior, there are probably Nazis or Nazi-like behavior.
@admin Users are always able to decide if they like the way we moderate. We unlike a lot of servers share our block lists and our reasons why we issue blocks.
The reality is qoto and the other instances on the list we choose to use have been widely evidenced to be spreading hate speech, illegal content or other abusive materials which violate my servers rules.
It's very clear you have no real interest in my rational or reasoning so I'll end this here for me.
Jawohl, Anführer!
Guess I've got a couple of instances to block, myself.. considering they're being run in a Nazi-esque style.
@wild1145
There are people who would moderate for free given the right motivation.
"Keep the actual nazis away" is a good reason to want to moderate... but you'll want to find people who know the difference between "someone slightly to the right of me" and actual nazis...
@freemo