Peter Drake, he/him, LFHCfS 🔥 @peterdrake@social.cleverlibre.org

@ersei@ersei.net .. and at this very moment, I'm picking up "k pop chicken" at a Korean restaurant. COINCIDENCE?!

@lowqualityfacts *examines cuticles* I'm just sayin'. #drake #phd #LuxuriantFlowingHair

@freemo @gamehawk Gotcha.

I'm not trying to override any marginalized community; of course, I will defer to them about their rights and safety.

That said, the minorities on qoto are not a representative sample of a general community which is, of course, not monolithic. But that's why the Fediverse has many servers, right?

@freemo @gamehawk

"Are you talking about racist posts that happen to be out int he fediverse somewhere? Or are we talking about harassment, where posts are sent as direct messages to them? There will always be bad people on the internet, luckily you dont see that nonsense if you arent looking for it. If someone is being harassed by someone actively pushing cruel messages at them then that is far more concerning from a moderation perspective, especially if its an organized attack. If that is happening I’d want to address it."

As mentioned previously in the thread, I'm talking about the stuff that's flooding, e.g.:

https://qoto.org/tags/newhere

It's not DMs, but it's very clearly "an organized attack" that's "actively pushing cruel messages at" people by hijacking hashtags.

"Why dont we leave that for the maginalized people to decide? As I said it is at their request, and for their safety, we have an open policy in the first place."

I see the value in letting people speak/act/decide for themselves, but I also see the value in not making the victims do all the emotional labor. It's complicated.

@freemo @gamehawk @trinsec I am aware of this history and respect it. I'm not saying we need the same policy as others; I'm saying some solution is needed. Your "suspension" idea is interesting.

@freemo @foolishowl @aebrockwell Any timeline for launching the UFoI?

@freemo @aebrockwell Ah, I see, it's a pinned toot on your profile. Reasonably public, but the about page would be an even better place.

There is a maintenance issue: won't people have to do this on a regular basis?

@freemo @gamehawk

"we provide a blocklist you can import"

Where do you provide it? I don't see it on the qoto "about" page.

"Also we are working on a technological solution whereby the qoto admins can start "suspending" servers and individual users can opt-out and override it and see it anyway."

Intriguing! This sounds like the best of both worlds: individual users don't have the burden of importing (and regularly updating) a list of bad-faith servers, but if they really want to peek at one, qoto won't stop them. (I'm sure someone will complain about even being suspended, but that's another issue.)

"you say you are being harassed... why have you not reported it so we can act?"

To be clear, I don't claim that *I* am being harassed here. What I'm seeing looks like a deliberate campaign of harassment against several marginalized communities.

I didn't report it because (a) I thought reporting it to the source servers would be pointless because they're absolutely full of this stuff and clearly don't care, (b) I thought reporting it to qoto would be pointless because they're not harassing a specific individual who has asked them to stop, and (c) it feels like whack-a-mole, as these toots are not all coming from the same account or even the same server.

I'm not complaining about the qoto leadership not being omniscient. I'm just expressing the concern that not protecting users from this attack vector makes qoto an unsafe place for marginalized people.

@gamehawk I'm aware that qoto adopts a fairly extreme federate-with-everyone policy. The rules *within* qoto are much less tolerant of abuse, and it hasn't been a problem within the instance.

The contrast between the two pages you link to is striking. If I were trans, Black, Jewish, etc. and saw this, I would not feel safe joining qoto, knowing that I'd have to see these attacks and defend myself after seeing them.

I originally joined qoto because it was a STEM instance. I haven't left yet (mostly out of laziness), but the momentum to do so is certainly building.

The fact that this organized campaign of harassment is not an issue on other servers suggests that it's not, as I feared, a case of each message coming from a new server, which would be very hard to stop.

@freemo @trinsec, any comment?