Blocking someone should remove their replies from your posts, this is the type of safety features we need in the Fediverse!
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@Schafstelze @dansup indeed, this is insanely dangerous, all someone has to do to spread misinformation or even flat out libel without contest if you could remove replies is block anyone who disagrees with them. You have the right to choose what you see, but that shouldn't extend to choosing what other people see.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup That's like saying no one should be able to delete spam or harassment comments (or worse) from their blog posts, because someone, somewhere, might post BS and delete the comments that call them out on it.
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Blocking someone should remove their replies from your posts, this is the type of safety features we need in the Fediverse!
@dansup Agreed: this definitely falls under the category of "don't break users' expectations."
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@dnkrupinski
Will those replies to your posts still be visible for others who view your posts?* your post *
* reply by blocked person "Yes, they will.
If you don't delete your posts and the blocked person don't delete his/her replies to your post, all posts will be visible to others.
From the Mastodon docs:
"Blocking hides a user from your view:
* If you were following the user you unfollow them
* You won’t see the user in your home feed
* You won’t see other people boosting the user
* You won’t see other people mentioning the user
* You won’t see the user in public timelines
* You won’t see notifications from that userAdditionally, on the blocked user’s side:
* The user is forced to unfollow you
* The user cannot follow you
* The user won’t see other people’s boosts of you
* The user won’t see you in public timelines
* If you and the blocked user are on the same server, the blocked user will not be able to view your posts on your profile while logged in." -
@dansup
A permalink is always final, the reply will still exist, just the reference to the original post should be removed.I am not quite sure how to enforce such a thing in a federated system? A bad actor instance could still choose to ignore the unlink request and show the cached post in relationship with the reply. In some extreme cases they might even make changes to the software on their end. Such bad actor instances are typically run by ultra right wing oriented people.
@dnkrupinskiThis is where moderation comes into play:
Moderators a able to block a single user for all users of his/her instance or a whole instance for all users.
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#server-wide-moderation -
@rimu @dansup Alternatively, imagine you post something innocuous and a bunch of people spam it with harassment, scams, or other abusive replies. Do you want the abuse to stay visible for everyone else after you block it? Or do you want to be able to disconnect it from your post's reply chain, so only people looking for those posts or accounts will see them?
Edit: assume for the sake of argument that you're not the admin on any of the instances, so you can't decide who gets defederated or suspended.
Which is the bigger problem? Someone being able to disconnect replies they disagree with, or someone not being able to detach actual abuse?
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@alterelefant @dansup @dnkrupinski
Yes but a bad actor can also just edit their post to include a link to or screenshot of the original one.
Nothing will be a perfect solution but increasing friction that needs to be overcome to harass someone will reduce harassment since not everyone is equally dedicated to being a pain in the ass.
@gbargoud @alterelefant @dansup
If you are a bad actor you can just install a "shadow" account on a different instance with a similar instance name.
Then you can just post text "in the name of" the user who has blocked you.
There are always thins you can do as a bad actor in a system without central coordination ("decentral").
I don't understand which proposal could add an extra layer of "defence" here?
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@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup we had the same concerns pop up around post editing, and in practice it's just.. not really a big deal, it's not the giant abuse vector people are worried about.
The concerns are theoretical but the problems today with the existing behavior (including unblockable harassment, misinformation, and a degrading of public conversation) are real.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup there are also a lot of different ways this could be implemented. "FetchAllReplies" just got merged a little while ago. That goes to the original thread's server and asks for a list of replies.
We don't need to force any other server to do anything to say, "well, fetchAllReplies shouldn't return replies from users who are blocked by the post author."
That doesn't require sharing the blocklist, and we'd all agree a server has the right to choose what it returns.
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@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup there are also a lot of different ways this could be implemented. "FetchAllReplies" just got merged a little while ago. That goes to the original thread's server and asks for a list of replies.
We don't need to force any other server to do anything to say, "well, fetchAllReplies shouldn't return replies from users who are blocked by the post author."
That doesn't require sharing the blocklist, and we'd all agree a server has the right to choose what it returns.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup it wouldn't be a complete solution, but it would be much, much better than what we have now, and would not require forcing the server of the blocked reply to do anything differently.
And there are a lot of small things we could do like that.
I'm seeing a lot of concern about dictating how people talk but like.. if someone goes to the server I'm hosted on and clicks on my thread directly.. why am I being forced to provide backlinks to other replies?
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@gbargoud @alterelefant @dansup
If you are a bad actor you can just install a "shadow" account on a different instance with a similar instance name.
Then you can just post text "in the name of" the user who has blocked you.
There are always thins you can do as a bad actor in a system without central coordination ("decentral").
I don't understand which proposal could add an extra layer of "defence" here?
@dnkrupinski @alterelefant @dansup
Unlinking the reply when someone is blocked/reply controls which apply retroactively would mean that if the blocked user has followers who tend to pile on with additional harassment, they need to take a couple of extra steps to find where to post.
Although I'm mostly just against the "but a custom instance can override it" type of argument in general since that just boils down to "we should do nothing instead of helping a little bit"
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@dnkrupinski @alterelefant @dansup
Unlinking the reply when someone is blocked/reply controls which apply retroactively would mean that if the blocked user has followers who tend to pile on with additional harassment, they need to take a couple of extra steps to find where to post.
Although I'm mostly just against the "but a custom instance can override it" type of argument in general since that just boils down to "we should do nothing instead of helping a little bit"
@gbargoud @alterelefant @dansup
The best way to handle this is:
* block account
* delete your post and repost it as a new post
* all references to the old post have gone -
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup it wouldn't be a complete solution, but it would be much, much better than what we have now, and would not require forcing the server of the blocked reply to do anything differently.
And there are a lot of small things we could do like that.
I'm seeing a lot of concern about dictating how people talk but like.. if someone goes to the server I'm hosted on and clicks on my thread directly.. why am I being forced to provide backlinks to other replies?
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I don't think that free speech means "anyone who wants to have access to me as a platform should be able to say things to every single person who follows me, without any of our consent".
That's dictating my speech.
If someone is following someone else and wants to see their reply.. sure we can talk about that, maybe they should still be able to see it. But there's a lot of grey here and it feels like the current system is forcing me to platform other people.
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@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I'm on furaffinity and I can remove replies. The platform is not flooded with libel.
I'm on Bluesky and can detatch replies. I'm not seeing huge upticks of libel.
I don't know of any platforms where mass libel has been the result of reply curation. It's just not a problem in practice because there are many different mechanisms to deal with this.
@foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup that's not what the post is about though, any admin is free to block an account and that prevents that user's posts from federating to your server, that already happens, you can already do that. The post was about ActivityPub federating a user block to unlink and delete posts on the thread, which requires the blocklist to be shared to work (as it has to federate the block) and modifies the thread on servers that are not yours.
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@foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup that's not what the post is about though, any admin is free to block an account and that prevents that user's posts from federating to your server, that already happens, you can already do that. The post was about ActivityPub federating a user block to unlink and delete posts on the thread, which requires the blocklist to be shared to work (as it has to federate the block) and modifies the thread on servers that are not yours.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I think the conflict here is that people are very literally looking at server owners as being the only ones that should have agency here, and in reality even though I'm on a hosted server, I still think I should have some agency over my own threads. I don't have to ask my server host to remove comments from my blog, for example.
I don't think this would require making a blocklist public except under specific implementations.
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@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup That's like saying no one should be able to delete spam or harassment comments (or worse) from their blog posts, because someone, somewhere, might post BS and delete the comments that call them out on it.
@kelson @Schafstelze @dansup there's a world of difference between an admin deleting spam and someone selectively blocking post replies on other people's feeds on different servers via federation. If you own your server do what you want with it, it's your data, your feed. But it should not be put in the protocol to have a block federate to other servers and remove posts, we don't need a twitter 2.0 where large accounts can control what is or isn't seen.
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@rimu @dansup Alternatively, imagine you post something innocuous and a bunch of people spam it with harassment, scams, or other abusive replies. Do you want the abuse to stay visible for everyone else after you block it? Or do you want to be able to disconnect it from your post's reply chain, so only people looking for those posts or accounts will see them?
Edit: assume for the sake of argument that you're not the admin on any of the instances, so you can't decide who gets defederated or suspended.
Which is the bigger problem? Someone being able to disconnect replies they disagree with, or someone not being able to detach actual abuse?
@kelson
> harassment, scams, or other abusive replies
Those should be removed by server moderators. If the origin server doesn't take it down, other servers can decide to defederate it. If your own server neither defederates not deletes the reported replies, you should look for another server imho.
@rimu @dansup -
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I think the conflict here is that people are very literally looking at server owners as being the only ones that should have agency here, and in reality even though I'm on a hosted server, I still think I should have some agency over my own threads. I don't have to ask my server host to remove comments from my blog, for example.
I don't think this would require making a blocklist public except under specific implementations.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup keep in mind, we do this already.
Quote posts. Quote posts already allow detatching. It's not perfect but works pretty well. It also allows locking quotes.
We could have the exact same system but for detaching replies from threads.
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@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup I think the conflict here is that people are very literally looking at server owners as being the only ones that should have agency here, and in reality even though I'm on a hosted server, I still think I should have some agency over my own threads. I don't have to ask my server host to remove comments from my blog, for example.
I don't think this would require making a blocklist public except under specific implementations.
@foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup the only way to federate it to other servers would be via publicly posting the ban, even if your full list isn't visible any server you've federated to would effectively have it, so it would be easy to scrape. I fully disagree, you don't own the fediverse, you don't own the thread you only started it, you can split and block further replies but you cannot kill a conversation down the chain from the one you started, it doesn't even need to necessarily involve you.
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@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup keep in mind, we do this already.
Quote posts. Quote posts already allow detatching. It's not perfect but works pretty well. It also allows locking quotes.
We could have the exact same system but for detaching replies from threads.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup and that system works well enough even though it doesn't force every server to participate and can't guarantee perfect functionality.
What's neat about quote posts is I don't even need to block in order to detatch.
Which lines up a lot better with how I use reply deletion on every other site, most of the time it's not for bannable offenses.
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@kelson @Schafstelze @dansup there's a world of difference between an admin deleting spam and someone selectively blocking post replies on other people's feeds on different servers via federation. If you own your server do what you want with it, it's your data, your feed. But it should not be put in the protocol to have a block federate to other servers and remove posts, we don't need a twitter 2.0 where large accounts can control what is or isn't seen.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup So it's not my data if someone else is the admin? All those people on WordPress.com or Blogspot or wherever who don't want spam on their posts are just out of luck because someone else runs the server?
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@foxyoreos @Schafstelze @dansup the only way to federate it to other servers would be via publicly posting the ban, even if your full list isn't visible any server you've federated to would effectively have it, so it would be easy to scrape. I fully disagree, you don't own the fediverse, you don't own the thread you only started it, you can split and block further replies but you cannot kill a conversation down the chain from the one you started, it doesn't even need to necessarily involve you.
@raptor85 @Schafstelze @dansup how do quote detatchments work then?
They have all of the same constraints as the system I'm proposing, and they work on the fediverse today, and have not ruined discussions on Mastodon.
