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This is the part that never made sense to me. The way mastodon is built the server automatically downloads all content you federate with to your own server. Tha

This is the part that never made sense to me. The way mastodon is built the server automatically downloads all content you federate with to your own server. That means if someone on your instance hits follow on any account, boom you're now legally responsible for hosting and disseminating everything that account posts. It's just not practical to moderate every post from every account anyone on your server follows. Even one seriously egregious image squeaks through and you're looking at the possibility of actual jail time. I always wondered if the expectation could be flipped to expect the frontend client to fetch the majority of content remotely from the followees' servers on the fly. The architecture is so complex in a federated scenario though that could be a total mess or not even technically feasible at all.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
Hmm, but isn't this lack of moderation also what is supposed to protect hosts from legal problems, just like it does for ISPs ? (Why wouldn't an ISP be legally bothered about transferring an illegal file ?)
- lrvick 4y ago
  SMTP servers host and transmit piles of illegal content, but so long as server operators make best efforts to use spam lists it is never a legal problem.
lrvick 4y ago
Kind of like you can send an email attachment containing illegal content to thousands of people and their SMTP servers will automatically download and store it. This is not a new problem. Shared spam lists and block lists are already emerging on mastodon, matrix, and other decentralized systems too.
- endor5639 4y ago
  I'm talking more about instance operators. Using an email analogy it's more like running an equivalent of gmail/yahoo mail/fastmail. There's this second order of magnitude on the problem because you're responsible for all of the touch points on all of your users in aggregate. Spam lists and block lists on the fediverse are a thing, but they're just step one of a marathon battle against fediverse spam/illicit content. Most instances are very scrappy operations and spam/block lists only put a dent in a very large and often overwhelming issue. Working dynamic spam/block list solutions at scale that are capable enough to actually erase the issue are a hand wavey future potential solution, whereas the tidal wave of content exceeding the ability of instance owners to moderate is a very real very today problem. I think what's actually happening on the ground is instance owners slap on some instance block list of the worst offenders and turn a blind eye hoping there's nothing too bad hidden in the mountain of media they have cached, or they just hope nobody starts caring enough to look. That might work fine for a while but I don't think this problem is going away.
  - greesil 4y ago
    Centralization does have some economies of scale in this regard. It seems like hosting your own Mastodon server is not for the faint of heart, and requires significant time investment. It's like a Twitter starter kit, just add capital and water daily.
- dleslie 4y ago
  When a Mastodon instance chooses to relay another it's like if your email provider could arbitrarily sign you up for mailing lists, in a way that bypasses your mailbox filters. This is something generally unheard of in email land.
  - lrvick 4y ago
    I have hosted public shell accounts and email servers for the public for 20 years and this is just as real of a problem for small community classic internet service providers as it is mastodon servers. If anyone user of your email users gets on a spam list for illegal content, then it gets cached on your servers. Or a shell user simply uploads pirated movies. This is a harsh reality well known to anyone who provides any public internet services. There is illegal content embedded in every blockchain, ipfs, and freenet node, and you cannot easily detect or censor it. Some people will inevitably do disgusting or illegal things with all public internet resources at some point, but we absolutely cannot let such individuals discourage small community hosting which is vital for the survival of the free internet. Decentralized services will always be abused to share CSAM but paradoxically are our only practical defense against giant surveillance capitalism corporations that we -know- are manipulating and selling the behavior of live children at massive scale today.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Section 230 of the CDA protects operators of interactive computer systems against liability for user-generated content. It's the reason Twitter isn't liable when someone uses it to send death threats to another person.
kstrauser 4y ago
Mastodon has a feature where you can choose not to cache content separately, so that it’s served from the original server. I’ve turned that on for instances that host lots of weird content.

BlueTemplar 4y ago

Hmm, but isn't this lack of moderation also what is supposed to protect hosts from legal problems, just like it does for ISPs ? (Why wouldn't an ISP be legally bothered about transferring an illegal file ?)

lrvick 4y ago
SMTP servers host and transmit piles of illegal content, but so long as server operators make best efforts to use spam lists it is never a legal problem.

lrvick 4y ago

Kind of like you can send an email attachment containing illegal content to thousands of people and their SMTP servers will automatically download and store it. This is not a new problem. Shared spam lists and block lists are already emerging on mastodon, matrix, and other decentralized systems too.

endor5639 4y ago
I'm talking more about instance operators. Using an email analogy it's more like running an equivalent of gmail/yahoo mail/fastmail. There's this second order of magnitude on the problem because you're responsible for all of the touch points on all of your users in aggregate. Spam lists and block lists on the fediverse are a thing, but they're just step one of a marathon battle against fediverse spam/illicit content. Most instances are very scrappy operations and spam/block lists only put a dent in a very large and often overwhelming issue. Working dynamic spam/block list solutions at scale that are capable enough to actually erase the issue are a hand wavey future potential solution, whereas the tidal wave of content exceeding the ability of instance owners to moderate is a very real very today problem. I think what's actually happening on the ground is instance owners slap on some instance block list of the worst offenders and turn a blind eye hoping there's nothing too bad hidden in the mountain of media they have cached, or they just hope nobody starts caring enough to look. That might work fine for a while but I don't think this problem is going away.
- greesil 4y ago
  Centralization does have some economies of scale in this regard. It seems like hosting your own Mastodon server is not for the faint of heart, and requires significant time investment. It's like a Twitter starter kit, just add capital and water daily.
dleslie 4y ago
When a Mastodon instance chooses to relay another it's like if your email provider could arbitrarily sign you up for mailing lists, in a way that bypasses your mailbox filters. This is something generally unheard of in email land.
- lrvick 4y ago
  I have hosted public shell accounts and email servers for the public for 20 years and this is just as real of a problem for small community classic internet service providers as it is mastodon servers. If anyone user of your email users gets on a spam list for illegal content, then it gets cached on your servers. Or a shell user simply uploads pirated movies. This is a harsh reality well known to anyone who provides any public internet services. There is illegal content embedded in every blockchain, ipfs, and freenet node, and you cannot easily detect or censor it. Some people will inevitably do disgusting or illegal things with all public internet resources at some point, but we absolutely cannot let such individuals discourage small community hosting which is vital for the survival of the free internet. Decentralized services will always be abused to share CSAM but paradoxically are our only practical defense against giant surveillance capitalism corporations that we -know- are manipulating and selling the behavior of live children at massive scale today.

heavyset_go 4y ago

Section 230 of the CDA protects operators of interactive computer systems against liability for user-generated content. It's the reason Twitter isn't liable when someone uses it to send death threats to another person.

kstrauser 4y ago

Mastodon has a feature where you can choose not to cache content separately, so that it’s served from the original server. I’ve turned that on for instances that host lots of weird content.