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A lot of lurker-only servers tend to get blocked, too. Some instances check every follow/follow request and block if anything looks off, including "lurker only"

A lot of lurker-only servers tend to get blocked, too. Some instances check every follow/follow request and block if anything looks off, including "lurker only". > I also see Mastodon posts showing up in search results, so it looks to me like indexing is already happening Mastodon has a configurable robots.txt. Some instances are fine with search indexing their public timelines. The big thing is instances can want their public timelines indexed but not their "followers only" timelines.

jefftk 4y ago
> Some instances check every follow/follow request and block if anything looks off, including "lurker only". That's rare, though, right? Since there's often a ton of following going around, especially now? It's probably also not that hard to make something that easily passes those sorts of quick checks? > Some instances are fine with search indexing their public timelines. Which then means anything of yours that gets boosted by someone on a server like that will be indexed.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  > That's rare, though, right? Not in my experience. I'm on a tiny instance and follows are so rare in general, I can watch them all individually. There are many users that require follow requests where they verify/vet every single follow. > It's probably also not that hard to make something that easily passes those sorts of quick checks? Maybe such that one person doesn't notice, but remember the scale here: if someone is trying to "follow the world" maliciously, they have to make sure that they pass the quick checks of every paranoid person they try to follow. Once a malicious site is "discovered" the #fediblock hash tag moves pretty virally to encourage other paranoid users/instances to (re-)evaluate the bad actor. > Which then means anything of yours that gets boosted by someone on a server like that will be indexed (Courteous) Instances don't allow you to boost a Followers Only post to the Public timeline. Discourteous instances may exist, but when they are found out, they are generally blocked (again, the #fediblock hashtag sometimes moves swiftly and virally here).
  - fediblock 4y ago
    Fediblock just re-centralizes blacklisting to the (opaque) maintainers of that list, which defeats much of the point of federation
    - WorldMaker 4y ago
      There's no "Fediblock central list". At the moment it's just a search hashtag that federates with other toots (it federates as toots because it is just toots). It is entirely up to instance admins what they do with what they see in that hashtag.
gs17 4y ago
> A lot of lurker-only servers tend to get blocked, too. Some instances check every follow/follow request and block if anything looks off, including "lurker only". Well, there goes thinking I can always just host my own instance, I probably wouldn't be active enough for their tastes. And it adds another concern to joining a smaller instance, seems like I have to rely on other users to make it look more legit if I don't want to be so centralized. Or are they looking for very strictly, literally "lurker only" instances?
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  There's always an "everyone blocks me and no one likes me" fear in hosting your own instance, and yes you will run the risk of preemptive blocks if people don't like how your instance looks. The particular combo here, though, is "lurker only instance" that also spams follow requests. If you don't spam follow requests and are selective about who you follow (like a human rather than a bot), you have less risk of this specific paranoia. Lurkers are fine to many Mastodon users. Lurkers spamming following requests are a concern.
- xg15 4y ago
  Not a Mastodon user, but I'd imagine most admins follow common sense. If your server only has a handful of accounts that obviously correspond to you and your friends, I don't see why anyone would have a problem with that. On the other hand, if the server has 100s of accounts, each of which follows a large number of people off-server - yet somehow no one follows anyone else on the server and no one ever talks a single word, that would probably raise some suspicion.
  - merlincorey 4y ago
    > On the other hand, if the server has 100s of accounts, each of which follows a large number of people off-server - yet somehow no one follows anyone else on the server and no one ever talks a single word, that would probably raise some suspicion. Existing Twitter and Facebook connections (names, followers, friends, etc) to create many secret indexer servers made of easily verifiable Google searches of real people with real friends and GPT-like toot generation to fake just enough activity seems like a pretty straightforward route to avoid suspicion. Arms races suck -- public data is public, period.

jefftk 4y ago

> Some instances check every follow/follow request and block if anything looks off, including "lurker only". That's rare, though, right? Since there's often a ton of following going around, especially now? It's probably also not that hard to make something that easily passes those sorts of quick checks? > Some instances are fine with search indexing their public timelines. Which then means anything of yours that gets boosted by someone on a server like that will be indexed.

WorldMaker 4y ago
> That's rare, though, right? Not in my experience. I'm on a tiny instance and follows are so rare in general, I can watch them all individually. There are many users that require follow requests where they verify/vet every single follow. > It's probably also not that hard to make something that easily passes those sorts of quick checks? Maybe such that one person doesn't notice, but remember the scale here: if someone is trying to "follow the world" maliciously, they have to make sure that they pass the quick checks of every paranoid person they try to follow. Once a malicious site is "discovered" the #fediblock hash tag moves pretty virally to encourage other paranoid users/instances to (re-)evaluate the bad actor. > Which then means anything of yours that gets boosted by someone on a server like that will be indexed (Courteous) Instances don't allow you to boost a Followers Only post to the Public timeline. Discourteous instances may exist, but when they are found out, they are generally blocked (again, the #fediblock hashtag sometimes moves swiftly and virally here).
- fediblock 4y ago
  Fediblock just re-centralizes blacklisting to the (opaque) maintainers of that list, which defeats much of the point of federation
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    There's no "Fediblock central list". At the moment it's just a search hashtag that federates with other toots (it federates as toots because it is just toots). It is entirely up to instance admins what they do with what they see in that hashtag.

gs17 4y ago

> A lot of lurker-only servers tend to get blocked, too. Some instances check every follow/follow request and block if anything looks off, including "lurker only". Well, there goes thinking I can always just host my own instance, I probably wouldn't be active enough for their tastes. And it adds another concern to joining a smaller instance, seems like I have to rely on other users to make it look more legit if I don't want to be so centralized. Or are they looking for very strictly, literally "lurker only" instances?

WorldMaker 4y ago
There's always an "everyone blocks me and no one likes me" fear in hosting your own instance, and yes you will run the risk of preemptive blocks if people don't like how your instance looks. The particular combo here, though, is "lurker only instance" that also spams follow requests. If you don't spam follow requests and are selective about who you follow (like a human rather than a bot), you have less risk of this specific paranoia. Lurkers are fine to many Mastodon users. Lurkers spamming following requests are a concern.
xg15 4y ago
Not a Mastodon user, but I'd imagine most admins follow common sense. If your server only has a handful of accounts that obviously correspond to you and your friends, I don't see why anyone would have a problem with that. On the other hand, if the server has 100s of accounts, each of which follows a large number of people off-server - yet somehow no one follows anyone else on the server and no one ever talks a single word, that would probably raise some suspicion.
- merlincorey 4y ago
  > On the other hand, if the server has 100s of accounts, each of which follows a large number of people off-server - yet somehow no one follows anyone else on the server and no one ever talks a single word, that would probably raise some suspicion. Existing Twitter and Facebook connections (names, followers, friends, etc) to create many secret indexer servers made of easily verifiable Google searches of real people with real friends and GPT-like toot generation to fake just enough activity seems like a pretty straightforward route to avoid suspicion. Arms races suck -- public data is public, period.