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I hope the author has their flame proof pants on. The mastodon community (well portions of it, its not one community) will not appreciate this sort of thing at

by boyter 4y ago

I hope the author has their flame proof pants on. The mastodon community (well portions of it, its not one community) will not appreciate this sort of thing at all. This was somewhat covered previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221851 but is worth having a look at. In short though, any attempts to do this tends to result in huge block lists, the hashtag #fediblock circulating around, and in some cases outright personal attacks on the people behind it.

tbrownaw 4y ago
Not sure how you put a google query builder on a naughty list what with how it wouldn't have to talk to any of your instances directly.
- boyter 4y ago
  I could totally see there being a mass movement to add robot.txt to opt everyone out of being indexed. Then a movement to defederate anyone who allows indexing. Then hopefully a move to allow-list federation which I personally have suggested for a while now as the only sensible move if they really want some privacy.
  - CaptainFever 4y ago
    I can see the “defederate from indexing” movement too, although this may get pushback from creators that rely on social media to make a living or to self promote. (Checking for “web search tool”, #Google and #Fediblock from mastodon.social, it seems like people have not noticed yet.) I would like to point out that HN has actually discussed the “no search social media” idea before, where it was called pseudo-privacy[1]. Whitelisting makes me worried for the future of decentralised social media, as higher barriers for creating new instances encourage consolidation instead of diversity and decentralisation. It’s true that it would make moderation easier, though. Indeed, one of the main barriers to spam right now is perhaps the cost of domains. Speaking of which, this also makes me worried how the Fediverse will deal with its inevitable spam problem, without simply saying “the volunteer mods will take care of it”. Or perhaps that is a legit strategy, I’m not sure. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22317234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22317234
    - boyter 4y ago
      I wonder about the spam problem as well. Blocks will not work. I have a feeling that Hashcash could be a solution, and where instances do not participate in it you could slow their connections in. Just an idea though.

by boyter 4y ago

tbrownaw 4y ago

Not sure how you put a google query builder on a naughty list what with how it wouldn't have to talk to any of your instances directly.

boyter 4y ago
I could totally see there being a mass movement to add robot.txt to opt everyone out of being indexed. Then a movement to defederate anyone who allows indexing. Then hopefully a move to allow-list federation which I personally have suggested for a while now as the only sensible move if they really want some privacy.
- CaptainFever 4y ago
  I can see the “defederate from indexing” movement too, although this may get pushback from creators that rely on social media to make a living or to self promote. (Checking for “web search tool”, #Google and #Fediblock from mastodon.social, it seems like people have not noticed yet.) I would like to point out that HN has actually discussed the “no search social media” idea before, where it was called pseudo-privacy[1]. Whitelisting makes me worried for the future of decentralised social media, as higher barriers for creating new instances encourage consolidation instead of diversity and decentralisation. It’s true that it would make moderation easier, though. Indeed, one of the main barriers to spam right now is perhaps the cost of domains. Speaking of which, this also makes me worried how the Fediverse will deal with its inevitable spam problem, without simply saying “the volunteer mods will take care of it”. Or perhaps that is a legit strategy, I’m not sure. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22317234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22317234
  - boyter 4y ago
    I wonder about the spam problem as well. Blocks will not work. I have a feeling that Hashcash could be a solution, and where instances do not participate in it you could slow their connections in. Just an idea though.