#thebadspace — Public Fediverse posts

If any of you are on a server that isn't blocked by .art or other TBS servers, I kindly ask you to send this to your moderators. My toots will never reach them as they have defederated kolektiva. I think this goes to prove the ineffectiveness of TBS but we'll see if they do anything.

#Fediblock #TheBadSpace

• Pleroma
• Akkoma
• Misskey
• Firefish
• Sharkey
• Iceshrimp
• Iceshrimp.NET
• CherryPick
• Neko
• Catodon
• Meisskey
• Tanukey
• Metaskey
• Mitra
• Friendica
• Hubzilla
• (streams)
• Forte

• Pleroma
• Akkoma
• Misskey
• Firefish
• Sharkey
• Iceshrimp
• Iceshrimp.NET
• CherryPick
• Neko
• Catodon
• Meisskey
• Tanukey
• Metaskey
• Mitra
• Friendica
• Hubzilla
• (streams)
• Forte

• Pleroma
• Akkoma
• Misskey
• Firefish
• Sharkey
• Iceshrimp
• Iceshrimp.NET
• CherryPick
• Neko
• Catodon
• Meisskey
• Tanukey
• Metaskey
• Mitra
• Friendica
• Hubzilla
• (streams)
• Forte

• Pleroma
• Akkoma
• Misskey
• Firefish
• Sharkey
• Iceshrimp
• Iceshrimp.NET
• CherryPick
• Neko
• Catodon
• Meisskey
• Tanukey
• Metaskey
• Mitra
• Friendica
• Hubzilla
• (streams)
• Forte

• Pleroma
• Akkoma
• Misskey
• Firefish
• Sharkey
• Iceshrimp
• Iceshrimp.NET
• CherryPick
• Neko
• Catodon
• Meisskey
• Tanukey
• Metaskey
• Mitra
• Friendica
• Hubzilla
• (streams)
• Forte

Yesterday, our mod team began receiving a number of reports about one of our users, who had repeatedly expressed criticism of #TheBadSpace. To the best of our knowledge, this exchange involved a series of comments on a thread about the prospects of collective, decentralized blocklists, followed by a post on their own timeline in which they called out The Bad Space, listed the instances participating as Sources for its rating system, and linked to an article on the subject that was critical of the project. The post framed Kolektiva's inclusion on The Bad Space list as an 'attack on our community', and could be reasonably construed as an effort to rally users to respond to this 'attack.'

While some members of our mod team were already familiar with the controversy around The Bad Space, and the litany of accusations of anti-Black racism and transphobia/transmisogyny associated with these debates, this understanding was not equally shared across our team. It should be mentioned that our moderation team is composed of volunteers who do our best to keep on top of the moderation load as best we can, when we can. Several times since 2020, we have been caught off-guard by a snowballing controversy that most of our active mods needed some time to learn about and properly understand.

In an effort to avoid further escalation and division, and to avoid contributing to a new wave of harassment of Black and trans Mastodon users, one of our mods temporarily froze and limited the #Kolektiva user's account yesterday. This was done to give our team time to all research the issue and discuss it collectively (because that is how Kolektiva operates, for better or worse).

The post calling out The Bad Space and its partipating Source instances has been removed for violating of our code of conduct - specifically our policy against targeted harassment.

We realize that people are going to be upset with Kolektiva actions. Unfortunately, we see that as fairly unavoidable in situations like this.

Members of the Kolektiva mod team share concerns about the potential abuse of power that stems from centralized block lists, and the way that these threats can be magnified by the personal biases of the instance moderators who are tasked with deciding who gets included on these lists. That said, we also fundamentally respect instance operators' right to decide who they want to federate with, and we understand and appreciate the important role that tools like The Bad Space play in seeking to address the very real oppression and harassment faced by marginalized communities on the fediverse. As anarchists, we understand these efforts as manifestations of the principles of autonomy and voluntary association.

As we research this issue further, we encourage people to reach out to members of our mod team to share past or current examples of anti-Black racism or transphobia related to this issue, particularly if you think it provides pertinent context to this current situation.

We thank people for their patience and support, and encourage everyone to avoid playing broken telephone and otherwise furthering divisions between already maginalized groups.

Finally, we refer people to our About section, and specfically to the sections on Targeted Harassment, and the headings SAFETY AND DANGER ON THE FEDIVERSE and DEFEDERATING FROM OTHER INSTANCES.

https://kolektiva.social/about

#FediBlockMeta #KolektivaMod

@smitten @yassie_j @lucretia @[email protected] Doesn't chage the fact that #Ro is a proven asshole and uses #dogpiling as much as openly made up accusations ranging from gaslighting to racism as well as his followers in order to harass critics.

Exhibits:
- https://h-i.social/@are0h/111694086714150764
- https://friend.camp/@garbados/111698488960089886
- https://todon.nl/@schratze/111300890306267140
- https://portend.place/objects/6b5e72e8-8f9e-4104-b947-70a6160cd86b

#Ro #TheBadSpace #Dogpiling #Harrassment

@smitten @yassie_j @lucretia @larsfrommars Doesn't chage the fact that #Ro is a proven asshole and uses #dogpiling as much as openly made up accusations ranging from gaslighting to racism as well as his followers in order to harass critics.

Exhibits:
- https://h-i.social/@are0h/111694086714150764
- https://friend.camp/@garbados/111698488960089886
- https://todon.nl/@schratze/111300890306267140
- https://portend.place/objects/6b5e72e8-8f9e-4104-b947-70a6160cd86b

#Ro #TheBadSpace #Dogpiling #Harrassment

@smitten @yassie_j @lucretia @larsfrommars Doesn't chage the fact that #Ro is a proven asshole and uses #dogpiling as much as openly made up accusations ranging from gaslighting to racism as well as his followers in order to harass critics.

Exhibits:
- https://h-i.social/@are0h/111694086714150764
- https://friend.camp/@garbados/111698488960089886
- https://todon.nl/@schratze/111300890306267140
- https://portend.place/objects/6b5e72e8-8f9e-4104-b947-70a6160cd86b

#Ro #TheBadSpace #Dogpiling #Harrassment

Puh, a really controversial topic that seems to cause strong emotions by many people on Mastodon.

I am not one of the big fish involved in the discussion. But I think it is important because how our community interacts depends on ourselves.



First, I want to say that shared blockslists can make sense. Basic lists to filter out the really bad shit. And maybe some stricter versions with keywords to facilitate new instances the creation of a safe space for certain groups (ok, here we could discuss why not blocking ALL kinds of harrassment, but in practice -and in the spirit of the fediverse as a community of distinct, but federated instaces- different people have varying levels of tolerance and set the threshold differently).


Currently, I see many posts about TBS, both in favour and against. 
Here I wanted to share my thoughts about TBS. I see basically the following problems:


- The trusted instances are hard-coded and not independent from each other (correct me, if I am wrong). I think that a lot of controversy about TBS comes from concerns about the influence of one of the persons at mastodon.art, both directly because they are used as trusted source but also because of indirect influence on the other instances via their moderation-discord channel. Everywhere are power dynamics. Also informal hierarchies don’t disappear if we don’t call them out.

- There is no appealing mechanism (TBS-banned instances would need to go begging on their knees to the “trusted instances” power circle). There is usually no “defederation will last for 6 months” or similar.

- There is no mechanism to resolve the issue of binarity of defederation: It is the nuke of moderation tools. However, the problem is that there are no intermediate tools to separate real nazi/pedo shit from “many months ago there was a disagreement regarding moderation style”. TBS was announced to be for the really bad stuff, not for more controversial/personal decisions.

- Blocklists are a *huge* responsibility. It is really easy to fuck things up (on purpose and by accident), especially if the blocklists are widely adopted. It is crucial to have very, very good mechanisms in place to avoid power issues. Therefore it is important to be open to (constructive) criticism.


Just to try out, I looked how kolektiva.social (the lovely anarchist instance I call my home for almost a year now) scores on TBS.
 Currently, kolektiva.social is suspended by 4 and silenced/limited by 2 of the “trusted instances serving as reference for the The TBS blocklist. If TBS would be widely dopted by the fediverse, this would mean adiós to my beloved instance*
 😢

I have to admit that I lost a little bit of track of the multiple blocklist projects:


- The Bad Space https://tweaking.thebad.space/

- GardenFence: https://gardenfence.github.io/ (significant overlap with TBS, a predecessor?)

- Seirdy.one’s blocklists https://seirdy.one/posts/2023/05/02/fediverse-blocklists/ (the author transparent reports are totally worth reading)

- Oliphant’s blocklists https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist (developed on the base of Seirdy.one’s lists, not sure whether it is continued)

- FediSeer https://gui.fediseer.com/ (maintained @Db0 by right now, my favourite!)


- And the good old fediblock hasthag


Pesonally, I see Fediseer as a promising project. It has the optionto select the instances you “trust” and get their blocklists. It is really not necessary (and inefficient) that the mods of *every* of the 10-20 k Mastodon instances have to dive through all the really, really bad places to block them. There is still the issue of structural power dynamics of the instances that are used by default, but I understand that you have to begin somewhere and with the really, really bad instances, there should be less of a controversy.
- 
However, seeing the current heat of the debate, it is important for me to make also the following statement: 
The level of harassment and personal attacks that the person most visible behind TBS ( @Are0h ) is receiving from many sides is totally out of place. There are unclear power dynamics that should be addressed. Maybe this person is not the best at taking criticism, but a human being enjoying some privileges while suffering also discrimination. And also yes, Mastodon has definitevely a whiteness problem (and harassing a prominent black person provides exactly their point). Listen to black people when they talk about discrimination. Listen to queer people when they talk about discrimination.

But please, folks. Try to take a few breaths before writing an outrage post. Destructive group dynamics don’t seem to be what we need to resolve our problems. Maybe some of you will hate me for this. My apologies. I don't want to dismissing your experience, but to bring us back to the table to find ways to first keep the really bad shit out while trying to make the fediverse a more welcoming place for all.

sorry for the hippie speech. English is not my first language, s




* Of course, a very valid question is also: why is kolektiva.social considered by such a considerable proportion of the set of instances that some people consider “trusted sources” as worth of being defederated because of “Moderation issues, Poor moderation, abusive/harrassment behaviour” (on mastodon.art’s ‘about’ page even “racism”). I recall a complex conflict *last year*. However, whether kolektiva.social is currently a place for abusers/racists, is not really an assessment that can o should be made by a privileged white person like me, I guess.

#TBS #TheBadSpace #Federation #Defederation #Blocklists #SharedBlocklists #FediSeer #Outrage
@foolishowl

EDIT: I had incorrectly stated that seirdy.one is discontinued 😃

Puh, a really controversial topic that seems to cause strong emotions by many people on Mastodon.

I am not one of the big fish involved in the discussion. But I think it is important because how our community interacts depends on ourselves.



First, I want to say that shared blockslists can make sense. Basic lists to filter out the really bad shit. And maybe some stricter versions with keywords to facilitate new instances the creation of a safe space for certain groups (ok, here we could discuss why not blocking ALL kinds of harrassment, but in practice -and in the spirit of the fediverse as a community of distinct, but federated instaces- different people have varying levels of tolerance and set the threshold differently).


Currently, I see many posts about TBS, both in favour and against. 
Here I wanted to share my thoughts about TBS. I see basically the following problems:


- The trusted instances are hard-coded and not independent from each other (correct me, if I am wrong). I think that a lot of controversy about TBS comes from concerns about the influence of one of the persons at mastodon.art, both directly because they are used as trusted source but also because of indirect influence on the other instances via their moderation-discord channel. Everywhere are power dynamics. Also informal hierarchies don’t disappear if we don’t call them out.

- There is no appealing mechanism (TBS-banned instances would need to go begging on their knees to the “trusted instances” power circle). There is usually no “defederation will last for 6 months” or similar.

- There is no mechanism to resolve the issue of binarity of defederation: It is the nuke of moderation tools. However, the problem is that there are no intermediate tools to separate real nazi/pedo shit from “many months ago there was a disagreement regarding moderation style”. TBS was announced to be for the really bad stuff, not for more controversial/personal decisions.

- Blocklists are a *huge* responsibility. It is really easy to fuck things up (on purpose and by accident), especially if the blocklists are widely adopted. It is crucial to have very, very good mechanisms in place to avoid power issues. Therefore it is important to be open to (constructive) criticism.


Just to try out, I looked how kolektiva.social (the lovely anarchist instance I call my home for almost a year now) scores on TBS.
 Currently, kolektiva.social is suspended by 4 and silenced/limited by 2 of the “trusted instances serving as reference for the The TBS blocklist. If TBS would be widely dopted by the fediverse, this would mean adiós to my beloved instance*
 😢

I have to admit that I lost a little bit of track of the multiple blocklist projects:


- The Bad Space https://tweaking.thebad.space/

- GardenFence: https://gardenfence.github.io/ (significant overlap with TBS, a predecessor?)

- Seirdy.one’s blocklists https://seirdy.one/posts/2023/05/02/fediverse-blocklists/ (the author transparent reports are totally worth reading)

- Oliphant’s blocklists https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist (developed on the base of Seirdy.one’s lists, not sure whether it is continued)

- FediSeer https://gui.fediseer.com/ (maintained @Db0 by right now, my favourite!)


- And the good old fediblock hasthag


Pesonally, I see Fediseer as a promising project. It has the optionto select the instances you “trust” and get their blocklists. It is really not necessary (and inefficient) that the mods of *every* of the 10-20 k Mastodon instances have to dive through all the really, really bad places to block them. There is still the issue of structural power dynamics of the instances that are used by default, but I understand that you have to begin somewhere and with the really, really bad instances, there should be less of a controversy.
- 
However, seeing the current heat of the debate, it is important for me to make also the following statement: 
The level of harassment and personal attacks that the person most visible behind TBS ( @Are0h ) is receiving from many sides is totally out of place. There are unclear power dynamics that should be addressed. Maybe this person is not the best at taking criticism, but a human being enjoying some privileges while suffering also discrimination. And also yes, Mastodon has definitevely a whiteness problem (and harassing a prominent black person provides exactly their point). Listen to black people when they talk about discrimination. Listen to queer people when they talk about discrimination.

But please, folks. Try to take a few breaths before writing an outrage post. Destructive group dynamics don’t seem to be what we need to resolve our problems. Maybe some of you will hate me for this. My apologies. I don't want to dismissing your experience, but to bring us back to the table to find ways to first keep the really bad shit out while trying to make the fediverse a more welcoming place for all.

sorry for the hippie speech. English is not my first language, s




* Of course, a very valid question is also: why is kolektiva.social considered by such a considerable proportion of the set of instances that some people consider “trusted sources” as worth of being defederated because of “Moderation issues, Poor moderation, abusive/harrassment behaviour” (on mastodon.art’s ‘about’ page even “racism”). I recall a complex conflict *last year*. However, whether kolektiva.social is currently a place for abusers/racists, is not really an assessment that can o should be made by a privileged white person like me, I guess.

#TBS #TheBadSpace #Federation #Defederation #Blocklists #SharedBlocklists #FediSeer #Outrage
@foolishowl

EDIT: I had incorrectly stated that seirdy.one is discontinued 😃

Puh, a really controversial topic that seems to cause strong emotions by many people on Mastodon.

I am not one of the big fish involved in the discussion. But I think it is important because how our community interacts depends on ourselves.



First, I want to say that shared blockslists can make sense. Basic lists to filter out the really bad shit. And maybe some stricter versions with keywords to facilitate new instances the creation of a safe space for certain groups (ok, here we could discuss why not blocking ALL kinds of harrassment, but in practice -and in the spirit of the fediverse as a community of distinct, but federated instaces- different people have varying levels of tolerance and set the threshold differently).


Currently, I see many posts about TBS, both in favour and against. 
Here I wanted to share my thoughts about TBS. I see basically the following problems:


- The trusted instances are hard-coded and not independent from each other (correct me, if I am wrong). I think that a lot of controversy about TBS comes from concerns about the influence of one of the persons at mastodon.art, both directly because they are used as trusted source but also because of indirect influence on the other instances via their moderation-discord channel. Everywhere are power dynamics. Also informal hierarchies don’t disappear if we don’t call them out.

- There is no appealing mechanism (TBS-banned instances would need to go begging on their knees to the “trusted instances” power circle). There is usually no “defederation will last for 6 months” or similar.

- There is no mechanism to resolve the issue of binarity of defederation: It is the nuke of moderation tools. However, the problem is that there are no intermediate tools to separate real nazi/pedo shit from “many months ago there was a disagreement regarding moderation style”. TBS was announced to be for the really bad stuff, not for more controversial/personal decisions.

- Blocklists are a *huge* responsibility. It is really easy to fuck things up (on purpose and by accident), especially if the blocklists are widely adopted. It is crucial to have very, very good mechanisms in place to avoid power issues. Therefore it is important to be open to (constructive) criticism.


Just to try out, I looked how kolektiva.social (the lovely anarchist instance I call my home for almost a year now) scores on TBS.
 Currently, kolektiva.social is suspended by 4 and silenced/limited by 2 of the “trusted instances serving as reference for the The TBS blocklist. If TBS would be widely dopted by the fediverse, this would mean adiós to my beloved instance*
 😢

I have to admit that I lost a little bit of track of the multiple blocklist projects:


- The Bad Space https://tweaking.thebad.space/

- GardenFence: https://gardenfence.github.io/ (significant overlap with TBS, a predecessor?)

- Seirdy.one’s blocklists https://seirdy.one/posts/2023/05/02/fediverse-blocklists/ (the author transparent reports are totally worth reading)

- Oliphant’s blocklists https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist (developed on the base of Seirdy.one’s lists, not sure whether it is continued)

- FediSeer https://gui.fediseer.com/ (maintained @Db0 by right now, my favourite!)


- And the good old fediblock hasthag


Pesonally, I see Fediseer as a promising project. It has the optionto select the instances you “trust” and get their blocklists. It is really not necessary (and inefficient) that the mods of *every* of the 10-20 k Mastodon instances have to dive through all the really, really bad places to block them. There is still the issue of structural power dynamics of the instances that are used by default, but I understand that you have to begin somewhere and with the really, really bad instances, there should be less of a controversy.
- 
However, seeing the current heat of the debate, it is important for me to make also the following statement: 
The level of harassment and personal attacks that the person most visible behind TBS ( @Are0h ) is receiving from many sides is totally out of place. There are unclear power dynamics that should be addressed. Maybe this person is not the best at taking criticism, but a human being enjoying some privileges while suffering also discrimination. And also yes, Mastodon has definitevely a whiteness problem (and harassing a prominent black person provides exactly their point). Listen to black people when they talk about discrimination. Listen to queer people when they talk about discrimination.

But please, folks. Try to take a few breaths before writing an outrage post. Destructive group dynamics don’t seem to be what we need to resolve our problems. Maybe some of you will hate me for this. My apologies. I don't want to dismissing your experience, but to bring us back to the table to find ways to first keep the really bad shit out while trying to make the fediverse a more welcoming place for all.

sorry for the hippie speech. English is not my first language, s




* Of course, a very valid question is also: why is kolektiva.social considered by such a considerable proportion of the set of instances that some people consider “trusted sources” as worth of being defederated because of “Moderation issues, Poor moderation, abusive/harrassment behaviour” (on mastodon.art’s ‘about’ page even “racism”). I recall a complex conflict *last year*. However, whether kolektiva.social is currently a place for abusers/racists, is not really an assessment that can o should be made by a privileged white person like me, I guess.

#TBS #TheBadSpace #Federation #Defederation #Blocklists #SharedBlocklists #FediSeer #Outrage
@foolishowl

EDIT: I had incorrectly stated that seirdy.one is discontinued 😃

Puh, a really controversial topic that seems to cause strong emotions by many people on Mastodon.

I am not one of the big fish involved in the discussion. But I think it is important because how our community interacts depends on ourselves.



First, I want to say that shared blockslists can make sense. Basic lists to filter out the really bad shit. And maybe some stricter versions with keywords to facilitate new instances the creation of a safe space for certain groups (ok, here we could discuss why not blocking ALL kinds of harrassment, but in practice -and in the spirit of the fediverse as a community of distinct, but federated instaces- different people have varying levels of tolerance and set the threshold differently).


Currently, I see many posts about TBS, both in favour and against. 
Here I wanted to share my thoughts about TBS. I see basically the following problems:


- The trusted instances are hard-coded and not independent from each other (correct me, if I am wrong). I think that a lot of controversy about TBS comes from concerns about the influence of one of the persons at mastodon.art, both directly because they are used as trusted source but also because of indirect influence on the other instances via their moderation-discord channel. Everywhere are power dynamics. Also informal hierarchies don’t disappear if we don’t call them out.

- There is no appealing mechanism (TBS-banned instances would need to go begging on their knees to the “trusted instances” power circle). There is usually no “defederation will last for 6 months” or similar.

- There is no mechanism to resolve the issue of binarity of defederation: It is the nuke of moderation tools. However, the problem is that there are no intermediate tools to separate real nazi/pedo shit from “many months ago there was a disagreement regarding moderation style”. TBS was announced to be for the really bad stuff, not for more controversial/personal decisions.

- Blocklists are a *huge* responsibility. It is really easy to fuck things up (on purpose and by accident), especially if the blocklists are widely adopted. It is crucial to have very, very good mechanisms in place to avoid power issues. Therefore it is important to be open to (constructive) criticism.


Just to try out, I looked how kolektiva.social (the lovely anarchist instance I call my home for almost a year now) scores on TBS.
 Currently, kolektiva.social is suspended by 4 and silenced/limited by 2 of the “trusted instances serving as reference for the The TBS blocklist. If TBS would be widely dopted by the fediverse, this would mean adiós to my beloved instance*
 😢

I have to admit that I lost a little bit of track of the multiple blocklist projects:


- The Bad Space https://tweaking.thebad.space/

- GardenFence: https://gardenfence.github.io/ (significant overlap with TBS, a predecessor?)

- Seirdy.one’s blocklists https://seirdy.one/posts/2023/05/02/fediverse-blocklists/ (the author transparent reports are totally worth reading)

- Oliphant’s blocklists https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist (developed on the base of Seirdy.one’s lists, not sure whether it is continued)

- FediSeer https://gui.fediseer.com/ (maintained @Db0 by right now, my favourite!)


- And the good old fediblock hasthag


Pesonally, I see Fediseer as a promising project. It has the optionto select the instances you “trust” and get their blocklists. It is really not necessary (and inefficient) that the mods of *every* of the 10-20 k Mastodon instances have to dive through all the really, really bad places to block them. There is still the issue of structural power dynamics of the instances that are used by default, but I understand that you have to begin somewhere and with the really, really bad instances, there should be less of a controversy.
- 
However, seeing the current heat of the debate, it is important for me to make also the following statement: 
The level of harassment and personal attacks that the person most visible behind TBS ( @Are0h ) is receiving from many sides is totally out of place. There are unclear power dynamics that should be addressed. Maybe this person is not the best at taking criticism, but a human being enjoying some privileges while suffering also discrimination. And also yes, Mastodon has definitevely a whiteness problem (and harassing a prominent black person provides exactly their point). Listen to black people when they talk about discrimination. Listen to queer people when they talk about discrimination.

But please, folks. Try to take a few breaths before writing an outrage post. Destructive group dynamics don’t seem to be what we need to resolve our problems. Maybe some of you will hate me for this. My apologies. I don't want to dismissing your experience, but to bring us back to the table to find ways to first keep the really bad shit out while trying to make the fediverse a more welcoming place for all.

sorry for the hippie speech. English is not my first language, s




* Of course, a very valid question is also: why is kolektiva.social considered by such a considerable proportion of the set of instances that some people consider “trusted sources” as worth of being defederated because of “Moderation issues, Poor moderation, abusive/harrassment behaviour” (on mastodon.art’s ‘about’ page even “racism”). I recall a complex conflict *last year*. However, whether kolektiva.social is currently a place for abusers/racists, is not really an assessment that can o should be made by a privileged white person like me, I guess.

#TBS #TheBadSpace #Federation #Defederation #Blocklists #SharedBlocklists #FediSeer #Outrage
@foolishowl

EDIT: I had incorrectly stated that seirdy.one is discontinued 😃

Puh, a really controversial topic that seems to cause strong emotions by many people on Mastodon.

I am not one of the big fish involved in the discussion. But I think it is important because how our community interacts depends on ourselves.



First, I want to say that shared blockslists can make sense. Basic lists to filter out the really bad shit. And maybe some stricter versions with keywords to facilitate new instances the creation of a safe space for certain groups (ok, here we could discuss why not blocking ALL kinds of harrassment, but in practice -and in the spirit of the fediverse as a community of distinct, but federated instaces- different people have varying levels of tolerance and set the threshold differently).


Currently, I see many posts about TBS, both in favour and against. 
Here I wanted to share my thoughts about TBS. I see basically the following problems:


- The trusted instances are hard-coded and not independent from each other (correct me, if I am wrong). I think that a lot of controversy about TBS comes from concerns about the influence of one of the persons at mastodon.art, both directly because they are used as trusted source but also because of indirect influence on the other instances via their moderation-discord channel. Everywhere are power dynamics. Also informal hierarchies don’t disappear if we don’t call them out.

- There is no appealing mechanism (TBS-banned instances would need to go begging on their knees to the “trusted instances” power circle). There is usually no “defederation will last for 6 months” or similar.

- There is no mechanism to resolve the issue of binarity of defederation: It is the nuke of moderation tools. However, the problem is that there are no intermediate tools to separate real nazi/pedo shit from “many months ago there was a disagreement regarding moderation style”. TBS was announced to be for the really bad stuff, not for more controversial/personal decisions.

- Blocklists are a *huge* responsibility. It is really easy to fuck things up (on purpose and by accident), especially if the blocklists are widely adopted. It is crucial to have very, very good mechanisms in place to avoid power issues. Therefore it is important to be open to (constructive) criticism.


Just to try out, I looked how kolektiva.social (the lovely anarchist instance I call my home for almost a year now) scores on TBS.
 Currently, kolektiva.social is suspended by 4 and silenced/limited by 2 of the “trusted instances serving as reference for the The TBS blocklist. If TBS would be widely dopted by the fediverse, this would mean adiós to my beloved instance*
 😢

I have to admit that I lost a little bit of track of the multiple blocklist projects:


- The Bad Space https://tweaking.thebad.space/

- GardenFence: https://gardenfence.github.io/ (significant overlap with TBS, a predecessor?)

- Seirdy.one’s blocklists https://seirdy.one/posts/2023/05/02/fediverse-blocklists/ (the author transparent reports are totally worth reading)

- Oliphant’s blocklists https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist (developed on the base of Seirdy.one’s lists, not sure whether it is continued)

- FediSeer https://gui.fediseer.com/ (maintained @Db0 by right now, my favourite!)


- And the good old fediblock hasthag


Pesonally, I see Fediseer as a promising project. It has the optionto select the instances you “trust” and get their blocklists. It is really not necessary (and inefficient) that the mods of *every* of the 10-20 k Mastodon instances have to dive through all the really, really bad places to block them. There is still the issue of structural power dynamics of the instances that are used by default, but I understand that you have to begin somewhere and with the really, really bad instances, there should be less of a controversy.
- 
However, seeing the current heat of the debate, it is important for me to make also the following statement: 
The level of harassment and personal attacks that the person most visible behind TBS ( @Are0h ) is receiving from many sides is totally out of place. There are unclear power dynamics that should be addressed. Maybe this person is not the best at taking criticism, but a human being enjoying some privileges while suffering also discrimination. And also yes, Mastodon has definitevely a whiteness problem (and harassing a prominent black person provides exactly their point). Listen to black people when they talk about discrimination. Listen to queer people when they talk about discrimination.

But please, folks. Try to take a few breaths before writing an outrage post. Destructive group dynamics don’t seem to be what we need to resolve our problems. Maybe some of you will hate me for this. My apologies. I don't want to dismissing your experience, but to bring us back to the table to find ways to first keep the really bad shit out while trying to make the fediverse a more welcoming place for all.

sorry for the hippie speech. English is not my first language, s




* Of course, a very valid question is also: why is kolektiva.social considered by such a considerable proportion of the set of instances that some people consider “trusted sources” as worth of being defederated because of “Moderation issues, Poor moderation, abusive/harrassment behaviour” (on mastodon.art’s ‘about’ page even “racism”). I recall a complex conflict *last year*. However, whether kolektiva.social is currently a place for abusers/racists, is not really an assessment that can o should be made by a privileged white person like me, I guess.

#TBS #TheBadSpace #Federation #Defederation #Blocklists #SharedBlocklists #FediSeer #Outrage
@foolishowl

EDIT: I had incorrectly stated that seirdy.one is discontinued 😃

@david #FACT: #MastodonDotArt is a shitshow as they are colluding with #TheBadSpace and those behind it refuse to acknowledge their wrongdoings and #DoBetter:
https://mstdn.social/@kkarhan/111057102657794381

And since thise are basically the unopposed admins, they deserve to be defederated:
https://github.com/greyhat-academy/lists.d/blob/770889fde4af4d0f5bd08c6d49af78a3ce49bc2c/activitypub.domains.block.list.tsv#L10

@david #FACT: #MastodonDotArt is a shitshow as they are colluding with #TheBadSpace and those behind it refuse to acknowledge their wrongdoings and #DoBetter:
https://mstdn.social/@kkarhan/111057102657794381

And since thise are basically the unopposed admins, they deserve to be defederated:
https://github.com/greyhat-academy/lists.d/blob/770889fde4af4d0f5bd08c6d49af78a3ce49bc2c/activitypub.domains.block.list.tsv#L10

@david #FACT: #MastodonDotArt is a shitshow as they are colluding with #TheBadSpace and those behind it refuse to acknowledge their wrongdoings and #DoBetter:
https://mstdn.social/@kkarhan/111057102657794381

And since thise are basically the unopposed admins, they deserve to be defederated:
https://github.com/greyhat-academy/lists.d/blob/770889fde4af4d0f5bd08c6d49af78a3ce49bc2c/activitypub.domains.block.list.tsv#L10

i just learned about the fedidrama that happened a few days ago and this is giving me a headache and I don't know how to respond to this. I don't want to be part of a bad instance and I don't know what to do. I want to give the mods the benefit of doubt that they will fix things but...

I don't mean to downplay the damage of the situation to BIPOC people, and I'm sorry if this comes across that way. I'm just trying to make sure I'm part of good instances and I'm concerned about the posts about tech.lgbt not being a well-moderated instance and the actions of one of the mods.

#fedimeta #fedidrama #thebadspace #techlgbt