Oddbean

@jaf @78b3e470 @b17a3b4f I'm on a 4-digits invite-only instance (at least it was when I was invited) and it works kinda nice, honestly. 🤔 The admins are doing quite a good job. You seem to talk about wildly different people. Like, tankies, neolibs, big servers... what is it? 🤨

@5392447a I, personally, am specifically referring to cartels of Mastodon instances which work in coordination to disparage and sabotage other instances and instance softwares via abuse of things like #fediblock. @jaf @78b3e470

@jaf Yeah, true, you can see active participants in the hashtag. But, to name a few, other than mastodon.art, off the top of my head: cathode.church, union.place, cosmick9.com, eldritch.cafe, artisan.chat, and the parties that comprise the "Oliphant" block-list oligarchy. The laughable part of the Oliphant block-list is how they claim it's "algorithmic" based on "consensus ", when, in practice, as soon as one of the maintainers adds anyone to that block-list, all the others follow suit, therefore immediately creating unanimity. These block-lists are promoted and advertised as being professionally maintained and independently vetted when they're absolutely not, and primarily (either due to market-share or culture) Mastodon instances widely subscribe---blindly---to these giant block-lists put together by other Mastodon instances. When talking about block-lists and #fediblock, this is genuinely a purely Mastodon behavior or phenomenon. They represent easily like 80% or more of the active participants therein. @5392447a @78b3e470

@b17a3b4f @78b3e470 @jaf Mmh... I'm very curious then what will come out of those projects aiming to improve the moderation and block decisions. Apparently some kind of federated system allowing for sharing of reasoning, proofs and all that stuff. Could make it better if done properly, could also make it infinitely worse.

@5392447a The correct answer is for these Mastodon groups to adopt whitelist federation and fuck off, stop harassing the rest of us with their hateful, vindictive neuroticism and abusing, controlling personality disorders. @78b3e470 @jaf

The "problem" with this stuff is it doesn't really work. There will always be an incentive to abuse the list and add people over personal gripes, and everyone else who is party to the list needs to reach absolute consensus in every case. Every construct like this will sooner or later lead to the maintainers exhausting themselves and splitting up in an orgy of drama. The only people who really suffer from this are the ones on these instances with restrictive policies - who don't realize they can just walk away, and of course the ones stuck on central platforms because "omg mastodon is insufferable"...