@frocksupreme Trans people have more safety in numbers here than POC.

One very easy trick to hide dogpiling from everybody else is to make a followers-only post and tag the person you're harassing.

Also, white folx like us don't always recognize racism for what it is when we see it.

For the history, https://logicmag.io/policy/blackness-in-the-fediverse-a-conversation-with-marcia-x/ is a good read

On what you can do now, https://privacy.thenexus.today/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/

@gunchleoc i never experienced racism on mastodon. and thats my point. nothing else. i am speaking out for myself not everybody. i have never been criticized as a racist ever before and which of course i am not. but i am surprised how aggressively some ppl. try to misunderstand & push it towards a wanted result. it completely misses reality & probably shows how unsuitable they are to be social on a social medium

@frocksupreme Most of the racism I've seen here I've only seen because I follow the fediblock hashtag. Some pretty vile stuff gets reported there.

Without that and without following any black users, I would be completely oblivious of this thing going on, because my corner of the fedi doesn't get harassed.

So, yes, what you see depends a lot on your bubble.

@mastodonmigration @stefan
Can you help me understand how followers only posts are harder for moderation to catch? I understand they are not public but they can still be reported? I'm trying to tackle this problem from the moderation agle as a server block helps so many more people (if we can pull it off)

@mastodonmigration @stefan My other question is accounts like this seem likely to get blocked from your server for other reasons. They would have to use this trick 100% of the time to avoid detection.

I'm NOT saying this isn't happening. I'm just trying to understand how these accounts behave so we can find, I hope, an even better way of shutting them down.

@scottjenson @mastodonmigration @stefan followers-only posts require the *victim* to report the attack. Depending on the volume and ferocity of the harassment, the victim may not be in a position to do this (either due to harassment across several channels, or unawareness of reporting and moderation options).

As an example, I piled into this thread to help out with an example, but I wouldn't have seen it to help out if it were "followers only".

I can see the positive value in being able to restrict a discussion, but it seems like "all my friends plus one more" might be a dangerous model.

Take all this with a grain of salt, as I haven't actually been subject to this kind of abuse, and am privileged in a bunch of ways which probably shield me from having to consider the worst of it.

@evana @mastodonmigration @stefan This is very helpful thank you. The workaround suggested is to have new filter that blocks all followers only posts that also include you. For this to be effective, it would need to default to being ON, which might rub many the wrong way. Defaulting to OFF means victims need to find and turn this on (which seems unlikely)

I'm trying to brainstorm other solutions that offer more protection (but I'm coming up short) Are there any others?

@evana @mastodonmigration @stefan One additional thought. If we default this filter to on and it DOES fire, this could be a moderator visible event?

@scottjenson @stefan

This was in another thread discussing the issue. Not sure if what it reports is accurate vis a vis moderator limitations. Could it be a GDPR issue?

"This technique is insidious in another way too. As a moderator, you can't look at non-public posts unless someone specifically reports them, so your ability to understand the context is severely limited. Sometimes you literally can't see the harassment even when you go looking for it."

https://sfba.social/@EverydayMoggie/115330983420918538

@scottjenson Not sure if I understand the question myself. Do you mean whether someone posting a followers-only + 1 post would automatically flag that post for moderation?

That's a tricky one. Now that I think about it, I might've actually received replies to my posts that were followers-only+1 (me). No abuse, just regular replies, I suppose the person wanted a bit more privacy?

@evana @mastodonmigration

@mastodonmigration @stefan The "math" checks out. I don't deny this is happening. At the same time, none of us in this thread says we've ever experienced it. We can't fight a problem we don't properly understand.

What would help is talking to people/moderators that have had to deal with this. I have to assume this is a fairly common problem so finding people to talk to should be fairly easy I would hope.

@stefan @evana @mastodonmigration Exactly, that's why I asked the second question: make it a simple one-click for the target to report it.

The filter (if it defaults to off) isn't good enough. Most people just won't know how to turn it on.

@scottjenson @mastodonmigration @stefan I don't have good ideas yet, but a couple probably-obvious observations:

* New and less-technical users are probably more likely to completely exit the platform due to harassment
* Experienced and technical users will probably have connections and better ability to bring tools into play
* Followers-only specifically separates the participants from any other network than the original poster. This probably needs to be communicated _really clearly_
* I can see followers-only as a good solution for sensitive discussions, but you want the recipients to understand that the information is sensitive so they don't allude to it/repost it without that privacy
* There's a tension between privacy defaults and broadening the web of social connection and discovery. The most private default would remove a lot of the social network value, so you'll rarely get a clear "win" without at least some damage to other cases

@evana @mastodonmigration @stefan Agree with your points but we're still circling around the issue of how likely this happens (and how)

I DONT want to imply I don't believe people that say it happens, I'm just trying to understand the broader flow, i.e. how can a Brigade operate in secrecy? It just seems very fragile as they likely do other things that get them banned. Have we seen a large scale brigade that worked this way for a while? What causes them to trip up? Let's focus on that.

@scottjenson

I know we're very early into the conversation, and I'm sure more ideas will come up, but so far everything is just telling me that followers-only+1 posts should not be possible and rejected as "+1 is not a follower".

The workarounds are getting confusing.

@evana @mastodonmigration

@stefan @evana @mastodonmigration I agree! But you're pointing out to one of the pros/cons of the fediverse. Restricting followers-only to not have a +1 is a client limitation, something that could be avoided with a custom client.

Repeat after me: "Federation makes everything harder"

@scottjenson Right, but could the message get rejected by the server when it sees a "followers only" visibility, and the recipient is not a follower?

Almost like a quick, temporary auto-block of that person.

@evana @mastodonmigration

@stefan @evana @mastodonmigration yes, if this is a server feature and not a client one, then my concern goes away.

But I can 100% guarantee you that there is a small group of people that do this for very positive and supportive reasons that will be quite miffed if we do this (which just might be necessary!)

This is why I'm trying to find other ways of looking at this problem. I want to solve it! Just trying to find the right lever.

@scottjenson It just sounds like we might need to turn the conversation around and instead of asking how to mitigate this feature's potential for abuse, a better question might be, why is this useful?

If to limit a posts visibility, maybe using "quiet public" is a better option?

@evana @mastodonmigration

@scottjenson

Just trying to imagine this playing out IRL. Someone pulls me to the side to talk to me, surrounds me with their buddies. Now, they might all be very nice people. But this situation just sounds inherently threatening.

@evana @mastodonmigration