Notices by Ryan Wild (wild1145@universeodon.com)

Where this has gained some degree of attention today for the #Universeodon (and by extension #MastodonAppUK folks)

I have made use, for a while now of the minimum block list provided by @oliphant - This list combines the public block lists of a number of mastodon instances including some that I personally have had previous issues with. However, the minimum list has proven to be almost always spot on when it comes to removing servers that are known to be problematic for a range of reasons.

A couple of weeks ago that list got imported here to Universeodon, and there were a small handful (5 maybe) servers that had some existing relationship which we severed as a result of the import, which was an intentional decision on my part.

The intention behind bringing the list in was to start to align our moderation with MastodonApp, but to also try to ensure we aren't reacting to reports constantly, and that we can prevent our community from having to see content that may be upsetting.

Now I'm not glued to this list, if genuine issues are raised that can't be resolved, I'll stop using it going forward, but to date we've never had a single instance contact us and ask to be removed from our block list and we've had only one user that has even noticed it impacted them.

I'm always happy to have a genuine and open discussion if there are real concerns with the list we're using, from my experience running it over on MastodonApp.UK, it's proven to be a really solid list, and it's near impossible for one off issues to result in being added to the list, combined with the fact we don't stream the list in, if servers do get added and quickly removed, 99% of the time we never even know they had ever made it onto the list.

This doesn't mean we have or will stop adding servers manually, but it does give us a head start and tries to mean we're dealing with the new servers where our community has had to see something and report it.

@freemo You are welcome to moderate your server in any way you see fit, but you continue to make baseless assumptions and spout them as fact. Which list(s) I choose to use to help me and my team moderate effectively is entirely my choice.

Just because the data you are seeing in any way aligns does not mean it is the root cause or a contributing factor. The harsh reality is I and my team do not have time to manually review every single server that ever interacts with us, nor do we have capacity to deal with the significant increase in reports from instances on the block lists we import.

You can have your issues with the list, and by all means take that up with the folks that create it, your beef seems to be entirely with .art and if you had bothered to actually look into my past interactions and my past moderation stances from both of my instances, you'd see I have no time for the bullshit .art pulls either and I have in no way ever endorsed them.

@freemo The actual reality (Again which would have been clear to you if you'd taken more than 10 seconds to spot my original post and start throwing shit in my direction for how I choose to moderate, despite having nothing to do with my server or it's moderation yourself), you'd have seen that when I took over we had major stability and scaling issues trying to migrate Universeodon away from the old owners hardware and onto the infrastructure I own and had provisioned. We had long periods where we couldn't handle the load, and are still to this date having some issues we haven't been able to resolve with the way the instance is setup and configured, and a lot of users gave up because their apps wouldn't load or content wouldn't load fast enough compared to what they expect.

@freemo But again, you have absolutely fuck all idea about this server, how I run things or what it's like being a member of this community, and yet you've decided you are the best placed to try to judge me based on very very little insight and data that you could be bothered to scrape together.

If you don't like how I moderate, you have no need to interact with me or my server. I've yet to have any issues outside of a single query (Which is where you took the original post I made about using the block list) with regards to the block list, and outside of routine appeals from users where they disagree with our moderation practice, have had no enquiries or issues raised with me or my team about how we moderate.

@freemo @BobMastodon @oliphant We've used the blocklist which we use on other instances without issue, and that .art has no ability to veto or heavily influence. I've vetted this list over the last year and have seen it to be an overwhelming benefit to our ability to effectively moderate.

We only make use of the T0 blocklist and have never had any issues with instances on it being ones users of our communities actually wish to interact with.

@freemo @BobMastodon @oliphant The block list was imported around 2 weeks ago... The drop in user activity is consistent with a number of servers and has zero to do with the fact we've imported a block list. It was imported because we saw a huge surge in instances posting CSAM and other abusive materials which we recognised to be on the block list.

Please stop stating these things as if you have any real data on this, when you clearly do not.

@freemo @BobMastodon @oliphant No, I'm stating that your assumption that this list had anything to do with our users is, nonsense.

The list was imported for the first time around 2 weeks ago, long long after since we saw drops in user counts here, and across a lot of servers.

I'm stating that we've seen an increase in CSAM and similar content being shared on servers, all of which happened to be on the minimum block list from Oliphant which I use on the other servers without issues.

I would ask you once again, stop spouting and sharing bullshit based on your own made up nonsense.

@BobMastodon It looks like they are on the @oliphant Unified Minimum Block list which we've started to use. That would suggest there's been some serious issues with the instance historically. Let me do some digging to see if I can find out any more on why the instance is recommended to be blocked. It may well be a historic issue that has shifted, or it might be that the instance fails to moderate / administer properly in which case I'd personally suggest your friends shift instances to an instance that does moderate. It's worth saying they're going to be blocked by a fairly large number of instances as this block list is generally trusted as a absolute bare minimum block list and they may want to consider moving anyway for that reason.

I'll take a look probably tomorrow being honest and get back to you.