Notices by Raccoon🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 (raccoon@techhub.social)

So apparently #Trump has halted the bombing campaign on #Iran again, and Iran has responded by immediately ceasing attacks, leading to an effective #ceasefire without any negotiations. I find it darkly amusing how straightforward this whole situation is, and how clear it makes it that this is all unnecessary: literally all he has to do is stop attacking them. The only reason the #WarOnIran isn't over yet is because he got into it in the first place and now he needs to be able to claim he "won" something.

It's exactly the same as #Putin's situation in #Ukraine: a stupid despot has dragged #Russia into a stupid #war of imperialism, and it literally can only end when he stops attacking, but #politics mean that he desperately needs to have some sort of "win".

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/iran-will-halt-attacks-long-us-maintains-pause-iranian-source-says-after-trump-2026-07-26/

Randomly thinking about how, in a couple years, even the #political groups who want these agencies are effectively going to have to dissolve a big chunk of federal enforcement, including #ICE, to get a lot of the people who are in there right now back out, just to make the agencies capable of doing their actual jobs again...

#USpol #USgovernment #politics

Shout out to #SearchEngine #Podcast for talking about the #Fediverse on their latest episode, bringing in more users and growing the network with people who like informative media. I always appreciate new users coming in!

Also welcome to @kevin and the new #Forkiverse instance they've started! Always nice to see new instances!

If you have #Spotify or #Apple accounts, please go hit the like button equivalent on their episode!
https://www.searchengine.show/the-fediverse-experiment/

#TheContentMustFlow

@emilymbender
I'm sorry to hear you're going through this, and also sorry that you had to deal with it from someone from TechHub. As moderation, making this place friendlier and a better place to post about just about anything is a constant task, and sometimes I don't feel like we're making good strides with it. It's easy to spot and deal with the overt stuff, the people just saying racial slurs or whatever, but a lot harder to deal with things like microaggressions that can't be found through a simple search, or identified just by looking at the post.

I want us to be better. I don't know if any of us is up to the task when it comes to this though.

All that said, I appreciate seeing your posts, and I hope to keep seeing them in the future. We need people like you on this network, giving diverse opinions, from a place of expertise, on important topics, like all of you at DAIR post about.

I hope we can find some way to make it better for you.

- TechHub Moderation

@lepidotos @curiousgawker
Yeah whenever this sort of targeted attack happens, I think of all the mass shooters, violent authoritarian politicians, and mass deaths from corporate policies which are coming out of the ideology these people are pushing. I don't think it's a good strategy, and I'm not going to condone it, but it's not really troubling to me to hear that people who endanger other people's lives have found their own lives in danger as a direct consequence of their own actions...

#PSA
#Mastodon, nor the #Fediverse in general will never ask you to "verify" with payment details, especially not from a non-moderator account. If you get a message asking you to verify, it is a #Scam #Bot, and you should block and #report it to #moderation.

We are currently getting a wave of #spam from bots like this. Again, do not even click the link, just block and report.

@Fedicate
Sounds good! Please keep making things, and don't be too upset by the way some people are phrasing their feedback.

@BeAware @Fedicate
I'm sorry that there's people that get way too aggressive about this. Like I said, there really needs to be more tools for de-escalation and more cohesiveness, but everyone seems to be pouring into tools for reporting and blocking and fighting. When I saw the post on FediBlock, I wanted to tell that person to calm down, but I worried that would make it worse.

I don't know that the so-called "Fedi Mafia"is really much of a mafia as opposed to just a small group of people who go a little too aggressive when they see stuff like this, but yes, that is a bit of a problem because it scares off people who are making things in good faith.

Like I said, the person who made this is clearly talented and dedicated, I just don't think more tools for this sort of thing are really what we need right now. Honestly, I would rather see a system for endorsing profiles first.

@Fedicate
I'm going to be honest with you.

This is an interesting concept, but I am seeing a bunch of problems with it, and not seeing a reason to use this over the existing moderator report system. In fact, I worry that people will use this instead of the report button, which is already a massive problem with #FediBlock, along with the trolling and harassment that goes on with that tag.

This seems to just be FediBlock with extra steps.

I also want to note, if this is only negative reports, you will have the drawback of some of the most popular and/or insightful people having the most reports, because that's who's getting that traffic. If you are really dead set on doing this, you really should have a system that lets people say a person is good, like that they are credible or make good content, so that those negative reports can be outweighed by people vouching for the person.

And once again, that's a problem with FediBlock too: we don't need more tools for shaming. We need more deescalation.

@Fedicate
And I'm sorry you're receiving such negative and mean comments on this, because I really do think this was a good faith attempt at something, and I really don't want to discourage you here, but just looking at this I'm already seeing so many problems... I'm just saying you are clearly talented, and you have dedication and desire to do good, and your time would probably be better spent elsewhere.

Little #PSA to combat #misinformation, because apparently half of #US #Citizens don't know this: #NATO is a #Military #Defense #Alliance between the #USA and #Canada and most of #Europe. The main rule for joining is that the country must be a stable #Democracy with protections on human rights. The main terms of the treaty are that, if one country is attacked unprovoked, on their own soil, the others must send immediate military assistance, and counties must keep up a minimum military to be able to both defend themselves and come to the defense of others.

NATO is not a #trade agreement, though it does facilitate trade agreements to encourage peace.

NATO is not an #expansionist force. NATO is a pro-democracy force.

NATO is not anti-Russia, as #Russia was invited to join in the 90s. #Putin is anti-NATO because it's effectiveness limits his power.

NATO has only been called into one war: the US invasion of Afghanistan, with the triggering event being 9/11, when the US was attacked directly.

#News reports coming on from DeadBirdSite that #ElonMusk is apparently upset that people are calling #Tesla #ElectricVehicles "#Swasticars", after his open and flagrant use of #NeoNazi rhetoric and the #Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration last week.

The bigger question... Can we make #Swasticar the new trending hashtag for talking about #Teslas on the #Fediverse?

https://x.com/HalfwayPost/status/1883270707783840094

#TwitterMigration #Resist #FediResistance

@mart_brooks
Okay, that is a way of looking at it.

So to follow this up, who is disagreeing with the idea that people don't have a biological sex, and why do you think that's important enough to talk about this way?

Just another reminder to report people to moderation before posting on #FediBlock. Just today, I saw moderation clearly active on MSTDN trying to ban all the accounts that roll on a rotating IP made, but missing some of the accounts because they hadn't all been reported.

Even if mods are aware something is going on, reports give us a way to solve the problem in a couple clicks.

Generally speaking, you don't need to make a public call out until moderation is either ignoring it or directly involved, and people using this hashtag for accounts that haven't been reported has been an ongoing problem.

@mart_brooks
What about intersex conditions?

Also, why is this so important, on a societal level?

@mynameistillian
Hey @stux, you have a FediBlock here because of a user who has been repeatedly signed up for accounts on MSTDN to harass people on the network, ban and block evading, calling people "Zoophiles", etc.

We aren't going to do anything here, but please figure out a way to stop the troll from spamming and harassing.

- TechHub Moderation

@stux @mynameistillian
Yeah, I was guessing they're rotating their IP. Remember that, if they're all from a certain range, you can restrict that range to be approval-based.

I'll keep reporting them when I see them. Good luck.

- TechHub Moderation

CC @mawr because she was tagged in as staff.

Just reposting to the #FediBlock tag that @stux has put #MSTDN signups on Manual Approval for now, which should stop the harassment / spam from that one disgruntled guy. If you were blocking over this, please unblock them, as they are otherwise good about handling this sort of thing.

Also tagging, because they should be more used, #InstanceBlock, #FediUnblock, #FediReconciliation, #FediAdmin.

- TechHub #Moderation

@BeAware
I try to keep track of it because some of the worst actors on the network show up on there pretty often, and even though a lot of them are repeats, it's a quick way to know when a new one has shown up.

@BeAware
Well of course you didn't, if you did you probably wouldn't have boosted, lol. :blobcatlaugh:

But yeah, it's not obvious what's going on until you see the rest of the #FediBlock hashtag today...