Notices by Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: (raccoon@techhub.social), page 2

#US

@freemo
Did you read what I linked there? The difference between the two parties on this is night and day: Harris is arguing for deescalation and a Ceasefire, Trump is arguing for more violence in more places.

If you truly want peace and an end to Netanyahu's genocide, Harris is the only viable path we have, or as I've heard actual Palestinians put it, "Our only hope." Voting third party, when you could actually elect someone who is openly sympathetic to a ceasefire over someone who is hostile to even asking for one, is counter-productive.

No third party candidate will win, but we can get much closer to the outcome we want under Harris.

And the rest of the parties? When Netanyahu came to speak in front of congress, nearly all the Republican reps gave him a standing ovation, while over 2/3rds of the Democrat reps openly protested him. This is very much a partisan issue, with two very different takes from the parties.

> "Biden is trying to hold [#Netanyahu] back," Trump said, without saying whether he was referring to Israel's operation in #Gaza, #Lebanon or both. "And he probably should be doing the opposite, actually."

Trump is literally promising that, if he is elected, he will support a much higher civilian casualty rate in #Israel's military campaigns. He is literally running against the Biden policy of trying to deescalate the #IsraeliPalestinianConflict. He makes "#GenocideJoe"s hesitation and compromises look more like calls for #CeasefireNow.

Meanwhile, Harris is one of the people actively pressuring the rest of the administration to take a more aggressive stance against Netanyahu's civilian casualty rate, and is likely to start laying into him and demanding a timetable for ceasefire the day after the election if she wins.

Once again, night and day.

https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-breaks-his-silence-on-sinwar-as-harris-seizes-opportunity-in-his-death-/7828406.html

#USpol

With the successful assassination of #Sinwar, the #Hamas terrorist leader behind last year's October attack which predicated the current violence, Biden and Harris are now trying to use his death to bring #Israel's campaign in #Gaza to an end. This seems reasonable, as it gives the Hamas-focused allies of #Netanyahu's coalition a way to say "mission accomplished", without allowing his genocidal ambitions to go further. It's expected that, if Harris wins, we could see a ceasefire by the end of the year.

https://apnews.com/article/harris-election-2024-israel-sinwar-gaza-5082986dda69887ca525b6a97d2452df

Trump, meanwhile, says he wants to re-instate his #Muslim ban, and especially make sure no #Palestinians, or anyone else from what he calls an "infested" country, can come here legally. This is on top of his general hatred for Palestinians and middle-easterners in general, and clear support for Netanyahu.

https://time.com/7022828/trump-travel-ban-refugees-gaza/

The difference is Night and Day.

#USpol

I think at least 90% of server administrations on the #fediverse can and should get along with each other. I think if some people learned to de-escalate or agree to disagree, or at least try to find a common ground before they go on #FediBlock, we could have a lot less drama.

Granted, I also think less than 10% of that over 90% of servers are generating at least 90% of that drama, and over 90% of the blocking that's going on is that less than 10% that we can't get along with.

It's absolutely insane that the political situation is such that someone who is actively undermining the response to one of the worse hurricane seasons in history is a viable presidential candidate. He is literally trying to undermine information about a disaster for political gain.

This is the kind of thing he did as president, redirecting Aid towards his own pet projects as aid agency heads screamed at him that they desperately needed more, showing up for photo-ops in affected areas with no ability or intention to help.

...and yet people are willing to vote for this guy apparently. I can only assume it's the racism.

#PSA about #Hurricane #Milton relief #misinformation...

#FEMA, #Military, and other groups are in place and already on the ground in #Florida and #Georgia. Everything is being expedited.

There is plenty of #aid available for damage and many programs. The limit is NOT $750: that is the amount from the "quick approval" program, and you can apply for more.

Aid is NOT being redirected towards illegal immigrants.

The government is NOT redirecting the storm with space lasers or "Jew magic". I should not have to say that one, but it is not happening.

If you are in #GulfCoast Florida, you have until Noon to get out: storm surge will reach record levels, covering cars and homes.

@wjmaggos
Keep in mind that servers don't whitelist, they blacklist. Federation happens automatically.

You are probably running into these Nazi instances because "liberal City" is an obviously political one, but if you can get some cross-traffic with servers like TechHub, .Art, Writing.Exchange, MSTDN, Meow, etc, you should have better interactions from there.

You may want to look at TechHub's blocklist, on our about page, and make sure we're blocking/limiting the same servers. We are pretty hesitant to block, so it's pretty much guaranteed that every server on that list has a serious problem.

@feld
Part of why I laid out the reasons that way is so you can easily have your spreadsheet sort them, and take or leave what you want. It's intended that you could easily pick out only specific kinds and go after them.

As for the ones that do not deserve to be on this list, please tell me which ones, and I will remove them immediately and re-check them at a later date. You can do this in a DM if you want.

Same goes to anyone else who thinks a server is on here mistakenly.

I've been working on this for a few months now. I want to take more time on it before I say it's truly ready, but some of the things on the #FediBlock and #InstanceBlock tags lately have made me decide to rush this out now: I'm seeing people talk about servers we've had blocked for over a year now, where #admins harass minorities, promote terrorism, and trade #CSAM.

I'm convinced this needs to be available sooner rather than later.

This is a #blocklist from an older, block-averse instance, with servers we've seen absolutely unacceptable content from over the years.

I encourage you to look over the reasons before you import, but be warned, many of these have CSAM and/or terrorism on the main timeline.

View the servers themselves at your own risk.

Importable CSV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H6TljzFoEtZ23QE_vaGlJUl6bC7J1I4J

THIS IS NEW: If y'all see anything that shouldn't be on there, respond and I'll recheck.

#FediMod #Moderation

Releasing a minor update to TechHub's public #Blocklist: added a couple things, fixed a couple issues. Making this available to other Fedi admins.

Link is still the same...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H6TljzFoEtZ23QE_vaGlJUl6bC7J1I4J/

We recommend servers block these instances because they are known bad actors, where we have seen direct evidence of extreme levels of bigotry, harassment, and pedophilia.

While you should look into every list you import, and I definitely encourage anyone importing this to skim the list and pay attention to the given reasons, I do not encourage going to the instances in question, as many contain illegal content such as terrorism and #CSAM.

I release this list in the hopes of helping servers which are new or have less moderator-time get the known-offender instances off their timelines, especially ones which continually appear on the #FediBlock and #InstanceBlock tags.
- #TechHub #Moderation

UPDATE:
Vetted and added a few more instances, mostly what was missing from Binbows' PediKill list.

New list is at the same URL as the old one, can be imported on top of existing lists, see above post for details...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H6TljzFoEtZ23QE_vaGlJUl6bC7J1I4J

Reminder that this list is representative of instances where we have seen EXTREME behavior, beyond a single account: racial slurs, pedophilia, terrorism, CSAM, etc.

This list is not exhaustive: it is everything WE have seen direct cases of behavior we would block over, and we try to block sparingly. Instances may have slipped through the cracks. Not being on this list is not an endorsement.

This list is NEW. If anyone sees anything on this list that they feel was inappropriate, feel free to tell me, and I will go recheck it.

- TechHub Moderation

#FediBlock #InstanceBlock #FediAdmin #FediMod #Moderation #Racism #CSAM

Of the tens of thousands of servers on the fediverse, there are about 200 or so which have administrations which actively support Naziism, Pedophilia, Terrorism, and other serious issues which #Moderation on mainstream Fedi blocks on sight.

TechHub only blocks instances we see as a serious threat to our timeline / users, but we are old and I am thorough, and thus, we've accumulated a considerably large (200+) list of the WORST instances. I publish a curated and annotated version of this list so that #Staff / #FediAdmin s can see it, and potentially import all or part of our blocks.

You can find it at...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H6TljzFoEtZ23QE_vaGlJUl6bC7J1I4J/

In light that moderation issues will increase as we near the US Election, I have just pushed another update. I HIGHLY recommend every admin look at this, and consider importing all or part of it.

- TechHub Moderation

#FediBlock #InstanceBlock #FediAntisemitism #FediRacism

@BeAware
And here I was about to try and pressure them... :V

I was thinking about posting something in the near future to try and get the other servers that haven't blocked them yet to group up and threaten to block them if they didn't start respecting the fact that some servers don't want to be scraped. Personally, it's not an issue here, because my understanding is they are just indexing for searches, and that theoretically means better reach for us: the point of blogging is to say things in public. The issue I had was the block evasion.

Interesting...

I just got a follow request from #Awakari, with its own detailed and formatted message, and it never occurred to me that that's the sort of thing that #ActivityPub supports, though it does make sense.

I'm also a little surprised because my understanding has been that the main reason they are controversial is because they don't get permission to crawl people's profiles, but here they've sent a customized agreement type thing for me to look at...

#crawler

So... Has anyone on here actually talked with the people from the #SocialWebFoundation?

I can tell the #Mastodon Organization has, but #Threads is also listed there, while I don't see any other names that aren't some corporate entity. I'm all for groups that want to expand the #Fediverse, even for-profit ones, but it's a red flag when an organization that purports to be for a general movement doesn't have an open line of communication with rank-and-file server-runners and volunteers...

Edit:
I just realized that it was founded by @evan who is actually very active in mainstream Fedi, and one of the maintainers of the actual protocol. While that doesn't elaborate on actual intentions, it is good to know that at least it's someone who is directly involved, and not some random corporation. #EvanProdromou

@puppygirlhornypost2
Their website has language about concrete goals, which include encryption on private messages and better support for long form / rich text posts like those on CoHost or WordPress, which I would be in favor of. I think the most concerning thing here is that there are a couple companies listed as being involved who don't seem to be involved, namely Facebook/Threads...

@BeAware
I screenshot, copy/paste into Mastodon, click the caption button, then click the button to automatically caption it. It takes a minute, but it does it without me having to input, and it's accurate enough I can just make a couple minor edits.

Just wanted to say, as a #FediMod, I really appreciate that #Mastodon lets me click a button to caption screenshots of text for me. It means I don't have to caption these racist / sexist / pedophilic things I put up on FediBlock / InstanceBlock.

Thanks Mastodon!

It says something about #Trump that I, as a person who's known a lot more about him than the average person for over a decade, am less surprised by the fact that he's now apparently blaming "the #Jews" if he doesn't when the election then the fact it took him this long. He thinks of people in such hereditary and demographic terms, so unquestioning of ethnic stereotypes, that it's inevitable that anyone who isn't part of the only demographic group that is voting for him in large numbers (straight white non-disabled males) is going to end up being lashed out at as soon as the election is over, regardless of the outcome.

It's why it's very important to make sure he loses, and doesn't have the power of the US government behind him when he decides to get revenge.

Very dark times we live in for the #US.

#uspol #2024election #antisemitism