Improving Safety with updates to our Block List policy
Published on March 2, 2023 by Nelson Chu Pavlosky
Good news: The Fediverse continues to grow steadily, so you have the potential to connect with more people as time goes by.
Bad news: Within the last few weeks, we saw our first incident of what appeared to be coordinated abuse towards a jawns.club member.
Thankfully, we were able to handle reports swiftly, which included blocking the abusive users and the servers they post from. But this incident sparked a conversation about ways we can mitigate and improve this process in the future without overwhelming our volunteer moderation efforts.
Soon after, we found that the latest version of Mastodon provides us with some tools that we're actively experimenting with, and we wanted to share these experiments transparently with all of you.
Bad news: Within the last few weeks, we saw our first incident of what appeared to be coordinated abuse towards a jawns.club member.
Thankfully, we were able to handle reports swiftly, which included blocking the abusive users and the servers they post from. But this incident sparked a conversation about ways we can mitigate and improve this process in the future without overwhelming our volunteer moderation efforts.
Soon after, we found that the latest version of Mastodon provides us with some tools that we're actively experimenting with, and we wanted to share these experiments transparently with all of you.
The Problem
Until now, our policy has been to manually confirm every report of a instance violating our Code of Conduct before blocking/suspending or limiting/silencing it. This is fine for periodic reports, but as the number of servers we connect to grows, the number of servers that host harmful behavior will too. If we want to be proactive about this issue, we must sometimes trust other people.
A (Partial) Solution
The latest version of Mastodon allows us to import from other instances pre-built lists of ban-worthy instances that are known to be harmful or host activity that is against our Code of Conduct.
For example, Oliphant Social's list of block lists is compiled from the block lists of several well-moderated instances, with cross-references to ensure that multiple servers agree.
Within the last couple of weeks, we have started experimenting with this approach by importing the "least controversial block list," aka the Ultra-Minimalist 100% Blocks agreed upon by every single one of their sources.
As we become comfortable with the process for and side-effects from using these community-contributed block lists, and/or as our moderation burden increases, we may begin importing increasingly aggressive block lists that include servers with less consensus among all sources.
For example, Oliphant Social's list of block lists is compiled from the block lists of several well-moderated instances, with cross-references to ensure that multiple servers agree.
Within the last couple of weeks, we have started experimenting with this approach by importing the "least controversial block list," aka the Ultra-Minimalist 100% Blocks agreed upon by every single one of their sources.
As we become comfortable with the process for and side-effects from using these community-contributed block lists, and/or as our moderation burden increases, we may begin importing increasingly aggressive block lists that include servers with less consensus among all sources.
Known Side-effects
As we import these block lists, it is possible that jawns.club members will have followers, or even accounts you are following, on instances that turn up on these block lists.
The Mastodon import tool provides us with a tool to identify instances where a server on the import list includes jawns.club follow relationships, and manually review them before we proceed with the import. Initially, our policy will be to manually review any servers on the block list that have follow relationships with Jawns.club, but to automatically import the rest of the block list.
During our initial import, only one instance on the imported block list had accounts following our members. That instance permits posting sexualized depictions of children, which is against our code of conduct. We blocked it, of course.
Future block list imports may be more complex, and may not go as smoothly.
We will be cautious when evaluating servers that have follow relationships with us, and whenever possible we will initially "silence" (reduce the visibility of) servers that our members are following, rather than a full block that would break relationships with accounts that our members follow. We may also decide to have a private conversation with any member who would be affected by a suspension/block of the offending instance before proceeding.
The Mastodon import tool provides us with a tool to identify instances where a server on the import list includes jawns.club follow relationships, and manually review them before we proceed with the import. Initially, our policy will be to manually review any servers on the block list that have follow relationships with Jawns.club, but to automatically import the rest of the block list.
During our initial import, only one instance on the imported block list had accounts following our members. That instance permits posting sexualized depictions of children, which is against our code of conduct. We blocked it, of course.
Future block list imports may be more complex, and may not go as smoothly.
We will be cautious when evaluating servers that have follow relationships with us, and whenever possible we will initially "silence" (reduce the visibility of) servers that our members are following, rather than a full block that would break relationships with accounts that our members follow. We may also decide to have a private conversation with any member who would be affected by a suspension/block of the offending instance before proceeding.
Transparency & Communication
As we import new block lists, we will publish updates here so there is transparency to our community.
If you see us block a server that you believe we should NOT block, we encourage you to contact us with an appeal so we can review it and decide if we should reverse the decision.
Note that we do not publish our own internal block list of servers that we have reviewed manually. This is kept private to reduce the chances of blocked harassers finding another instance to harass us from. You can read more about our moderation decision framework if you're curious.
If you see us block a server that you believe we should NOT block, we encourage you to contact us with an appeal so we can review it and decide if we should reverse the decision.
Note that we do not publish our own internal block list of servers that we have reviewed manually. This is kept private to reduce the chances of blocked harassers finding another instance to harass us from. You can read more about our moderation decision framework if you're curious.
Any Questions?
As always, most of our moderation work is quiet and invisible. We hope that updates like these provide insights into the work that we're doing to keep our corner of the Fediverse safe and clear of problems.
If you have any questions or concerns about the approaches we've taken as described in this update, or anything is unclear, please reach out! You can contact us at [email protected] or send a DM to @[email protected] and @[email protected].
Lastly, if you haven't already become a paying supporter, we'd appreciate it if you did. Even a few dollars a month makes a difference!
Your humble jawns.club mods,
Nelson & Alex
If you have any questions or concerns about the approaches we've taken as described in this update, or anything is unclear, please reach out! You can contact us at [email protected] or send a DM to @[email protected] and @[email protected].
Lastly, if you haven't already become a paying supporter, we'd appreciate it if you did. Even a few dollars a month makes a difference!
Your humble jawns.club mods,
Nelson & Alex