90%+ of the fedi is going to block gab and they're still going to be able to see everything because defederation/server blocks don't work like you think they do because activitypub. maybe instead of grandstanding to misdirect about whatever bullshit you're up to, come help us find a solution to THAT looming disaster

@anna The failure of ActivityPub to do this does lie on Eugen, as he is the one who insists its working despite its failure.

@kaikatsu this isnt entirely fair, a lot of it is just baked into activitypub, and i honestly hear the "but you can right click open in new window" excuse from the anti-eugen crowd just as much as i hear it from the pro-eugen crowd

@anna i don't know if there even is a solution to this issue though, public posts are public, so it makes sense that they can be fetched.

@nik see: my other reply. big difference between active stalking and passive surveillance working out of the box.

@anna Block 104.16.121.96 in your VPS’s firewall. That will truly defederate them and stop them from reading your statuses directly.

@noirscape while that works for some things, they can still get a lot from context threads and such, but thanks for the reminder ive been meaning to do that

@anna It’s pretty much the closest we can really do without locking federation down to only specific instances, which would screw over smaller instances or upcoming ones.

Reject their incoming statuses and prevent them from indexing our statuses. It won’t stop them from browsing it by directly going to your instance, but it’ll at least stop them from shitting up threads from gab directly (since federation suspending just means you can’t see them shitting up threads).

@noirscape it still slurps things it finds in threads, etc. though since those take a circuitous route to the blocked server that does no checking at all, which is why even if it is the software equivalent of asking nicely, we need something that at least indicates to not store content from a server that is blocking said server

@anna Hrmm, that would involve exposing the blocked instance list to a degree however, which I know not all instances are interested in since some block due to them blocking instances to fend of harassers, which would just move to another instance if they realised they were being blocked.

@anna do you think me personally blocking gab domains will stop them? I dont want them seeing my posts

@SunSaint @anna if you make public posts, anyone can see them, regardless of blocks

@nik @SunSaint yeah that's the crux of the problem, but also like, yeah if its public you can see it just right click open in private window, though a lot of the technical discourse has been poisoned by that because this is not really a solvable problem, that we can't do ANYTHING and so therefore its time to end the discussion and not do anything actionable

but there's a difference between explicit stalking and passive surveillance as the default mode all fedi servers operate under, and someone is going to get hurt before people realize this

@nik @SunSaint @anna

Yeah being able to block people but also have public posts is a really difficult problem that it's not simply a matter of flicking a switch to fix, it's something the internet has been dealing with for a long time and while I'm not saying there will never be a solution, getting upset with someone for not coming up with one is rather like getting upset with a specific doctor for not finding the cure to some disease.

@nik @SunSaint @anna

And to be clear I'm not saying that's not a problem that can cause harm, I just mean that it doesn't make sense to hold Eugen responsible for something like that.

@nik @SunSaint @anna

Now if people want to come up with ideas to minimize risk or mitigate harm, that's good and we should talk about those! But acting like "this is all becuase Eugen hates safety!" is just absurd.

@mal @nik @SunSaint its worse than it could be because of a lot of bad decisions made by privileged people over a long time. assigning blame is pointless though because it does nothing to fix it.

@anna @mal @nik @SunSaint
To go round and round in a circle again: I don't think the problem is that privileged people failed to implement something better as much as it is that people, privileged or not, couldn't figure out something better to implement.

As @noirscape wrote, going the Zot/Zap route and locking down federation would hurt smaller instances or new ones. That solves one big problem and creates another big problem.

@nik @anna wait what???????? Then how come I can't see the public posts of people who have blocked me? Why wouldnt it be the same for people I've blocked?

@SunSaint @nik to explain what is going on technically as simply as possible, when you block/defederate from the admin panel, your local server drops all copies of all posts from that instance and drops all follow requests. the problem is that for a variety of good technical reasons mostly involving caching, when content is requested from an instance there is no identification saying who is doing the requesting.

this is why like, all our posts are on, say, free speech extremist (pleroma), or baraag (mastodon), despite them both being extremely blocked, the block isnt reciprocal so they still see anything public pretty much

@anna @nik arrrrrggguhhhhhhh

@SunSaint @anna @nik

yea h ive recently been trying to isolate just the good happy fun brand on my main account now and trying to make sure i use my private as my vent journal now so ppl cant see that, altho i do that on followers only, im public so, still better to have em on a private.

@SunSaint @anna simply because single user blocks federate, but instance-wide blocks do not

@SunSaint @nik @anna you can though, just go to their profile directly for you that is https://witches.live/@SunSaint
now if the person who blocked you is on the same instance this only works if you are logged out/using a private window

@anna would it be helpful for defederation to also generate an nginx block rule? I’ve been thinking of doing something like that for the Shop.

@phildini like it kind of helps? but there's still other places for requests to leak

@anna sure, I mean, relays are now a potential attack vector right?

@phildini kind of but so are like, threads

@anna IMO, the nature of the discussion should be this: How do we get people we *do* want to see on the Fediverse, specifically educators, journalists, public servants, et cetera?

@jon i think we're doing a good job of that by building something that such people would want to come to, and solving the problem of missing some key tools to prevent nazis from stalking and harassing people is an important part of that

how can the fediverse tell people its better than twitter if there are still reply nazis stalking you when you post on the federation?

@anna @jon I'm just getting back into fediverse stuff, so I'm kind-of walking into this conversation blind (but it's taking up the top of my home feed and interesting). It sounds like the problem is you can block extremists from showing up in your feeds, but can't stop them from seeing those feeds or posting in such a way that other people who view those feeds see both your posts and their responses to you?

@maloki i did see your reversal and thank you, but i've been seeing A Lot Of Shit

also eugen announced it on his .social which i get the feeling a lot of people who are going on about it kind of sort of have blocked, and i didn't even see it myself until it was brought to my attention, hence getting the word out here lol

i boosted it earlier, but it's here: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/102180970932210065

@maloki i boosted it before posting this