Post #4076817

2026-07-24 22:06 UTC

@benpate@mastodon.social Steps to a Safer Fediverse has my thoughts as of early 2024 on how to make progress ... and it's depressing how little has changed since then. I agree with @laurenshof@indieweb.social that "better safety tooling" is a bit of a red herring; the first section of this document is "It's about people, not just the software and protocol". That said improving the tools is useful, and the next section is "It's about the software too" with some specific ideas. In another thread @rakoo@blah.rako.space metioned that consent is a key aspect of a more safety-oriented fediverse. Three specific ways this plays out: allow-list or allow-list-plus federation. This is an area where there's been noticeable progress since 2024, with Island Networks, GoToSocial and Bonfire providing first-class support for allow-list federation, etc. But there's atill a lot more that needs to be done, because nobody's really tacked the question of how new instances can get discovered and federated with in a mostly allow-list network. There's certainly some intriguing thinking on this front, and The free fediverses should focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety has a roundup of some of the ideas, but nobody's put them into practice yet as far as I know. interaction controls. GoToSocial, Bonfire, etc support these; Mastodon doesn't, and while the quote-post implementation is on a path to supporting them they haven't prioritized this. Mastodon and Mastodon-based forks make up so much of today's fedii that without them supporting it, they're only useful for island networks. the lack of a general consent mechanism for new funcationality that requires consent ... this was the problem that Bridgy Fed ran into, and it affects anybody trying to do stuff that's not easily reducible to the existing consent flags. There's a bit of discussion here but as far as I know nobody's written it up in general. @DePemig@social.coop

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@jdp23@neuromatch.social 2026-07-24 22:20

As for what would help the fediverse serve more people ... the cultural issues are a really big barrier. White people with influence need to put a lot more time and energy into dealing with the endemic racism here. Guys need to put a lot more time and energy into dealing with the sexism, misogyny, and reply-guy-ism. People from the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe need to put more energy into grappling with their colonialist attitudes and assumptions. Non-Jews need to put more effort into dealing with antisemitism, non-Muslims need to put more effort into dealing with Islamaphobia. etc etc etc This has technical implications as well Erin Kissane's What people in the global majority need from networks -- a summary of the excellent Engine Room report Exploring a transition to alternative social media platforms for social justice organizations in the Majority World -- has some great perspectives here. On the cultural side, @julian ran a very good session at FediForum last year on How Can We Make the Fediverse a Safe Space for BIPOC… Again?, not sure whether there's been follow up on that. 5 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people focuses on anti-Blackness but the ideas there can be adapted to other dimensions as well. @benpate@mastodon.social @laurenshof@indieweb.social @DePemig@social.coop

Open ##4076816