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Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

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Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking a lot about moderating with online communications, decentralized and federated makes the solutions even more complex. It's not easy to filter when the people you want to filter have some tech knowledge. I've been dealing with that for years. One bad person in a country near this one has access to thousands of VPNs, and is simply unstoppable. I've been kicking around the idea of having multiple filt…

Actually, being a D* podmin for 7 years gave me a lot of time to reflect on fair moderation. Good moderation means letting people say things that you disagree with, essentially, as long as it is legal content. However, as the owner of a webserver, I do have the prerogative to lay down the rules of what can be served there, and so a part of good moderation is setting up a fair and rational TOS that is publicly posted,…

"ability to share blocklists among pods, with standardized TOS terms that several pods could subscribe to" - is one of the things I was thinking would be a nice thing to make available - however I think it should not be on by default for new server setups (assuming it's a server setup to run one of these pods things you mention, I am considering this from my little understanding of how rocket chat and matrix and riot and things like that can work, I think it's similar in nature)

So I think it's great to have these kind of blocklists available to pods / servers / whatever instances, but I would like to see it as opt in, and selectivley able to opt out of whichever ones for any reason by the server / instance operator, and I think it should be optional for the users to opt out of whichever blocklists as well.

I can imagine there are many server/instance operators that would not want their users to be able to override the blocklists and I think that is fine, but I would also want people to post publicly, or at least available to their registered members, which lists were being used - so some transparency in the censoring.

I also think there needs to me be more safe space options, as I mentioned above - perhaps "rooms" where only known users who had been around for X amount of months or whatever could enter -

because, I think no matter how many blocklists are made, no matter how many cidr's are blocked, the truly evil trolls will find ways to circumvent the blocks, and they will get in, and they will post things you and your users do not want to see - and blocking them will make it more of a game and more of a win when they do get in,

So things can be made a bit better I think, but unless you enter a password protected chat area with just you and one other person you know - not being open to anyone else in the world - there is going to be risk. To think that any kind of shared censor list is going to make a magical space safe is not considering the ability and desire of those who want to ruin it.

On some of my sites I have several million ip addys blocked, a few countries via geoip, and yet I have still spent more than a dozen weeks of life researching ips for proxies / VPN, blocking those subnets, writing to ISPs and companies, filing complaints, contacting police in multiple countries, putting together evidence, dealing with lawyers, censoring "bad words" - all kinds of things.

In the end, I have limited some of the bad stuff that was posted by people who did not read our rules, I have stopped some of the spam bots. But, there is a kid in Canada that still comes in and ruins the whole thing for dozens of our users pretty much any time he wants. Sometimes its several times a day, sometimes it's once a week. I have found no way to actually stop it 100%.

So I look forward to some of these newer apps getting stronger with multiple moderation abilities. I do think we need to be careful forcing any one, or multiple people's ideas of what should be blocked on other people - as I have had good moderators and bad ones, and some that blocked some people for the wrong reasons - and deplatforming the non-popular is not the reason for the mod powers imho - and even with lots of mods we can't stop it all.

you've apparently seen much of this ebb and flow over the 7 years and finally had enough - I can relate, it's not easy. One of things we decided was forced vacation breaks for the mods to keep sanity and perspective.

The more options the better imho, so long as they are optional.

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, being a D* podmin for 7 years gave me a lot of time to reflect on fair moderation. Good moderation means letting people say things that you disagree with, essentially, as long as it is legal content. However, as the owner of a webserver, I do have the prerogative to lay down the rules of what can be served there, and so a part of good moderation is setting up a fair and rational TOS that is publicly posted,…

"ability to share blocklists among pods, with standardized TOS terms that several pods could subscribe to" - is one of the things I was thinking would be a nice thing to make available - however I think it should not be on by default for new server setups (assuming it's a server setup to run one of these pods things you mention, I am considering this from my little understanding of how rocket chat and matrix and riot…

> So I think it's great to have these kind of blocklists available to pods / servers / whatever instances, but I would like to see it as opt in, and selectivley able to opt out of whichever ones for any reason by the server / instance operator, and I think it should be optional for the users to opt out of whichever blocklists as well.

Yes, I agree with this. The end effect of this will be self-partitioning of the network, however, I think.

There are actually some pods who do a great job of tracking down bad users, and they have a full staff, and I trust their podmins. I should be able to offload a lot of the work of gatekeeping a TOS standard, to them, if I desire.

I totally agree it should be optional too. I clearly stated that in my posts to the D* github issues. But they just banned me, said trying to take action to moderate CP off the network was censorship, and they were going to ban me for it, ironically. That's when I started suspecting the D* core devs may actually be protecting their CP network, or even possibly profitting from the CP on their network.

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is precisely the attitude which would probably get you banned, and I would ban you for such an attitude. You titled your post with CP and switched to neo-nazis who kept moving around when they were banned or blocked, the switched back to CP on the networks. You didn't write about CP posters that you blocked or banned only for them switch to other pods. Any reason for that omission? You see, insinuations can work…

If you think people should be banned from discussions because of their "attitudes" regarding moderation, you don't understand the difference between moderation and censorship, and you are advocating censorship. > I would ban you for such an attitude. Well, then you are a would-be censor, and it's a good thing you can't ban everyone everywhere, or else the whole world would fall silent and the only sound would be of y…

Dude I think I have offered the proper solution to your problem.

You have made your suggestions, they have been ignored and you have been banned from the relevant discussion groups.

It is quite obvious that the solution is a software issue, that what you want is a change to the software.

Then what you have to do is to seek out some like-minded pod administrators, have some discussions with them, gather whatever necessary resources required to fork the software and get going.

The software is open source, isn't it?

That is a whole lot better than accusing some software developers of aiding and abetting the distribution of CP, which can be said of the whole of the Internet itself.

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#34
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's discussing moderation that got you banned, but spamming github issues about it. A single issue should suffice. I can't verify it, but they refer to you spamming their discourse too. That said, I'd expect a discussion on this topic to be welcomed. The only reason they could reasonably be annoyed by you is if you keep rehashing points they've already discussed. In that case, the right approach would…

"Spamming" issue tickets? You mean leaving comments? "Spam" is an unsolicited advertisement for a product or service, I DEFINITELY did not do that, so I think you should be more precise with your language. They don't have a Terms of Service that says you are not allowed to make comments on issue tickets, so I did not violate any terms of service. IMHO "spamming" is the excuse that all censors use, when they censor yo…

"Spam" is any sort of unwanted communications. Whether or not it is advertising anything is irrelevant.

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Spamming" issue tickets? You mean leaving comments? "Spam" is an unsolicited advertisement for a product or service, I DEFINITELY did not do that, so I think you should be more precise with your language. They don't have a Terms of Service that says you are not allowed to make comments on issue tickets, so I did not violate any terms of service. IMHO "spamming" is the excuse that all censors use, when they censor yo…

"Spam" is any sort of unwanted communications. Whether or not it is advertising anything is irrelevant.

That's literally not true. Spam is unsolicited commercial advertisement. Complaints about CP are not spam, you ridiculous fool and would-be censor.

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think people should be banned from discussions because of their "attitudes" regarding moderation, you don't understand the difference between moderation and censorship, and you are advocating censorship. > I would ban you for such an attitude. Well, then you are a would-be censor, and it's a good thing you can't ban everyone everywhere, or else the whole world would fall silent and the only sound would be of y…

Dude I think I have offered the proper solution to your problem. You have made your suggestions, they have been ignored and you have been banned from the relevant discussion groups. It is quite obvious that the solution is a software issue, that what you want is a change to the software. Then what you have to do is to seek out some like-minded pod administrators, have some discussions with them, gather whatever neces…

I'm accusing them of aiding and abetting the distribution of CP because that's EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE DOING, that's why they have a network with tons of CP on it RIGHT NOW.

> hey you know what you should do with this CP platform? FORK IT!!!

LOL, no. I have no interest in working on the D* project, ever again, my focus has now turned towards working with law enforcement to hold them accountable for aiding and abetting distribution of CP.

If the Diaspora Foundation wants to insult and ban podmins who complain about CP, then it's only logical that the response of those podmins should be to start criminal CP complaints against them.

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