blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
Some reasons why blocklists *should* come with receipts:
1. So that blocks can be verified (you've probably already heard this one)
2. Resultingly, so that more people can actually *use* the blocklist without concerns about legitimacy
3. So that people can keep track of whether the issue has been resolved later
4. So that people can understand what the problematic behaviour was, and recognize it when it moves to another instance
5. So that people can see who were involved, in case those *perpetrators* move to another instance (a couple of serial account creators come to mind here)
Even if you don't personally care about verifying blocks, there are still many other reasons to keep careful track of blocking reasons.
For instance, I've seen entirely too many cases of people warning against Eris, the listener not seeing the problem and ignoring the warning, and then only finally understanding once being shown some of their posts. That only works if you keep receipts.
(That doesn't mean that there aren't people who will ignore the problem regardless of receipts; but those are not the people who will ever take it seriously anyway, they're not the target demographic here.)
blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@joepie91 This has been discussed a *lot* a lot with the trusted sources who were contributing to Oliphant's blocklists, and now Ro's blocklists, and always the discussions came to the consensus that there are two main reasons receipts/reasons weren't included - harassment, and legal threats. That's why .art and many others use phrases like 'DNI' and 'alt-fedi' - to avoid being threatened with lawsuits, which happens a *lot*. Providing receipts has also -
blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@joepie91 - led to instances getting worse harassment than the thing they were providing receipts for in the first place.
This is what the '% of trusted sources' mechanism was trying to address; all source instances keep internal receipts, then the blocklists go '80% of the trusted sources have this instance blocked' so anyone using the blocklist knows the blocked instances are considered widely problematic. This still needs some degree of trust (don't use -
blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@joepie91 - the blocklist if you don't trust the source instances) and still needs *and expects* anyone importing those blocklists to do their due diligence. Nobody should be importing a blocklist blindly anyway - that's obviously bad.
What The Bad Space is meant to do is provide a disconnected (i.e., not meant to be used as a blocklist) repository of receipts. Still a WIP obviously, a lot needs filling in, but I think that's one of the goals.
re: blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@welshpixie Right, this is the first I hear of those particular concerns, and I can see how those would be a problem.
For The Bad Space specifically (and I want to emphasize that my original post is about receipt-less blocklists *in general*, not just that particular site), if the goal is to be a receipts repository rather than a blocklist, then it is not entirely clear to me why it's showing overwhelmingly entries that have *no* receipts?
It seems to me like the no-receipts entries are much better as an internal to-do list, with the site only displaying the entries for which receipts are available - otherwise it *practically* becomes a blocklist rather than a receipts index, despite the intentions. The information kind of drowns in information-less pages, so to say. (cc @Are0h, as this is direct feedback)
I think the "% of trusted sources" is a pretty good first approximation, but it still doesn't 'persist' beyond the set of people who trust the list, if you get what I mean - there is no information to be reused by 'outsiders' to establish their own lists after review.
I'm not sure there is much I can do about the risk of harassment for listing receipts, but at least for the legal aspect, I'd be happy to host receipts if that helps - I'm generally unimpressed by dubious legal threats, and I can afford to be a pincushion for those.
re: blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@joepie91 @Are0h Well @Seirdy has a huge repo of receipts at https://seirdy.one/posts/2023/05/02/fediverse-blocklists/ - what I meant more was when individual instances, especially smaller ones, add receipts and/or reasons to their blocklists they get targeted; it's bad for some of the source instances to list them, and bad for the importing instances to list them too.
Oh, and also: listing CSAM as a block reason turns a blocklist into a repo for finding places to get a hold of CSAM.
re: blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@joepie91 Also, Oli's blocklist info pages (like https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist) point to The Bad Space and to Seirdy's receipts repo as a place to find receipts externally of the blocklists.
re: blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@welshpixie (Speaking of which, what happened with Oli?)
re: blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@joepie91 Haaah, that's a loaded question and I will DM you ;p
re: blocklists, receipts, fedi admin meta
@welshpixie Right, I misunderstood the problem then I think. It makes sense to me that individual (smaller) instances don't publish their reasons or even their blocklists, that problem I'm indeed familiar with.
My concern is more about the 'collective' blocklists and everything around them; those that are specifically presented as "here is a list you can use to find problematic instances".
If the receipts are provided on a separate index, then that's sufficient for what I was describing in my original post; as long as the receipts are *somewhere* and they're reasonably easy to find. But that bar often doesn't seem to be met either, which can make it very difficult to figure out what exactly happened.
blocklists (important clarification)
To clarify, since I cannot edit my original post: with "blocklist" I'm *not* referring to the defederation lists of individual instances! These are often private for good reasons.
Rather, I'm talking about the organized/collective blocklists, the ones that are meant to be used by third parties as recommendations for what to block preventatively.