so i was wondering what happens when someone opens a troll or nazi instance - would it be possible to mute/block that entire instance?
@corzntin which administrator? could the admin of mastodon.social block the instance troll.social ? or can I do that as an individual user?
@mstrasser yes the administrator of the instance can do that. Users can't.
@mstrasser i think the admin of your instance would have to stop federating with this instance, but you couldn't do it yourself i think
@maitre_triangle ah ok, would be a neat feature though - time to look at the source code I guess :) (I'm still amazed that I can just do that^^)
@mstrasser yeah it would, and also just to be able to block users by ourselves! I would like to be able to read it and understand something :p
@maitre_triangle If you click on the three dots below a toot there is at least a button to block user XY, haven't tried it yet though
@mstrasser oh yes, i hadn't looked at it yet !
@mstrasser Yeah, instances can defederate from other instances. Like if we collectively decided to block an instance like nazisare.good or something we could make sure it doesn't appear in our federated timeline.
@mstrasser That's actually a hot topic right now around several of the larger instances. A couple of GNUSocial sites/instances are being defederated entirely from those Mastodon instances, causing waves among the users on both sides.
@Gallowglass oh wow, do you have a link or something where I can find more info about this?
@mstrasser I'll see if I can find something. I know there's a list of Banned instances on the Git that are apparently the primary bad actors in the whole ordeal.
@mstrasser Here's the list for one of the instances having these issues.
https://github.com/nolanlawson/blocked-instances/blob/master/README.md
@mstrasser Ah, this has some info. Halfway down the review turns a bit pessimistic with info about the defederation issues.
https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the-water-888c10e8abb1
@Gallowglass ah nice, thanks :) let's see how this develops...
@mstrasser - no problem. It hasn't spread across all instances yet, and some of the admins have stated outright they won't do it until any given instance becomes an undeniable issue, but.. yeah. Who knows where it will go.
@Gallowglass hopefully this works out well, but at least with federation one has the possibility to do this stuff :)
@mstrasser yes, the administrator can do that