social.polotek.net is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
This is a single-user instance run by me. I'm the only one here. All complaints about me will be sent to the instance administrator. Who is me.

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I wish I could give more people some perspective into how things change on here when you are an instance administrator.

I just received a report against a user who isn't even a member of my instance. Remember, this is a single user instance. I am the only user.

This is a person of color who has been vocal in the current drama surrounding anti-Black racism on mastodon. The report comes from a very large and very prominent instance focused on LGBTQ+ communities.

The thing to understand is that this is politics. This Black user is not a member of that instance. They could block this user and go mind their business. But that's not what they want to do. This instance instead chooses to follow this person around the distributed fediverse and actively influence other instances against them. That is a choice.

Somehow, the thing that bothers me the most is how sloppy this is. If a real person had spent 2 seconds looking at who I am, they would see that I'm Black af, and non of that shit is likely to fly here. But they are sending these reports out indiscriminately. They can't even be bothered to be intentional about it. To me, that is the biggest indicator that this is bad faith rather than just them being misguided.

I can't imagine what it's like to be an instance administrator who is not prepared to navigate these cultural issues. Especially when you've actually agreed to be responsible for other people's experience on here. That's not a small thing. And a big part of the current discourse is that the mastodon ecosystem hasn't given instance admins and moderators enough tools and support.

I'm also still learning how mastodon works for admins. And I feel like I get surprised every time. Like this report doesn't come from a particular user. It's submitted from the instance as a whole? Does that mean it's from a person with admin or moderator privileges on that instance?

Or maybe it is an individual user. But it just looks this way in my UI because they've chosen to be anonymous? I don't know. It's not clear to me, and I would actually have to do work to find out.

@polotek when it's forwarded from a remote instance it looks like that. When you report a toot it goes to the administrator of your instance and then there's an option to forward the report to other instances offered to the user. It could be a person with privileges on that server but more than likely it was not.

Marco Rogers

@neckspike how do they know what instances to forward to? Does the person reporting have to search? Is some list of options provided to them?

@polotek
It's usually the instance of the user you're reporting and possibly other instances mentioned in the message? Like of I were to report someone replying to you it goes first to my instance and then I can also send the report to that user's instance and your own.

@neckspike I can understand how a group of developers might come to that conclusion given the technical context. But it makes absolutely no sense in the context of a social media thread. * sigh *

@polotek @neckspike the report is also forwarded to the instances of users that have participated in the conversation. I've seen that multiple times and moderators are often puzzled on why they receive a report from an instance against a user on a third instance. It is not clear on the report why we are receiving it.

@alxsim @polotek @neckspike this is one of the strangest feature choices made in recent Mastodon memory.

The THEORY is that you want to know about (potential) abuse involving one of your users (victim, affiliate, etc). But it doesn't always force the report to include the post in question, and sometimes even that post context isn't enough to understand why the report is coming to you, so it's... messy.

I assume much feedback has been filed and ignored about this (I've given up)

I think I may be repeating what other people said, but it's automatic. There's a checkbox that lets you choose whether to forward the report, but it doesn't give any control over where the report is sent. It goes to the originating instance, plus the instances of anybody who was tagged on any post included in the report.

@polotek @neckspike

@EverydayMoggie @neckspike I see. This is helpful. It wasn't clear to me what was actually presented to the reporting user. FWIW, I think this is an even worse decision.

There have been cases in which my instance took moderation action on something that was reported to us because one of our users happened to be tagged, so it's not completely useless.

@polotek @neckspike

@EverydayMoggie @neckspike I didn't say it was useless. There is a lot of space between this is a great feature and this feature shouldn't exist. The devil is in the details. I don't know how a reporting user is expected to know what happens when they click a checkbox to "report to other instances". I don't think a feature that is presented in that way can be used responsibly. Even if what comes out the other side is useful sometimes.

There really isn't a way for a regular user to know, you're right. I know only because I've seen the mod tools from the other side, and had people there to explain things.

Completely useless was a figure of speech, sorry if it came across too literally.

@polotek @neckspike

@EverydayMoggie @neckspike not at all. This was a very helpful exchange. Thanks.

Yes, for sure. The moderation tools overall need improvement.

@neckspike @polotek

@EverydayMoggie @neckspike @polotek from the website at least (Mastodon v4.2.10), the user sending the report should be presented with the options of which involved servers to send the report to, so it shouldn't happen blindly, however...

That's not to say the person sending the report is paying close attention or necessarily understanding what is going to happen based on their choices...

And of course other versions, clients, or server software may do something different.

Interesting. I don't ordinarily use the web client and my reporting interface lacks those options. It just has the forward/don't forward checkbox. I think some clients are even more minimalistic than that.

Oh, and your report didn't get sent, if you wondered.

@brook @neckspike @polotek

@EverydayMoggie @brook @neckspike @polotek #Pachli dev. here, and at the moment Pachli just presents a checkbox which forwards to all mentioned servers.

This is because the API is documented (docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/) as only forwarding to the original server, with no indication that other servers will receive the report.

I'll fix that.

docs.joinmastodon.orgreports API methods - Mastodon documentationReport problematic users to your moderators.

Thank you for pointing that out. It makes more sense now why a lot of clients seem to lack this feature.

@nikclayton @brook @neckspike @polotek