Toots for proprietor@wandering.shop account

Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-24 at 04:50

@shadowsminder Hi friend!

I just dealt with the two reports you submitted tonight & removed their content from our TLs.

Because they are from accounts hosted on other servers, there's very little real effect we have, we just get their posts out of our sight.

When you find problematic content from other servers, please remember to forward the report to the original host. Most nodes we federate with are effectively moderated, and users are anonymized when reporting. Thanks!

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-21 at 01:03

• Our one exception is pretty clear in our rules - explicitly sexual or graphically violent content shall be behind a CW.

The cost of not providing a warning on THAT is... we'll apply one when it's brought to our attention. At worst, remove a post. Thank you.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-21 at 01:00

Hey FediFriends - Yes, it's a day.

A short reminder.

We recommend and encourage the use of content warnings, and alt text, for the benefit of your audience. Please apply empathy in considering what the average reader of your posts might not want to see unprepared, OR what they might need additional textual explanation to understand.

This is NOT, however, a capital-R-RULE, respecting either function. We do not sanction folks for not using CW/AltTxt, whatever their reasons.*

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-21 at 00:26

We rarely announce individual decisions, but because many people have seen and been confused by these accounts appearing and claiming to be notable accounts, we wanted to share this and make you aware of the occurrence.

This may occur again; please be aware, and take the time to look carefully should you see an apparent Fediverse celebrity or influencer posting what seems to be odd content for their usual persona.

Thanks.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-21 at 00:22

Hello everyone. There is a new instance that has appeared in our networks which has a name similar to Mastodon's own flagship instance, and has created a number of accounts which duplicate the name, imagery, and some content of Fediverse accounts with large followings.

It is not apparent what the intention of this instance really is but upon review, what it is accomplishing is impersonation and misinformation.

We are adding this to our defederate/suspend list.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-20 at 18:32

We expect that creatives living off their work should have a reasonable space to share their work on our local and public timelines.

We also expect that users who do not wish to see this can use the tools Mastodon offers to mute accounts they do not wish to see in their daily browsing.

We will act on "spam" if it reaches a point of both disrupting someone else's entitlement to enjoy their timelines, AND does so in a way that circumvents their ability to eliminate it themselves.

Thanks!

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-20 at 18:27

I think things hit the "spam" threshold if the activity reaches a point of interfering with someone else's fair use of the space.

• you don't get a personal level of amplification just for you out at a book fair, right? Don't overwhelm the ambient chatter
• you don't leave your table to chase people across the green, do you? Advertising to others by name, DM, reply, etc is aggressive and disruptive.
• hashtags are topical and define communities themselves sometimes - don't barge in.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-20 at 18:18

We always return to the "town square" analogy in trying to describe and structure virtual communities. Consider that our public timelines here are like a community festival, which has welcomed you to set up a table for a virtual book signing, if you like.

You can put up a poster, announce where your table is for signings, and take your turn at the open mic for reading.

Others have the option to walk on past and go about their business, or choose a different interaction, and that's all OK too

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-20 at 18:14

Straightforward, self-promotional posts shared publicly on the local (and hence others' Federated) timelines are not something we see as actionable in a content moderation sense. In order for us to act on a report of "spam", additional attributes have to be apparent in the content. Such as:

• very high posting frequency that dominates the local timeline
• naming other users in promo posts
• using unrelated or broadly used hashtags that have different common usage
• replying with promo info

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-20 at 18:07

We DO include the following in our Code of Conduct as to what is discouraged behaviour in the community:

"Gratuitous or excessive advertising or spam. It's fine to promote your work, but it shouldn't be the bulk of what you share"

We recognize that's a bit squishy. That's OK. The CoC is an elaboration upon The Rules, and speaks to the vibe we wish to have on the local timeline. There is judgement to be applied.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-20 at 18:03

"SPAM" is a term that originated in the Iron Age of social media back on Usenet. Apocrypha has it the term came out of either a Monty Python reference (the Spam skit where all other dialogue was overwhelmed by the loud chanting of "Spam!Spam!Spam"), and/or, it was an analogy to the effect of chucking a hunk of the canned meat product through a fan and splattering it everywhere.

In our interpretation, applied to moderation decisions in this space, "spam" is a bit more than just "promotion".

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-20 at 17:58

Hello, Wandering.shop patrons ... it's been a minute since one of my PSA blathers, and things in the world are ... well, no LESS volatile than they have been for about 7 years now. 😜

I wanted to share our thoughts on the concept of "spam" in terms of some reports we get. Wandering.Shop's community is highly skewed towards writers, of course, and creatives in general, including many who earn a living by their creations. As such, we permit and encourage a moderate degree of promotion.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-20 at 17:53

Hello, Shop!

Pardon my latest lapse during this freezing cold, but busy spell. I've put up the renewed invite code for the next week in our standing, pinned Announcement (I don't make a "new" announcement every time, so it might not pop up or notify you, depending on client).

As always - share around, invite your friends, fam ... high-school frenemies ... rescues from Those Other Places ... please just don't re-post in public.

Stay warm out there today!

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-10 at 23:07

We will continue to keep particular attention on content, interactions, and reports regarding Meta's presence in the AP-fediverse and remain committed to active and evolving processes in how Wandering.Shop is managed and moderated.

Thanks everyone. We very much appreciate having one of the best and most engaged communities in the Fedi.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-10 at 23:04

As a much smaller instance, having a proportionately still smaller number of connections to threads users, we do not yet need to take the step of actively terminating existing users' connections in order to maintain manageability of our moderation workload here. Our move to limit means we will never encounter Threads' user content except where one of you here has actively sought a connection.

As with our Invite system, this allows every one of us agency and participation in our interactions.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-10 at 22:57

You will note that Hachyderm has moved from already having Limited Meta's instances to a complete defederation. Please review their numbers in their blog post, though, and their commentary on the effort of moderation required. They're more than an order of magnitude larger than Wandering.Shop.

Both our instances are on the same wavelength, in that moderation and federation decisions are based on the balance of minimizing harm while maintaining openness and access for as many users as possible

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-10 at 22:53

The team at Hachyderm is a superb resource not just for their own server users but for mod/admin teams all over the place.

I very much appreciate the work that's put in to analyze and define the thinking behind moderator operation - many of us don't have the time or comms skills to articulate things this well but are on board with this line of reasoning.

https://community.hachyderm.io/blog/2025/01/09/defederation-from-threads/

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-10 at 21:46

We will extend this policy to all Fediverse instances operated by Meta now and into the foreseeable future. While Limit allows individuals to consciously seek to follow accounts from these servers, we will not accept their content on our federated timelines unless our users explicitly boost it there.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-10 at 21:31

We are going to Limit Threads today. This is a step less severe than some other instances, which are defederating from them entirely. We do this because the Shop's followers, by and large, do not interact with Threads, but we do have a handful of our accounts followed from there, and a few users here follow personal contacts who remain on Threads. These connections are not presenting a problem and we wish to avoid breaking any existing relationships.

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Written by Managing Barista and Janitor on 2025-01-10 at 21:31

As you may be aware, Meta (parent co. of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp) recently announced moderation revisions that permit much more hateful content from their users than historically has been allowed. Activity from their Threads nodes is also slowly increasing and it is not unreasonable to expect a jump in this in the coming weeks as the political landscape in the US is set for more disruption.

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=> This profile with reblog | Go to proprietor@wandering.shop account