It's important for folks to know that reports are always investigated. The posts will be read, the user's post history considered, and their server's Local Feed potentially reviewed.
If bigoted/inappropriate posts are common and unmoderated on the public feed, the server will be blocked. In some cases, reading those posts and their replies will lead to other servers with similar behavior which then also get blocked.
So, even just one report can sometimes have a big impact.
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I've been reading posts from all different servers about users' hesitance to utilize the report function, and I'd like to make some things clear regarding how Kind.Social handles reports.
First and foremost, please use it. I understand it takes up spoons/energy, and it may not always be worth it to you, but please, report whenever possible.
Kind.Social will always prefer extra reports over users having to endure hateful or rule-breaking content.
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@Shards The Owner label that got applied to my profile during the latest update of the Mastodon server software just indicates that mine is the account set as the publicly visible Admin on the server's About page.
I can always make another account/person an Admin and then set that account as the one on the About page, making them the Owner.
So, to answer your question: it can be transferred entirely. Though, as you said, it's unlikely I'll be interested in leaving anytime soon.
If you experience an account repeatedly Following you, sometimes with days or weeks in between, they are likely trying to get you to Follow back to build their Follower count. I find this practice quite annoying and view it as a form of spamming. So, Kind.Social users, I encourage you to Report any account that does this to you.
Kind.Social welcomes and encourages independent creators, small businesses, and their promo posts.
While nobody's interested in banner ads for Amazon, an indie book store posting about some new arrivals or a gaming shop sharing upcoming tournament details is fine.
I ask that Public promo posts like that, from businesses or individuals, be kept to 5 or fewer per day. If posting more than that, those posts should be set to Unlisted. This prevents flooding our Local feed.
@ekimekim I did use the Admin Announcement once for server downtime. If it's relevant to everyone and time-sensitive, as opposed to general procedure questions or something, then an announcement begins to look like a good idea.
#KindSocialMod
Hey @Texan_Reverend, I'm working on a Mastodon bot and reading API docs, I see this thing called an "admin announcement". As far as I can tell when you have things to say about the server (eg. maintenance) you generally just make a normal post. Out of curiosity, do you consider this other kind of admin "broadcast" to be too heavy handed / unnessecary, or under what circumstances would you use it? #KindSocialMod
@niphette @Graham_LRR @Lachlan As a brief aside, much fearmongering has been made over admins/moderators having access to DMs, but that's true of every platform. Facebook & Twitter have both had legal issues from mods searching DMs for nudes or sensitive data. In some cases even trying to blackmail people.
At least Mastodon puts a warning right in the DM interface that tells you there's no encryption & that you should use something more secure for sensitive information.
#KindSocialMod
@niphette @Graham_LRR @Lachlan We take one additional step that most servers don't, though. Kind.Social has Authorized Fetch enabled. This means that for a server to be able to pull & potentially store posts/data, it has to be authorized to do so. If that server is blocked/defederated it will not be allowed to access that information.
Without that, while our users wouldn't see blocked users/servers, those blocked could still see posts here, & their servers could still pull data.
#KindSocialMod
@niphette @Graham_LRR @Lachlan Yes. The protocol connecting the whole network has access to the majority of the same post data. Only servers that have a connection to your home server will ever attempt to pull and store it, but yes there is access. No type of Mastodon post is encrypted, so it's possible for admins/mods to view them if something like harassment comes up. The overwhelming majority of folks have neither the time nor inclination to just rummage through them, though.
#KindSocialMod
@Graham_LRR @Lachlan The other data collection point to consider is the app that you use. The vast majority of Mastodon apps do not require additional permissions or data collection on your phone. This is a huge element of the data collection performed by others like Meta. The Threads, Instagram, & Facebook apps all collect phenomenal amounts of data which is entirely separate from your platform use, like: financial info, search history, health & fitness, browsing history, etc.
#KindSocialMod
@Graham_LRR @Lachlan
The only data the server collects is your activity with it. So, it obviously holds onto your logins, posts, boosts, favourites, follows, all that good stuff. You can see under people's posts that it tracks what app is used to login or post if it's not just a browser. As part of the process of maintaining your login tokens and such, it has an IP log. Plus, it tracks the language & time zone you use in order to serve things accurately.
https://kind.social/privacy-policy
@Nate_T The default Mastodon backend software does not support formatting or markdown. In order to easily keep up to date with security patches and new updates without downtime, I've opted to keep Kind.Social on the default software.
#KindSocialMod
Discussions of things which are technically illegal like file sharing are fine. Saying, "I looked up [search term] on Pirate Bay to find this rom file I think you'd like," is fine, too. Posting torrent links is not fine. I just don't want anything posted that could lead to me having to talk with policing entities or to me receiving a takedown/cease & desist notice.
I maintain the right to shut down discussions of illegal things that get into creepy/dangerous/bad territory.
#KindSocialMod
It's been pointed out that because of kind.social's smaller size, and thus not being federated with as many other servers as someplace like mastodon.social, the reach of our hashtag search is more limited. To begin addressing that, I've signed us up for a relay. This links us to hundreds of other servers without anyone here having to follow an account on them. If this leads to server instability, an unpleasant Federated timeline, or other negative consequences, I'll disconnect it.
#KindSocialMod
@Graham_LRR @beej If a server or user is suspended/blocked by your admin at the server level, you will never see anything from them, regardless of the avenue: posts, boosts, hashtag posts, replies, searching their profile, etc. Because it's a complete shutoff of all visibility, I employ it only when clearly necessary.
If you needed to check a blocked account for some reason, you could still open it via their home server's site in a web browser.
#KindSocialMod
Based on the results of our community poll:
https://kind.social/@Texan_Reverend/110569137164858765
It will be kind.social's policy to block any Meta, Facebook, Project92, Threads servers which connect to the Fediverse. This block can be revisited and/or removed at any time should circumstances call for it. Progress of Threads and Meta's behavior if and when it connects to Mastodon/the Fediverse will receive ongoing monitoring. Any changes to this block policy will be discussed with kind.social users beforehand.
#KindSocialMod
ElasticSearch has been added to kind.social. It allows our users to search posts related to themselves, such as:
Posts they published
Posts they boosted
Posts they favourited
Posts they were @ mentioned in
This does not afford users of other servers any new search capabilities, and it does not allow for general, non-hashtag searching of others' posts on kind.social or anywhere else.
Finding your past posts or that one post you favourited a month ago should be much easier now.
#KindSocialMod
@Johannab Yes, I'm only referring to blocking servers that are specifically using Blockbot, not everywhere with an account that happens to be named that. I check through both the Local timeline of the server and the bot's posts before making a decision. In the case that there is uncertainty, I'll default to leaving access in place and trying to reach out to the server admin for clarification.
#KindSocialMod
Moving forward, I will be viewing any server that utilizes Blockbot as hostile. It is a bot which posts the accounts of people who block any of the users on its server in order to assist with the targeting of harassment and reprisals.
I have only encountered it on three servers thus far, and they were also host to significant hate speech. They have been defederated, which shouldn't impact any of us, as they had only a few users and none of them were followed by anyone here.
#KindSocialMod
