As July ends, Sakurajima has grown considerably ever since Elon made a lot of damaging moves on Twitter, now known as 𝕏. Believe it or not, as of today, our Mastodon server has 421 monthly active users, and our Firefish (formerly Calckey) server has 88. This brings the total to 509 monthly active users across both servers, which is good.
Of course, a fraction of this is just a bunch of blank accounts that never got used after a week that we disable and intend to purge if they remain unclaimed. A small percentage of it is SPAM and accounts that broke the rules upon joining that we suspended.
Going forward, I expect the monthly active user total to drop slightly. Signups will require approvals once the Monthly Active User account total reaches 600. This is to manage the growth and size of the server. Anyone on Sakurajima may already use invite links to invite their friends. I can give invites out to creators who create content on Japanese culture or media to bypass the approval process.
The Firefish Controversy
Although it will be long, I won’t go into too much detail about this. Still, the lead developer of Firefish (Kainoa) apparently boosted a post from Eris of Disqordia, a known anti-black harasser. We know at Sakurajima, we have zero tolerance towards hate speech and harassment.
Since I am Asian American, I have experienced racism in my life. Asians, especially during the pandemic, experienced a rise in hate speech and violence. As someone marginalized, I do not associate with bigots and extremists, which is why the block list is long. It protects our servers from known bad servers perpetuating hate speech, harassment, and extremist ideologies.
While there are bad actors that complain and harass admins over their block list, they don’t have a right to complain. We have the right to disallow servers who harm the safety of our community. Like with that XKCD comic on “Free Speech,” the First Amendment only protects your right to free speech from the government, not private entities. Thus, we can kick users off our server if they break the rules (e.g., hate speech, harassment, etc.) and suspend or limit servers whose admins and moderators interact with bigots and extremists or allow for lax or no moderation.
After implementing all the blocks due to the coordinated harassment attack against our server and Urusai Social in March, I started implementing most of the blocks from Mastodon Art and Artisan Chat, including the Fedinuke list. There are some blocks that we decide not to enforce or with a limit/silence instead if I disagree with their reasoning for blocking. For the most part, blocking most of the “alt-fedi” and “dni” servers so far has kept everyone safe.
We never had a problem with members getting harassed or hate speech showing up. The block list is long, not because we are a bunch of “antis,” but because I don’t want a repeat of what happened in March. Yes, there was a harassment campaign by the simular kind of bad actors from Disqordia that attacked our instance and eventually our friends at Urusai Social in March. I am still somewhat traumatized by that incident, as it gave me bad memories.
Since that incident, I formed a moderation team to help me and countermeasures such as banning burner emails and filling in any gaps on our block list. I would like to thank the admins of Mastodon Art and Artisan Chat, that made their block lists available as a reference, along with Seirdy, who compiled the Fedinuke list. They are a big help.
From that, Sakurajima built a reputation as a safe, non-toxic, fun, and vibrant place for Japanese media fans and creators (bloggers, artists, podcasters, video curators, etc) to talk about Japanese media and share creations. Also, it’s run by an Asian American, giving more minority representation in the Fediverse. After all, we want to create a place better than Twitter, now known as X. Moreover, only a few Fediverse servers are Japanese media-orientated and well-moderated.
This is why I was very disappointed when I heard these revelations about the Firefish developer associating themselves with abusive people. When you hang out with abusive people and bigots, don’t be surprised if most people don’t want to associate with you anymore. Employers also look down on this kind of behavior, and they may not choose to hire you if they find out about it.
With that, I won’t go into further detail about this controversy. You can read Mastodon Art’s Admin, Weirder’s Admin, and Guinan’s (Tenforward Admin) posts/toots about the matter.
- https://tenforward.social/@guinan/110792321271834543
- https://weirder.earth/@WeirderAdmin/110803098985969513
- https://dotart.blog/dotart-blog/suspending-firefish-social
- https://blahaj.zone/notes/9hvtc7bc1o
Since that time, AtomicPoet announced that Firefish Social will permanently silence Disqordia. However, this is not really an acceptable outcome as we hoped. While we won’t remove our server from the Firefish server list for now unless there is another controversy we find out after this.
As a result, we are permanently limiting Firefish Social and Voring Me from Sakurajima. The only condition the limit on Firefish Social will ever get lifted is if the Firefish project gets new leadership that will uphold the values of inclusivity, disallowance of hate speech/harassment, and a robust code of conduct for the project.
With this decision, your connections with users from that server will remain intact. Still, they won’t show up on the public timelines. I didn’t go for a suspension as this is not an issue that would violate the Mastodon Covenant. In addition, we have Authorized Fetch enabled on the Firefish server, which prevents suspended servers from seeing our posts. It will be enabled on the Mastodon server soon.
As for the future of Sakurajima Social, I decided to keep it as is. At the end of the day, Sakurajima Social is our community. We are not Firefish Social, and we moderate our community that best suits the safety of our community. Those worried about Sakurajima Social’s fate can rest easy. We are not going anywhere. However, if you have ethical concerns about using the software, you can migrate your account to our Mastodon server at sakurajima.moe.
Suppose the Firefish project becomes tarnished beyond repair or gets discontinued. In that case, we will have two options, move to an available and well-maintained fork of Firefish or migrate to Misskey, if possible, as I implemented Argon2 hashing in a fork. This will ensure the continuance of our alternate server.
Suspension of Pawoo.net
Tomorrow from our announcement last week, we will suspend Pawoo, upgrading our block from a limit. Pawoo was limited with media rejected in the past due to reports of CSAM and lolicon/shouta. While Pawoo has had numerous issues regarding moderation in the past, this issue worsened after the Mask Network bought them over. Ever since we are hearing instances where actual CSAM is being posted. This happened in April and recently when Misskey IO (the official Misskey server) suspended Pawoo temporarily.
With that, this is the final straw. Pawoo hasn’t been in a good place for a while. Looking at the federation stats of Pawoo, only about 25 people are being followed over there, and 2 users are following our users from Pawoo. This is compared to our users following 479 users at Misskey IO and 54 of Misskey IO’s users following our users. We know that this won’t impact our users that much. At the end of the day, safety is our number one priority.
We will be doing the suspension Saturday morning. Please back up your follower list if you are following users there and see if they are available elsewhere.
Moderators Wanted
Now that Sakurajima Social has grown, we are looking for moderators to respond to reports. If you are on the Fediverse for at least a month and have no strikes against you, you can ask to become one. Just send a DM to @chikorita157@sakurajima.moe providing a reason why. If I can trust you, I will invite you to our Discord channel and grant you moderation powers. Also, only users online at Sakurajima Social regularly and over 18 should apply.
In closing remarks, given the amount of growth and the Fedidrama, it has been a stressful month. I hope things will be smooth sailing as more people switch from X to Mastodon or whatever Fediverse software of choice.
The post Sakurajima Updates – August 2023 appeared first on Sakurajima.
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