Curator

After some discussion with the team and with our host, we've decided to give enabling Authorised Fetch a go.

The drawbacks as advertised in the documentation are that it can cause some extra server load, and that it might cause problems for instances on different versions of Mastodon. Our host suspects we won't see any increased server load though, and it might actually lower server load because of the lower federation demands.

What does it mean?

Without authorised fetch, any instances that we've suspended can still see all of .art's content on their instance, but their instance becomes invisible to .art. It's not ideal from a security perspective as it still enables people on blocked instances to see and interact with .art's posts, so it can still be a vector for harassment.

With authorised fetch enabled, that's no longer the case. Instances we've blocked will now no longer be able to see any of .art's content when they're logged into their instance, so it's a much 'safer' approach in terms of mitigating threats/harassment/abuse, etc. People will still be able to see any public .art content if they view through a logged out device, but won't be able to interact if they're not logged in.

If there's any confusion, please ping @Curator and I'll do my best to answer.

If we notice any negative effects from this, like if it causes big problems with instances we don't have blocked but are on different software, we'll undo it.