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.
Following several incidents of racism and classism by the Hachyderm admin over the past few months that paint a picture of the white classist privelige so often found in tech communities, the most recent of which is a change of their rules to ban fundraising (which impacts marginalised people the most), our mod team has conferred and we will be silencing Hachyderm and will likely move to defederation if the instance remains hostile to queer, disabled, and BIPOC folk, as per .art's policy of fostering a safe environment for our marginalised users and silencing/defederating instances that are hostile to marginalised people.
Fundraising, donations, and begposts help provide a buffer against the ravages of capitalism and are essential for the survival of the people that capitalism ostracises, and are usually embraced within the fediverse and its goals of decentralization. .art will always allow these kinds of posts; please keep sharing your donation links and asking for financial help if you need it.
As always, silences and defederations need not be permanent and we continuously evaluate our decisions and reverse them when appropriate.
(Update, we're aware that Hachyderm are revisiting the 'no fundraising' rule but we still feel that this is overall part of a clear pattern of behaviour and our above stance still holds.)
(Further update; we've seen Nova's posts about stepping down as admin and handing over the instance to The Nivenly Foundation (that Nova is also a part of). We'll discuss this but likely means we'll keep the instance silenced while we see how that change unfolds and how the instance is managed/moderated thereafter.)
(Edit April 29th: For the sake of transparency, the links to receipts in the first paragraph were added after Nova's exit posts, and following a conversation that happened in the Hachyderm Discord channel where Nova expressed the feeling that she was being dogpiled because one small instance linked to this dot-art post as their reason for silencing Hachyderm, specifically because this post at the time contained no receipts. For further context, the background events that led to the decision to silence (not defederate) Hachyderm, that the receipts above demonstrate, were all at the time brought to Nova's attention as being problematic and large discussions were had in comment threads of Nova's original posts where people were explaining to her, for example, why comparing things to slavery and criticizing the people pointing out that users on Hachyderm were abusing the fediblock tag (which was created for the safety of PoC on the fediverse) is bad. So, here are the receipts of the racist/classist things that Nova was absolutely already aware of as being racist/classist.)
.art has a ban on AI 'art' because the big models people use to generate AI 'art' – e.g. MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, etc. – trained on other artists' work without their consent. There are well known ethical and moral implications around the use of AI 'art', especially when it's presented without being clear about how it was made, and even more especially when it's sold – as this is directly profiting from other artists' skill and hard labour with nothing going back to those original artists. Even when you don't specify an artist style in the generator prompt, the resulting image is produced from a tool which learned from studying other artists' work. If you use one of these tools to create imagery and then sell that imagery, you are a part of the problem, you are culpable, and you are profiting off the backs of other artists. If you are an artist yourself who creates anything by hand, you should know how demoralising it is to have your work stolen/infringed upon with no credit or payment going back to you; this is no different.
Recently we've been getting increasing reports of AI 'art' being posted around the fediverse, and almost all of these link to either Pixels or FineArtAmerica galleries. These other instances may not have the same rules as we do, and AI imagery might not be against the rules of those instances (or might make allowances for it to be posted as long as it's tagged as AI), but as the majority of our users specifically join .art because of our stance on AI 'art', we tend to suspend off-instance accounts that we see posting AI images because of the above mentioned implications on artists.
Both Pixels and FineArtAmerica are print on demand galleries, and they both promote and encourage the sale of AI art.
This doesn't sit right with us given that it's profiting off the backs of other artists. However, since we have also have artists here who make genuine hand-made art and sell it on those sites, we can't ban links to those galleries without also impacting genuine artists.
Do be aware, though, that if you use AI 'art' generators to create images and then sell those images, you do so knowing that you are using a system that abuses artists and we would hope that you reconsider.
If you have an account on .art and you have a Pixels and/or FineArtAmerica gallery that includes AI imagery that you're selling, we kindly ask that you move to another instance in respect of our stance as outlined above.
1) We consider 'generative art' a separate entity to 'AI art', and generative art is totally fine and allowed on .art and not subject to this discussion;
2) This only applies to users on mastodon.art . If you're not on mastodon.art, this is irrelevant to you and won't affect you at all; refer to your own instance's rules.)
The only reason we haven't outright prohibited AI images in our rules until now was that barely anyone was posting it, and when they did, they'd usually get booed off stage – the community stance on AI images is very strong and obvious here, and that was enough to discourage people from posting it, or to educate themselves on why it's problematic.
I fucked up earlier today and shared misinformation.
The admin of ua-fediland.de has a red and black flag in his handle. It's the flag of the UIA / Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which has nazi connections. After posting this update with a recommendation to block the instance, someone from another Ukrainian instance made a post that the flag, and the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) 'might have had a troubled history but are fine now'. I updated the thread linking to that person's post – I shouldn't have done that without checking that info.
I was then told that that second instance harboured fascists and that the OUN and that red and black flag had definite and strong ties to nazism and the holocaust. I deleted the post that linked to that misinformation, and re-did the now-orphaned reply to that post that explained the definite connection with the OUN and Nazism and pogroms so that it was re-connected to the thread.
The post with the misinformation may still be federating in some places due to being cached.
It's clear to me that this is an area I shouldn't be handling without extensive input and I should have waited for the people I usually run these things by to be online and give their input before rushing forward with actions, and will do so in future.
I made a rushed decision and took bold claims at face-value. I'm sorry.
For clarification, .art suspended ua-fediland.de as soon as we saw that bot with the nazi header image, and they remained suspended throughout. The suspension was never lifted, they were suspended before I contacted the instance admin, and stayed suspended after the email response.
We've silenced mstdn.party after some moderation concerns, and it becoming apparent that they federate with some very toxic instances and their users are already getting harassed by people on those instances.
If you have friends on mstdn.party, especially if they belong to marginalised groups, encourage them to move to an instance that prioritises their online safety, and/or to reach out to the admin for assurance that their safety is a priority and that instances known for harassment will be blocked.
What this means for .art users:
Accounts on mstdn.party that you already follow, and who follow you, will be unaffected. Nothing will change, you'll keep seeing their content as usual.
If a user from mstdn.party follows you, you'll get a follow request that you'll need to approve.
As with all of our instance-wide actions, the onus is not on us to not block problematic/toxic instances – it's on those instances to do better. We revisit all of our instance-wide silences and suspends regularly to re-evaluate; if the situation improves, we undo domain blocks, and if the situation on an instance we've silenced deteriorates such that it risks the safety of our .art users (i.e. toxic users on the silenced instance aren't being moderated), we move from a silence to a full domain block.
If you have questions, please @ Curator.
This announcement is only relevant to users on mastodon.art.
Since I don't think there's currently a way to manage privacy options on a per-post level, I've changed the site configuration to allow users to have more than one blog per username.
As well as allowing you to now have private, unlisted, and public blogs, it'll also let you categorise your blogs per content type if you wanted – e.g. one blog for writing, one for worldbuilding, a separate blog for each of your ongoing stories/novels to keep them organised and to let people only follow the stories they want to follow, etc. :D
