@Jesse Brown Seeing this list gives me the heebie-jeebies, but for actual written arguments, I'll refer you to this thread: https://mastodon.social/@smadin/109317702413472573

So anytime someone does something on the Internet that other people don't like (but isn't illegal, immoral or harming anyone) everyone should crap on it? Just let the guy run his hobby site. Sure, I get the points made by that thread and that's fair for people that understand. But there are a lot of new people that don't know how to find their friends or fans of people that want to follow the correct account. Any benefit of that site will go away once the big migration is over and things go back to normal conversations on Mastodon.

Let's simply help new people learn the proper methods of verification here on Mastodon. Nearly every server is run by volunteers as essentially a hobby. If people are going to demand a hobby website helping people (even if you don't agree with how) be shutdown, then what happens when people start demanding Mastodon instances get shut down because they disagree with how they are operated?

Mastodon instances get defederated when they are "bad". Do the same here, just don't use the site if you don't like it. Simple. No need to attack it.

@Jesse Brown Look, if you don't see how a public list of high-profile Fediverse accounts is potentially harmful, I can't force you to vote, but I'll take you at your words, let me do my thing and move along.

I don't see how it is harmful as all of those people are very public and want to continue to be public. I'm happy to read your thoughts on why it is harmful.

@Jesse Brown It's a very straightforward target list for anyone unscrupulous enough to use it and make a big splash because of the very nature of the list. It has the potential to put a big strain on the moderation team of any instance that is represented on this list, for a negligible gain. The friction to discovery on the Fediverse isn't a problem to fix, it's an inherent feature to keep its communities loosely connected but at a certain distance, and not a massive central public place like Twitter is and has shown its limits.

If you want to wish happy birthday to Neil Gaiman on the Fediverse, you'll find his account one way or another.

But why would you want to wish happy birthday to all the Fediverse accounts of people who were verified or with more than 50-100k followers on Twitter?

I see where you are coming from. I'm sorry I don't agree. I think for a communications platform it should be easier to find people you want to communicate with, not harder. Profiles that are marked as searchable should be easy to search, but they are not. Saying it is "by design" may be true, but it doesn't make it a good design. Anyone that wants to remain less discoverable has the ability to configure those settings on their account (usually they are set that way by default). But again, these people on that site are people that want followers and want their old followers to find them.

I don't understand where the strain on the moderation team would occur. If those people are going to be attacked it will happen eventually anyway.

I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this with me. Maybe @DataDrivenMD can look over this thread and consider what was said.

@Jesse Brown Maybe they would be harassed no matter what, but this website gives an incentive to harass them all at the same time.

And I don't believe we should entertain "people that want followers and want their old followers to find them". For all I care, they can stay on Twitter for this purpose. People who have been on the Fediverse before Musk's takeover have not had the use of a centralized list of high-profile accounts to make meaningful social media connections between each other.

Those people have also likely gotten past the learning curve and were able to do it when the instances were not so overloaded that the bigger ones started disabling the federated timeline (and in some cases, the local timeline) which greatly reduced the ability to organically discover people. There are a lot of issues at play here. As I said the usefulness of that site will likely reduce significantly once this big push dies down and people learn how Mastodon works.

@Jesse Brown I do agree with you that its relative usefulness will decrease with time, but not the potential harm.

Well I enjoyed the conversation and this should be a great example to new people here how Mastodon is all about discussing topics respectfully even between people that don't agree. I think in other social networks there would have been a lot of people jumping in to take a side and flame the other one. I hope things continue this way here. I've been around on and off for about 4 years and I'm always impressed with how calm things usually are.

service* not serve. I can’t type.

@Hal I'm glad you don't see how a centralized list of high-profile Fediverse accounts could hurt the domain as a whole, but this description of the service alone should ring alarm bells related to harassment.

I just feel like there could be value to some in terms of discovering individual contributors that the user has had a meaningful benefit from on a centralized service. I guess I may be missing something, but I can’t see where anything harassing would emerge.

@Hal I feel like my reply to someone else could also fit to your own message: https://friendica.mrpetovan.com/display/735a2029-5463-6dce-39d8-073386769231

thanks. I’ll review.

I still kinda land on the premise that making discovery easier isn’t inherently bad. I have absolutely zero idea how I would send a happy birthday to @shanselman (for example, if it were his birthday) without knowing that he (here) and his Twitter handle were the same person.

@simple It's a centralized list of high-profile Fediverse accounts, with an easy CSV export. Enough said. Even before any credibility, it is potentially harmful.

Maybe. Though it's only actually harmful if people really use it for "verifying" identity. Which, hey. Maybe they would actually use it. But yet still those he didn't want would be free not to. Nonetheless, I'm just playing devil's advocate. I do think it's a stupid idea and I will vote no.

@simple Thanks. I think this list is really harmful for other reasons than verification.

Could you share? I am actually interested in what the actual issue is beyond verification. I might be ignorant of the reasoning. While not completely new to the Fediverse, I am not necessarily a veteran

@simple Please see this reply of mine for an elaboration: https://friendica.mrpetovan.com/display/735a2029-5463-6dce-39d8-073386769231

@Jonathan Lamothe (he/him) ❌ I believe there are both a Laissez-Faire aspect to the Yes which ignores the potential threat this list poses, and a fascination towards popularity that I simply don't have. Maybe a little bit of FOMO as well?