For more information, please check out my blog [Oliphant Social Curated Blocklists](https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/the-oliphant-social-blocklist) page.
I, ([Oliphant@oliphant.social](https://oliphant.social/@oliphant)), curate a list of trusted sources, including my own server. These can be public or private lists, but a server can opt-in to being one of the Trusted Sources. So long as they aren't already a defederated server and are trusted by others on the Trusted Sources list, they become a member and provide either their public list, or a `read:blocks` api key for Oliphant.Social to use.
Everything is checked against Mastodon.Social and Mastodon.Online, as the 'flagship servers' we might as well give them a vote as well in defederation of the final unified list. (at least for now.) Hopefully Gargron won't mind too much me pulling from their public api of defederation to represent the voice of the Mastodon Server Covenant from a pretty canonical source.
It's worth noting that although I try on my server to remove and unban servers that are dead and no longer active, not all the sources do the same so there may be some bloat in the unified lists that comes from dead servers.
Read my [Guidlines for Defederation](https://writer.oliphant.social/oliphant/guidelines-for-defederation). That's how you end up on my list. Some of it comes from ancestral sources. Some of it is very subjective and may even be wrong and I will revisit the list. Make an issue above if you think you're on this list in error and I may remove it.
## Advantages of being a Trusted Source
For one, you can point people to your own list for import when they start their own server. Because all of the sources are involved in the "Fedi Council" here, no one needs to accept *my* opinionated list alone anymore. I am but one voice among trusted sources, but we take the most lenient judgment (Silence vs Suspend, and None/Reject Media over Silence) when creating the final `_unified_blocklist.csv`.
None of the Trusted Sources are going to end up in the final unified mergelist, for obvious reasons. We'll leave defederations of my trusted sources (myself included) up to your own individual discretion.
If you want to use Mastodon.social's blocklist, their obfuscate setting has made any domain with asterisks in it unimportable. None of the Oliphant.Social domains are obfuscated for that reason. If you're a Trusted Source, you're better off not obfuscating your blocked domains.
All the trusted sources in Tier0 and Tier1 are pulled and updated regularly as a dry run, which generates the files (see Fediblockhole link above) and creates the `_unified_min_blocklist.csv` file. This file can be imported and is a merge of all of the trusted sources combined.
This **FediBlockHole** config file is set to use the `min` setting when it comes to creating the final merge file. This means that where there is a conflict between trusted sources, the *least* severe setting wins.
Or the "safe list." Anyone that appears in the __allowlist.csv above will *not* be included in any of the unified blocklist files. This is primarily to ensure that no one who is part of our Fedi Council gets accidentally recommended as a block--even *if* members of the Fedi Council end up defederating each other in the future, this is just some protection against that.
Also, if you're using one of these lists in an automated fashion and want to be sure you don't show up in the results, either, please let me know.
Note that if you're writing your own custom local process, you should absolutely check if your server is in the defederation list, anyway, to prevent you from loading that entry and defederating yourself, which is a real pain and probably requires server access to fix.
Mastodon should also have built-in protection from defederating yourself, but that is another story.
Under the most-lenient policy, if I dropped a Suspension to Silence or even None+RejectMedia, I could affect the overall "min" and tier1 and tier2 lists as well.
Of course, it would have no bearing on the max file, but if I was to Suspend a commonly-silenced domain, the *max* policy would apply the most restrictive to the *max* file, and my Suspend could thus weight everyone else's Silence to a Suspend in that file.
That's why the algorithm is transparent, and why you have a choice of what you want to download, and I'm very up front about my own subjective choices on my server.
I'm showing all my work here, you see the source files from various servers that drive the resulting merge files, and can easily discuss among yourselves what this means.
See me if you want to get off the Oliphant.Social blocklist, or if you have recommendations or nominations of other Trusted Sources. Those opt-ins need to come from the server admin.
