Mastodon: Rename instance-wide silence user to "shadow ban"

[SoniEx2]

Instance-wide silences are really shadow bans, so they should be called what they are.

There should also be separate features to block the user from the federated timeline.

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• [x] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.
• [ ] This bug happens on a tagged release and not on master (If you're a user, don't worry about this).

[Cassolotl]

~My understanding is that "silence" on Mastodon doesn't stop people seeing your posts when they follow you (instance-level and individual-level), whereas shadow bans make it look to you like you're posting while preventing other people from seeing your posts. Someone should correct me if I'm wrong here!~

~Also, a shadow ban sounds like something the admin of your instance would do that would prevent your posts showing up to anyone at all, whereas a silence is done by an admin of another instance to prevent you showing up in the timelines, which affects only people on that instance.~

Edit: Here's the documentation on silencing a user:

Silence the offender: Comparable to shadowban or sandbox. This hides the user from anyone who isn't following them. The offender sees only other silenced accounts in the public timelines.

It's unclear how this works with the admin on your own instance compared to the admin on another instance. But since the documentation is clear that it's comparable but not identical to a shadowban, I don't think it needs renaming.

[SoniEx2]

You should also check recent cybre.space drama

[Cassolotl]

I'm not aware of it, I'm not using that instance - can you give us a run-down for context?

[Cassolotl]

There's already an issue about renaming the "silence" function, here: Think about renaming 'silence' to 'default block' #5694

[nightpool]

There's no real drama, I just had to clear up some confusion when Soni accused pleroma of breaking federation because some pleroma users were silenced.

[Cassolotl]

@nightpool Ahhh okay. :)

[ThisIsMissEm]

Feel like this issue as titled is resolved given the comments from @nightpool above, and #5694, the language issue is also noted in #6954

I'd like more information on the "block user from federated timeline" — as if I understand this correctly, this is something we need (i.e., the ability to prevent a user from appearing in the federated timeline on other instances, but still allow them to interact with users on other instances — i.e., when we're dealing with spam resolution or noisy users annoying others on the federated timeline by "taking over it").

[SoniEx2]

given user A on instance A, and user B on instance B, there should be a way for instance A to block user B from showing up on instance A's federated timeline. without affecting anything else.

[Cassolotl]

That's covered in #5694.