The RapidBlock Project is a grassroots initiative to make Fediverse domain blocking more effective through collective action.

Moderation on the Fediverse is unevenly distributed. Some instance admins devotedly follow the #FediBlock hashtag, blocking abusive servers within hours of their first appearance on the network. Others wait until their own users file a report. Still others do nothing at all.

This uneven distribution of moderation allows abusive instances to do significant psychological harm. Abusive instances are a fast-moving target; setting up a new Mastodon instance takes only an hour or two, as does resetting an instance to give it a new domain name. This gives abusers a substantial time window in which there are a lot of available victims to target.

The RapidBlock Project is something different: humans are in the loop at every step of the decision-making process, and the only thing that is automated is the actual propagation of the decisions. Moderation is hard, especially good moderation. Moderation is a full-time job, and many Fediverse admins aren't taking up that mantle of responsibility. We are trying to build a central moderation team with a clear, published rationale for our blocking criteria and a clear dispute process for remediating mistaken blocks.