Reporting a post

Hubzilla does not (yet?) offer an easy way to report posts that a user considers to be possibly illegal (punishable, violation of the instance rules, etc.).

The user has to take a somewhat roundabout route, namely to report the post to the hub admin via direct message. To do this, the internal link to the post is needed to indicate exactly which post (or comment) is involved.

Unfortunately, the post menu (⚙ bottom right of posts and comments) only offers the menu item ‘Link to source’. However, this link leads to the original location in the Fediverse where the post is stored. For posts that do not come from your own hub, it refers to the original instance at some Fediverse service. Unfortunately, this is not very helpful for the administrator to whom the post should be reported. He can only delete or moderate the post on his own hub. However, he cannot find it via the link to the source. The ‘local link’ would be needed, but such an entry cannot be found in the menu.

report01

But: It is still accessible via this menu (⚙). The ‘secret’ is the menu item ‘View Source’.

report02

This solution is not obvious (which is why I explain it here). If you click on it, a popup window will open that displays the source code of the post. At the top of the window, you will also find the post ID, a link to the source (i.e. what you can also access directly in the post menu), labelled ‘plink’ (for permalink), and the local link, labelled ‘llink’. The latter is the link that you have to share with the admin in the direct message (right-click in the browser to copy the link address).

report03

Now you can send a direct message to the hub administrator (to @!<handle-of-admin>) with the internal link and an explanation of the reason for the report. It's a bit of a hassle, but it can be done if you know how. ;-) I'll submit a feature request asking for the internal link to be made directly accessible and for a ‘Report post’ option to be added to the post menu. If and when that will happen? No idea.