In this thread, this mod complains about users who are angry about a Nazi making an account, defends the mod team from criticism, and repeats that closed registration is not an option. At no point does the mod apologize or admit fault on behalf of the team.
Now obviously the instance policy is not the doing of that sole mod so no, he's not individually responsible for what happened. But the team is.
Open registration makes so much more work for the rest of us, putting the burden on the network of smaller instances to clean things up due to the few massive instances that, as @welshpixie pointed out, prioritize growth over safety in their choice to maintain open registration.
Several notorious serial harassers who show up in fediblock literally every week wouldn't be able to keep up their harassment without instances like mas.to, mastodon.social, mstdn.social, and others with open registration. That policy allows these stalkers to make hundreds (not an exaggeration) of alt accounts for free, quickly.
Their large size also punishes our users when we are forced to defed them to keep our users safe, cutting them off from many mutuals and also limiting the reach of their fundraising posts (which as I have previously stated are more prevalent on BQL due to the impact of employment discrimination, institutional racism, etc on all Black queers).
This is what it means to enable abuse. This is what complicity looks like. It brings me no joy to have to say this, but it's the truth.
Today, a (literal) nazi opened an account and began harassing people. We received ~80 reports within minutes. That may be a record.
We suspended the account, of course. But not before a lot of people yelled at us. For the record, this is not preventable when registration is open. We can only react. So be nice.
My gratitude and love for the person behind this report. It made me chuckle. 🫶🏻
Meta commentary on mas.to's recent run-in with a Nazi & their policy on open registration
@the people's eva @Calligrafae I had my instance on open registration until last year (closed because I couldn't guarantee reliability until after I moved to someplace safer)... and honestly it's a hard balancing act.
Those with open registration are the fediverse evangelists trying to grow the network and usually with the awareness that any friction in registration will drastically reduce adoption... But then you get situations like this which are an extremely valid reason against...
Given that the open registration problem won't practically go away outside of whitelist only networks (which are inherently very small)... we really need better tools to manage these instances from the outside (since we can't control the inside)
I'm genuinely curious what ideas people have that could help?
I've been mulling over the idea of figuring out a system for collaborating on blocklists so moderators or users who trust eachother can expand their response time and power to quickly shut down these problem users. (Yes, I'm aware that blocklists also get used to compile lists of people for various reasons, but that's just assholes using a random tool that's not even good at that job)
This makes me think that maybe we need settings on the various platforms to do things like hide users under a certain age. Or maybe blocklists of problem email addresses so they can be blocked from registration without also having to set up a new email account?
re: Meta commentary on mas.to's recent run-in with a Nazi & their policy on open registration
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@shiri a filter like that was kind of my thinking also it would be ideal imo if the "hide posts from users under a certain age" thing could also be a per-instance setting, i.e. so an admin of an instance could turn that on only for the big instances like mas.to, but leave it off for instances with application-based signups that the admin(s) trust
But I will just repeat what I already said about safety vs. growth. Of course it's a tricky problem, community moderation is difficult. Signing up to run an instance means you're agreeing to take on difficult problems. So I don't have much sympathy in this context because white techies have been choosing growth and reach over safety from day 1. And the rest of us have been catching hell for it the whole time. One of the many reasons the fediverse is as white as it is
re: Meta commentary on mas.to's recent run-in with a Nazi & their policy on open registration
@the people's eva I appreciate it, I won't pretend that I don't have my own racist blindspots or biases, and this helps me inspect them.
I personally want growth not as an arbitrary measure but just that I'm ultimately wanting the people I care about elsewhere to move off of corporate platforms enough that I myself can completely abandon those platforms.
I'll make a fuss often on areas where people are upset over ridiculous concerns (most commonly I've harped on people who post publicly and are upset that their public posts are visible to people they don't like), but I try to listen as a starting point and I appreciate you drawing attention to this behavior and problem.
I was planning to re-open my server to open registration, but you have me questioning that. (I mostly have the advantage of a less popular platform, friendica, and I took advantage of a setting that limits registrations per day)
Meta commentary on mas.to's recent run-in with a Nazi & their policy on open registration
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'are the fediverse evangelists trying to grow the network' - that's the problem. That's growth at the cost of safety and nobody wants that. The fediverse *shouldn't* grow if it can't do so safely, and open sign ups are not safe.
This is that whole 'finding tech solutions for people problems' - the problem is all the privileged white guys with their growth mindsets who think-
Meta commentary on mas.to's recent run-in with a Nazi & their policy on open registration
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- that unrestricted growth is success. It's not success if you're driving marginalised people into smaller communities to feel safe, if Black people are bailing because there's too much racism. Tech solutions don't and can't fix racism when white people take such a lackadaisical stance to things like 'free speech', sealioning, deleting bad posts but not suspending accounts.
Meta commentary on mas.to's recent run-in with a Nazi & their policy on open registration
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@shiri Funny* to read all this just a couple of days after someone whined (in a different thread) that a request for CWs and such was "suffocating" instances or leaving them without growth potential and so on.
Never any speculation re: how many instances suffered those things because of serial harassment from dogged a-holes.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to the people's miss bitch • •@the people's eva @Calligrafae I had my instance on open registration until last year (closed because I couldn't guarantee reliability until after I moved to someplace safer)... and honestly it's a hard balancing act.
Those with open registration are the fediverse evangelists trying to grow the network and usually with the awareness that any friction in registration will drastically reduce adoption... But then you get situations like this which are an extremely valid reason against...
Given that the open registration problem won't practically go away outside of whitelist only networks (which are inherently very small)... we really need better tools to manage these instances from the outside (since we can't control the inside)
I'm genuinely curious what ideas people have that could help?
I've been mulling over the idea of figuring out a system for collaborating on blocklists so moderators or users who trust eachother can expand their response time and power to quickly shut down these problem users. (Yes, I'm aware that blocklists also get used to compile lists of people for various reasons, but that's just assholes using a random tool that's not even good at that job)
This makes me think that maybe we need settings on the various platforms to do things like hide users under a certain age. Or maybe blocklists of problem email addresses so they can be blocked from registration without also having to set up a new email account?
like this
noodlejetski, ngoomie and Morgan ⚧️ like this.
ngoomie
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Sensitive content
it would be ideal imo if the "hide posts from users under a certain age" thing could also be a per-instance setting, i.e. so an admin of an instance could turn that on only for the big instances like mas.to, but leave it off for instances with application-based signups that the admin(s) trust
Shiri Bailem likes this.
the people's miss bitch
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Sensitive content
@shiri agreed that more tooling is needed.
But I will just repeat what I already said about safety vs. growth. Of course it's a tricky problem, community moderation is difficult. Signing up to run an instance means you're agreeing to take on difficult problems. So I don't have much sympathy in this context because white techies have been choosing growth and reach over safety from day 1. And the rest of us have been catching hell for it the whole time. One of the many reasons the fediverse is as white as it is
Shiri Bailem
in reply to the people's miss bitch • •@the people's eva I appreciate it, I won't pretend that I don't have my own racist blindspots or biases, and this helps me inspect them.
I personally want growth not as an arbitrary measure but just that I'm ultimately wanting the people I care about elsewhere to move off of corporate platforms enough that I myself can completely abandon those platforms.
I'll make a fuss often on areas where people are upset over ridiculous concerns (most commonly I've harped on people who post publicly and are upset that their public posts are visible to people they don't like), but I try to listen as a starting point and I appreciate you drawing attention to this behavior and problem.
I was planning to re-open my server to open registration, but you have me questioning that. (I mostly have the advantage of a less popular platform, friendica, and I took advantage of a setting that limits registrations per day)
soaproot likes this.
Calligrafae
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Sensitive content
'are the fediverse evangelists trying to grow the network' - that's the problem. That's growth at the cost of safety and nobody wants that. The fediverse *shouldn't* grow if it can't do so safely, and open sign ups are not safe.
This is that whole 'finding tech solutions for people problems' - the problem is all the privileged white guys with their growth mindsets who think-
Persephone likes this.
Calligrafae
in reply to Calligrafae • • •Sensitive content
Persephone likes this.
neurotic_fiend_friction 🐚
in reply to Calligrafae • • •Sensitive content
@shiri
Funny* to read all this just a couple of days after someone whined (in a different thread) that a request for CWs and such was "suffocating" instances or leaving them without growth potential and so on.
Never any speculation re: how many instances suffered those things because of serial harassment from dogged a-holes.
*the other kind of funny, sans laugh track