Remote View

3y ago

To combat the anti-Semitic brigades over the last few days, we've made it so that new users have to fill out a registration application before they can join here.

This should help us cut down on the trolls. We recommend other instances do the same, because they will likely be targeted also.

I apologize for all their gore-posts as well, no one should have to see that. We'll try to look for more admins from different time-zones as well to get them faster.

The two other possibilities we have currently as options, are turning on required email verification, and as a last resort, closing signups. I personally would rather not do either, but they are options.

Many thanks to @k_o_t@lemmy.ml and @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml for banning those trolls.

83 comments

- Invite only instances would be also nice for self-hosting.
- Not opposed as long as someone else codes it lol. I'm a bit swamped.
- Fantastic idea! I actually never thought about this, this could probably be done fediverse-wide.

Perhaps to avoid this type of user, a pre-school intelligence test would suffice.
- I disagree. The far right users that chose to brigade Lemmy are not dumb, instead their moral compass is screwed up. Trolling requires smartness, even if the bait content itself is not a proof of intelligence.
  
  I'm not talking about trolls, I'm talking about Nazis and these guys with fixed ideas, by definition, are never luminaries, less if they are simple guys and not rich people, the latter almost always only sympathize with fascism, because it is the political orientation that most favors the savage capitalism that favors them.
  For the rest, the waving flags with the svastica tattooed can be seen as follows

I downvoted and reported as many posts as I can, I don’t know how much that helped but it was good to check back a couple hours later and see that the trolls’ posts had been removed
- Thank you for doing this o7

Thanks a lot! I have implemented this in my instance too. This past week I was also saw several accounts being created to post ads.

The brigading is really unfortunate and thanks to the admins for doing all the work to contain it. As Lemmy grows in usage requiring email verification may be unavoidable, but hopefully having a registration application will do the trick in the immediate term. Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later, so at least this is a useful test case for how such brigading and spam can be addressed going forward.

You do not need to apologize for actions of others, you did your best and you found a solution for this issue which is what at the end counts.
Lemmy does lots of more work than most other platforms I know, admins and mods are often very fast and helpful + resourceful.
My idea was to introduce some sort of reputation based system but the problem is, that bots maybe could abuse the system to upvote themselves to get some sort of credit or reputation, call it what you want. Most boards use captchas and eMail verification systems to workaround this. Maybe an option would be to enable captchas for users who have below x posts as a middle ground, lets say 1 captcha per new submission until you have 5 posts in total.
- Reputation would just turn this into Reddit, where you can't do anything or interact unless you use a single account or post what Reddit would like you to post.
- The Lemmy devs have already decided that karma is just a bottomless pit that just harms users mental health, so it's highly doubtful we'd ever have a reputation system be introduced, as that's literally the same thing.
  Also, captchas can be preventative to people with certain disabilities, so introducing them (I believe it would be reintroducing, actually) would contradict Lemmy's disability-inclusive culture. As well, email verification wouldn't work for people who would prefer anonymity. And nefarious users could just use a spoof mail account, so the introduction of required email account verification would really only harm privacy-focused real users, and do nothing to prevent trolls. Also, while on the subject and though you didn't mention it, we don't ban IPs because some VPNs reuse them for multiple people. So banning the IP of a troll might also cause the ban of real users.
  
  These are my thoughts on email too. Using throwaways is so easy for trolls, and legitimate users now have a privacy concern since a lot of the "legitimate" email services are really invasive.

I think having more admins from more time zones is the best solution, then e-mail verification and then having to fill out a form because it takes time to be reviewed and it takes more time from me because i have to write shit and anyway i can lie.

What does a person need to apply as admin or moderator? (this last one in general communities driven by admins or thought at site level like asklemmy)
- This is just my opinion. Applications are reviewed on a case by case basis and is up to a vote by the existing admins.
  Must haves:
  A history of quality activity on Lemmy.ml or another instance we federate with, such as amicable discussion, links to reputable web resources, etc.
  Frequently online. I'd say at least once a day is ideal, but I also understand that you're a volunteer, and will reasonably have other things going on where you might be missing for several days or otherwise intermittent at times.
  An interest in helping to develop the Lemmy community and ecosystem.
  No recent violation of instance rules or Lemmy project code of conduct.
  Is not currently banned from Lemmy.ml on another account.
  Optional but could help your application:
  History of reporting rule breaking content, particularly spam.
  Has participated in discussions on Lemmy development or the the direction the Lemmy community is going.
  Already a moderator of a community, or an admin on another instance (we will use your moderation history to assess your application).
  Activity on the Lemmy Matrix rooms (please Link your Matrix).
  Activity on the Lemmy project GitHub or other source control site that Lemmy is on, either as a code contributor or making/discussing pull requests (please Link your GitHub/other source control website).
  It would also help to specify your time zone and the languages you know.
  
  Must haves:
  To check by you if my history is enough
  I connect to Lemmy.ml three times a day at minimum to read mostly.
  Yes, I have. I use to try to even promote Lemmy here but it is difficult given the main focus in English content (by now).
  To check too.
  No
  Optional:
  To check as I don't track myself on that since recently.
  I think I can say that I did and do.
  No, never thought on applying until now. I was not sure if I could hold the responsibility.
  I am not in Lemmy Official Matrix room(s), I only helped to mount the unofficial spanish one ( https://matrix.to/#/#lemmy-es:mozilla.org ) and my Matrix account is @echedeylr:mozilla.org.
  A little but my account is https://github.com/EchedeyLR.
  Timezone: one less than Nutomic's one
  Languages: Spanish and English (not native, B1 certified)
  
  Must haves:
  My 2 year old history with 1600+ comments is up for everyone.
  Online twice a day. Also, active communication with users.
  Have put myself on the frontlines multiple times. See soferman incident as example. https://lemmy.ml/post/69058
  I have repeatedly stopped many incidents from happening.
  I use zero sockpuppets and actively advocate against them, and have expertise in identifying sockpuppets via my stylometry, OSINT and OPSEC skills.
  Optional:
  Active moderator of c/privacy and c/technology, also c/privatelife
  I contribute via comment suggestions and sometimes even modmail, to help improve Lemmy. This goes hand in hand with putting myself on the frontlines, and putting myself at risk in between crossfire.
  I report a lot of issues and actively moderate reported posts and comments.
  I am from India and I speak Hindi and English, so I can serve not just a wide timezone gap, but moderate a different kind of audience as well, compared to non-Indian foreigners here.
- For admins, you can express interest here, and we'll look them over.
  cc @k_o_t@lemmy.ml @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml @kixiQu@lemmy.ml
  
  I provided my two cents!

No worries. I have seen surprisingly few of these types of posts, so you're currently doing something better then other alternatives and I appreciate your efforts to make things even better.

Test troll

Also,it would be nice to have some sort of moderation/ban federation to avoid having to do the work on each instance.
I'm sure it's easier said than done but would be very beneficial to the project and community.
- I second this. If someone/something is banned and removed from an instance it shouldn't still be visible on a linked instance. If this isn't already a pending feature request I'll happily make one for it.
  
  I think there is an open issue for federating bans. Once @nutomic@lemmy.ml gets some time he said it wouldn't be too difficult.

Admins could also tweak register_per_second and register params

Thanks for this. I'd stick to the It's FOSS channels if I wanted to see loads of fascist crap 🤣 Love being on Lemmy!

Thank you for all the work you do!
- No probs!

After upgrading to 0.15.1, I activated the signup form. I haven’t had to deal with the daily trolls. Not ideal but it helps.

Thanks, I've done the same over on lemmy.pt. Hope this helps :)

So wait? Does this effectively make lemmy more private of a forum then?
- Its optional, and yes it can.

Doing registration form with manual approval is a good first step. My 2 cents is you could also implementing an invite based registration where users are allowed to invite their trusted friends.
Similar to how reputable private trackers works. There is form registration, interview, or invite from existing members. If existing member invites too many leechers, the current member will get a warning and ban eventually. This system is mostly working for private trackers so far.
- Are the invite systems usually e-mail based? If so, it would be cool to be able to generate 1-time use codes to invite friends, so that providing an e-mail is not required.
  
  Absolutely, have a code based invitation would be more privacy focused.

@dessalines@lemmy.ml what about allowing federation on an allowlist-only basis?
- Imo its not necessary to go back to allowlist yet, and I'd rather add malicious instances to our blocklist. We've only had to add like 2 so far, but can easily add more.
  
  This is a random idea, but what if instance admins could subscribe to another or multiple other instances block lists? It might be a useful mechanism to reduce duplicate work. Smaller instance admins could subscribe to larger instance block lists to share the moderation burden.

I downvoted and reported as many posts as I can, I don’t know how much that helped but it was good to check back a couple hours later and see that the trolls’ posts had been removed
- just letting you know your comment doubled.

I think we need a new permission-level that allows a user to delete comments and ban other non-admin users, so we can have more "site-mods", without substantially increasing risk of someone doing something undesirable with their power.
Maybe admins need "superuser" status to see / edit the site-config?

Blame the jews

Unless you can get everyone else on your shared instance list to do the same this is pointless. Look I just made this user on another instance that required email verification. I used a temp email service and am able to post what ever I want here.
You should instead have a period the user has to wait before posting so that you can have a night sleep without worrying about trolls flooding your site.
- All of the accounts that were posting in the event were two days old. Having a wait time doesn't help there.
  
  No, thats not true. They were mostly freshly created and spamming within a few minutes.

If other lemmy sites doesn't do the same, we should not federate with them.

The account registration UX is bad enough, why make it worse?
- The first five words of the title
- Would be nice to hear why you think it's bad and how to improve it. Could you open an issue on the tracker?

Good to know

India timezone here. Active and available atleast twice a day.
- Mods are g@y

How many admins do y'all have? I'd be lying if I said I agreed with y'all's moderation stances, but I'm surprised at how slow action to some of the posts, users, and communities is
- Lemmy.ml currently has 5 admins, though we're looking to recruit more. Keep in mind that all of us are volunteers who juggle moderating this instance and the other things in our lives.
- Your instance has Nazi content too
  
  Not nearly as much as lemmy.ml tho
- Your instance has some trolls too. I see a hitler posted there https://narwhal.city/posts/8200

83 comments