this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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Mander
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Technical question: while the instance is federated, its users can post here, right? Do you have any moderating tools that allow you to monitor incoming comments from users from a "fishy" instance as they come in?
My fear is that they have not accumulated enough of a mass of users yet, and enough of an interest in a "small" platform like Lemmy yet, but that the crowd will come once Lemmy becomes an established platform, which will make real infiltration efforts worthwhile.
And then we'll have to deal with the usual tactics: brigades organized offsite (on discord, telegram..) to drop on anything trans/immigration/etc. related like a plague of locusts. Teams of users posturing as the "sane one" and "crazy one" allowing the "sane" actor to push far-right points that "make sense" next to pure extremism. Threats sent as PMs to individual users. Doxxing, online stalking. And, behind that, their host doing nothing to prevent- or facilitating - the behavior.
I'm fine with you not taking action for now, but would you be ready to drop the hammer if they become problematic and user-level blocking of instances is not yet a thing?
Yeah, I'm with you on this. I will probably go back to lurking* if this is how it is because I do not want a target on my head as a proactive poster. I would have instance blocked them ages ago, but Lemmy in its current state leaves us unable to defend ourselves in this way. By the time that hammer is dropped if it does, the targets will already have been made. Hell, I grew up in a place where a lot of these people come from and I left there too for a reason. We cannot build and be proactive if our base is undefended.
*If I start seeing it.
You're such an active user that at the beginning I thought it was your instance, and your presence here makes this place very active and interesting. I agree it'd be quite easy to associate you with mander as one and the same.
I used to revive old subs on reddit but they didn't get much traction and mostly ended up just arguing with anti-climate people and it sucked and made me unhappy so I stopped. I want to help spaces like this and invite others to, but not at the expense of exposure to harm.
I also thought it was your instance because you are so active, and, at that point I’m really enjoying the content you are posting. If you end up creating your own instance dedicated to science, with moderation for the anti-science harmful stuff I will follow you there! Just let me know
I wish I had the money and time right now to do so! :) Trying to limit my projects otherwise I overload myself. I'll continue posting because my brain loves filing things for whatever reason, but I will protect myself if I need to.
That’s fair, it’s the same reason I’m not making an instance also: time and money (we’ll mainly time). If you end up moving and trying to rebuild it somewhere just let me know!
Yes, that sounds really demoralizing. :( I don't know how you did it.
I didn't. I stopped. I'm saying this as a warning because this place has potential and it would be a shame to stop it's momentum. People won't put up with it.
I'll keep going, here, by the way as I have time (a bit ill today) but if I get the ick again I'll need to bounce as I've been making my brain a priority. I still mod those Reddit subs and they just get spam these days.
I was on Lemmy two years ago (or something like that), and I ultimately left because of the gore brigading that kept happening. Mods were unable to control it. Wasn't that a thing on Mander as well?
We haven't had anyone using Mander as their home base in a brigade yet, fortunately, and it would be nice if it stays that way. But I do remember multiple brigades, and I do not think that we are much better prepared today than we were back then in terms of the tools that we have to detect these before our users see them.
The users were being created in many instances, mainly lemmy.ml and new instances that were created for the brigades. Around then was when lemmy introduced the application for registering and recommended others to implement them too.
Defederating is not very effective against a brigade because new instances can be spun-up quickly. White-list federation with instances that have an application is a more effective strategy, but with white list federation you cut out every new person who wants to join the fediverse from their small instance. If an instance is used to brigade, I'll block it until the admin can get things under control (if ever), and then unblock it. It's as simple as that.