A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:

"""
Moderated registration won't stop Nazis, because they'll just pretend to be human to fool moderators, but it will stop normal people, who won't spend the effort to answer the application question or want to wait for approval.
"""

Okay, I'm going to try to use points that I hope are pretty acceptable to anyone arguing in good faith, and I'm going to expand the definition of Nazis to "attackers" and lump in bigots, trolls, scammers, spammers, etc. who use similar tactics.

Attackers: we can group attackers into two main types: dedicated and opportunistic. Dedicated attackers have a target picked and a personal motive—they hunt. Opportunistic attackers have an inclination and will attack if a target presents itself—they're scavengers. In my years of experience as an admin on multiple Fedi servers, most attackers are opportunistic.

Victims: when someone is attacked, they (and people like them) will be less likely to return to the place they were attacked.

In general: without a motive to expend more effort, humans will typically make decisions that offer the best perceived effort-to-reward ratio in the short-term (the same is true of risk-to-reward).

Why does any of this matter?

Because it all comes down to a fairly simple equation for the attackers: effort > reward. If this is true, then the opportunistic attackers will go elsewhere. If it isn't true, then their victims will go elsewhere.

How can we tip that scale out of the attackers' favor?

By making sure moderation efforts scale faster against attackers' behaviors than against normal users' behaviors.

- A normal user only has to register once, while an attacker has to re-register every time they get suspended.

- A normal user proves their normality with each action they take, while every action an attacker takes risks exposing them to moderation.

- A new user / attacker likely spends a minute or two signing up, while a moderator can review most applications in a matter of seconds. Yes, attackers can automate signups to reduce that effort (and some do, and we have tools to address some of that, but again, most attackers aren't dedicated).

- Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack. As someone who gets targeted regularly by attackers from open-registration servers, I'd personally rather skim and reject a page-long AI-generated application, than spend another therapy session exploring the trauma of being sent execution videos.

I believe this points to moderated registration being the lowest effort remedy for the problem of the Nazi Sucker-punch. So before we "engineer a new solution" that doesn't yet exist, we should exhaust the tools that are already available on the platform today. Yes, we could implement rate limits, or shadow bans, or trust networks, or quarantine servers, but we don't have those today, and even if we did, there's no evidence that those would be a better solution for Fedi than moderated signups.

Will it stop *all* the attackers? No. But it will stop most opportunistic attackers.

Will it deter *some* potential new users? Yes. But communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) (@alice@lgbtqia.space)

Why reactive moderation isn't going to cut it, aka, "The Sucker-punch Problem". Imagine you invite your friend—let's call him Mark—to a club with you. It's open-door, which is cool, because you like when a lot of folx show up. Sure, it might get a little rowdy, but they have a bouncer, and you've never seen things getting out of hand. So, you're busy dancing when a new guy walks in wearing a "I Hate Mark" shirt and promptly sucker-punches Mark. You didn't see it happen, but Mark is upset and tells the bouncer, who kicks the guy out. A few minutes later, the same guy walks back in and sucker-punches Mark again. Same result. Some people in the club say they'll tell the bouncer if they see him come in again. Mark wants to leave, but you tell him it's not that bad—after all, you've never been punched, and you didn't see Mark get punched, so maybe he's just being sensitive. A different guy walks in wearing a "I Plan On Punching Mark" shirt. No one tells the bouncer, because they've never seen *this* guy punch Mark. He sucker-punches Mark. At this point, Mark is pissed and yelling about being punched. The club members talk about putting up a "No Punching Mark" sign, but the owner is worried it'll hurt his club's growth. Another Mark in the club proposes they turn away anyone wearing an anti-Mark shirt or espousing anti-Mark rhetoric at the door, but this gets shot down for the same reason as the sign idea—then someone sucker-punches him. By the end of the night, your friend Mark is beat to fuck and says he'll never come to this club again. In fact, he's going to tell anyone named Mark to stay clear of this place. The next time you go to the club, half the folx there are wearing "I Kill Marks" shirts, but there aren't any Marks there, so it doesn't come up. I've been sucker-punched every day, for the last three days in a row by some of the most vile hate-speech and imagery. The accounts are using open registration servers and signing up with variations on the username "heilhitler1488". I fully expect it'll continue as long as we have open registration servers. And no, username pattern blocking alone won't fix this, it'll help a little, but mostly it'll just make them wear a different shirt while they sucker-punch us. #OpenRegistrationHurts

LGBTQIA.Space (lgbtqia.space)

A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:

"""
Moderated registration won't stop Nazis, because they'll just pretend to be human to fool moderators, but it will stop normal people, who won't spend the effort to answer the application question or want to wait for approval.
"""

Okay, I'm going to try to use points that I hope are pretty acceptable to anyone arguing in good faith, and I'm going to expand the definition of Nazis to "attackers" and lump in bigots, trolls, scammers, spammers, etc. who use similar tactics.

Attackers: we can group attackers into two main types: dedicated and opportunistic. Dedicated attackers have a target picked and a personal motive—they hunt. Opportunistic attackers have an inclination and will attack if a target presents itself—they're scavengers. In my years of experience as an admin on multiple Fedi servers, most attackers are opportunistic.

Victims: when someone is attacked, they (and people like them) will be less likely to return to the place they were attacked.

In general: without a motive to expend more effort, humans will typically make decisions that offer the best perceived effort-to-reward ratio in the short-term (the same is true of risk-to-reward).

Why does any of this matter?

Because it all comes down to a fairly simple equation for the attackers: effort > reward. If this is true, then the opportunistic attackers will go elsewhere. If it isn't true, then their victims will go elsewhere.

How can we tip that scale out of the attackers' favor?

By making sure moderation efforts scale faster against attackers' behaviors than against normal users' behaviors.

- A normal user only has to register once, while an attacker has to re-register every time they get suspended.

- A normal user proves their normality with each action they take, while every action an attacker takes risks exposing them to moderation.

- A new user / attacker likely spends a minute or two signing up, while a moderator can review most applications in a matter of seconds. Yes, attackers can automate signups to reduce that effort (and some do, and we have tools to address some of that, but again, most attackers aren't dedicated).

- Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack. As someone who gets targeted regularly by attackers from open-registration servers, I'd personally rather skim and reject a page-long AI-generated application, than spend another therapy session exploring the trauma of being sent execution videos.

I believe this points to moderated registration being the lowest effort remedy for the problem of the Nazi Sucker-punch. So before we "engineer a new solution" that doesn't yet exist, we should exhaust the tools that are already available on the platform today. Yes, we could implement rate limits, or shadow bans, or trust networks, or quarantine servers, but we don't have those today, and even if we did, there's no evidence that those would be a better solution for Fedi than moderated signups.

Will it stop *all* the attackers? No. But it will stop most opportunistic attackers.

Will it deter *some* potential new users? Yes. But communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) (@alice@lgbtqia.space)

Why reactive moderation isn't going to cut it, aka, "The Sucker-punch Problem". Imagine you invite your friend—let's call him Mark—to a club with you. It's open-door, which is cool, because you like when a lot of folx show up. Sure, it might get a little rowdy, but they have a bouncer, and you've never seen things getting out of hand. So, you're busy dancing when a new guy walks in wearing a "I Hate Mark" shirt and promptly sucker-punches Mark. You didn't see it happen, but Mark is upset and tells the bouncer, who kicks the guy out. A few minutes later, the same guy walks back in and sucker-punches Mark again. Same result. Some people in the club say they'll tell the bouncer if they see him come in again. Mark wants to leave, but you tell him it's not that bad—after all, you've never been punched, and you didn't see Mark get punched, so maybe he's just being sensitive. A different guy walks in wearing a "I Plan On Punching Mark" shirt. No one tells the bouncer, because they've never seen *this* guy punch Mark. He sucker-punches Mark. At this point, Mark is pissed and yelling about being punched. The club members talk about putting up a "No Punching Mark" sign, but the owner is worried it'll hurt his club's growth. Another Mark in the club proposes they turn away anyone wearing an anti-Mark shirt or espousing anti-Mark rhetoric at the door, but this gets shot down for the same reason as the sign idea—then someone sucker-punches him. By the end of the night, your friend Mark is beat to fuck and says he'll never come to this club again. In fact, he's going to tell anyone named Mark to stay clear of this place. The next time you go to the club, half the folx there are wearing "I Kill Marks" shirts, but there aren't any Marks there, so it doesn't come up. I've been sucker-punched every day, for the last three days in a row by some of the most vile hate-speech and imagery. The accounts are using open registration servers and signing up with variations on the username "heilhitler1488". I fully expect it'll continue as long as we have open registration servers. And no, username pattern blocking alone won't fix this, it'll help a little, but mostly it'll just make them wear a different shirt while they sucker-punch us. #OpenRegistrationHurts

LGBTQIA.Space (lgbtqia.space)

A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:

"""
Moderated registration won't stop Nazis, because they'll just pretend to be human to fool moderators, but it will stop normal people, who won't spend the effort to answer the application question or want to wait for approval.
"""

Okay, I'm going to try to use points that I hope are pretty acceptable to anyone arguing in good faith, and I'm going to expand the definition of Nazis to "attackers" and lump in bigots, trolls, scammers, spammers, etc. who use similar tactics.

Attackers: we can group attackers into two main types: dedicated and opportunistic. Dedicated attackers have a target picked and a personal motive—they hunt. Opportunistic attackers have an inclination and will attack if a target presents itself—they're scavengers. In my years of experience as an admin on multiple Fedi servers, most attackers are opportunistic.

Victims: when someone is attacked, they (and people like them) will be less likely to return to the place they were attacked.

In general: without a motive to expend more effort, humans will typically make decisions that offer the best perceived effort-to-reward ratio in the short-term (the same is true of risk-to-reward).

Why does any of this matter?

Because it all comes down to a fairly simple equation for the attackers: effort > reward. If this is true, then the opportunistic attackers will go elsewhere. If it isn't true, then their victims will go elsewhere.

How can we tip that scale out of the attackers' favor?

By making sure moderation efforts scale faster against attackers' behaviors than against normal users' behaviors.

- A normal user only has to register once, while an attacker has to re-register every time they get suspended.

- A normal user proves their normality with each action they take, while every action an attacker takes risks exposing them to moderation.

- A new user / attacker likely spends a minute or two signing up, while a moderator can review most applications in a matter of seconds. Yes, attackers can automate signups to reduce that effort (and some do, and we have tools to address some of that, but again, most attackers aren't dedicated).

- Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack. As someone who gets targeted regularly by attackers from open-registration servers, I'd personally rather skim and reject a page-long AI-generated application, than spend another therapy session exploring the trauma of being sent execution videos.

I believe this points to moderated registration being the lowest effort remedy for the problem of the Nazi Sucker-punch. So before we "engineer a new solution" that doesn't yet exist, we should exhaust the tools that are already available on the platform today. Yes, we could implement rate limits, or shadow bans, or trust networks, or quarantine servers, but we don't have those today, and even if we did, there's no evidence that those would be a better solution for Fedi than moderated signups.

Will it stop *all* the attackers? No. But it will stop most opportunistic attackers.

Will it deter *some* potential new users? Yes. But communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) (@alice@lgbtqia.space)

Why reactive moderation isn't going to cut it, aka, "The Sucker-punch Problem". Imagine you invite your friend—let's call him Mark—to a club with you. It's open-door, which is cool, because you like when a lot of folx show up. Sure, it might get a little rowdy, but they have a bouncer, and you've never seen things getting out of hand. So, you're busy dancing when a new guy walks in wearing a "I Hate Mark" shirt and promptly sucker-punches Mark. You didn't see it happen, but Mark is upset and tells the bouncer, who kicks the guy out. A few minutes later, the same guy walks back in and sucker-punches Mark again. Same result. Some people in the club say they'll tell the bouncer if they see him come in again. Mark wants to leave, but you tell him it's not that bad—after all, you've never been punched, and you didn't see Mark get punched, so maybe he's just being sensitive. A different guy walks in wearing a "I Plan On Punching Mark" shirt. No one tells the bouncer, because they've never seen *this* guy punch Mark. He sucker-punches Mark. At this point, Mark is pissed and yelling about being punched. The club members talk about putting up a "No Punching Mark" sign, but the owner is worried it'll hurt his club's growth. Another Mark in the club proposes they turn away anyone wearing an anti-Mark shirt or espousing anti-Mark rhetoric at the door, but this gets shot down for the same reason as the sign idea—then someone sucker-punches him. By the end of the night, your friend Mark is beat to fuck and says he'll never come to this club again. In fact, he's going to tell anyone named Mark to stay clear of this place. The next time you go to the club, half the folx there are wearing "I Kill Marks" shirts, but there aren't any Marks there, so it doesn't come up. I've been sucker-punched every day, for the last three days in a row by some of the most vile hate-speech and imagery. The accounts are using open registration servers and signing up with variations on the username "heilhitler1488". I fully expect it'll continue as long as we have open registration servers. And no, username pattern blocking alone won't fix this, it'll help a little, but mostly it'll just make them wear a different shirt while they sucker-punch us. #OpenRegistrationHurts

LGBTQIA.Space (lgbtqia.space)

A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:

"""
Moderated registration won't stop Nazis, because they'll just pretend to be human to fool moderators, but it will stop normal people, who won't spend the effort to answer the application question or want to wait for approval.
"""

Okay, I'm going to try to use points that I hope are pretty acceptable to anyone arguing in good faith, and I'm going to expand the definition of Nazis to "attackers" and lump in bigots, trolls, scammers, spammers, etc. who use similar tactics.

Attackers: we can group attackers into two main types: dedicated and opportunistic. Dedicated attackers have a target picked and a personal motive—they hunt. Opportunistic attackers have an inclination and will attack if a target presents itself—they're scavengers. In my years of experience as an admin on multiple Fedi servers, most attackers are opportunistic.

Victims: when someone is attacked, they (and people like them) will be less likely to return to the place they were attacked.

In general: without a motive to expend more effort, humans will typically make decisions that offer the best perceived effort-to-reward ratio in the short-term (the same is true of risk-to-reward).

Why does any of this matter?

Because it all comes down to a fairly simple equation for the attackers: effort > reward. If this is true, then the opportunistic attackers will go elsewhere. If it isn't true, then their victims will go elsewhere.

How can we tip that scale out of the attackers' favor?

By making sure moderation efforts scale faster against attackers' behaviors than against normal users' behaviors.

- A normal user only has to register once, while an attacker has to re-register every time they get suspended.

- A normal user proves their normality with each action they take, while every action an attacker takes risks exposing them to moderation.

- A new user / attacker likely spends a minute or two signing up, while a moderator can review most applications in a matter of seconds. Yes, attackers can automate signups to reduce that effort (and some do, and we have tools to address some of that, but again, most attackers aren't dedicated).

- Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack. As someone who gets targeted regularly by attackers from open-registration servers, I'd personally rather skim and reject a page-long AI-generated application, than spend another therapy session exploring the trauma of being sent execution videos.

I believe this points to moderated registration being the lowest effort remedy for the problem of the Nazi Sucker-punch. So before we "engineer a new solution" that doesn't yet exist, we should exhaust the tools that are already available on the platform today. Yes, we could implement rate limits, or shadow bans, or trust networks, or quarantine servers, but we don't have those today, and even if we did, there's no evidence that those would be a better solution for Fedi than moderated signups.

Will it stop *all* the attackers? No. But it will stop most opportunistic attackers.

Will it deter *some* potential new users? Yes. But communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) (@alice@lgbtqia.space)

Why reactive moderation isn't going to cut it, aka, "The Sucker-punch Problem". Imagine you invite your friend—let's call him Mark—to a club with you. It's open-door, which is cool, because you like when a lot of folx show up. Sure, it might get a little rowdy, but they have a bouncer, and you've never seen things getting out of hand. So, you're busy dancing when a new guy walks in wearing a "I Hate Mark" shirt and promptly sucker-punches Mark. You didn't see it happen, but Mark is upset and tells the bouncer, who kicks the guy out. A few minutes later, the same guy walks back in and sucker-punches Mark again. Same result. Some people in the club say they'll tell the bouncer if they see him come in again. Mark wants to leave, but you tell him it's not that bad—after all, you've never been punched, and you didn't see Mark get punched, so maybe he's just being sensitive. A different guy walks in wearing a "I Plan On Punching Mark" shirt. No one tells the bouncer, because they've never seen *this* guy punch Mark. He sucker-punches Mark. At this point, Mark is pissed and yelling about being punched. The club members talk about putting up a "No Punching Mark" sign, but the owner is worried it'll hurt his club's growth. Another Mark in the club proposes they turn away anyone wearing an anti-Mark shirt or espousing anti-Mark rhetoric at the door, but this gets shot down for the same reason as the sign idea—then someone sucker-punches him. By the end of the night, your friend Mark is beat to fuck and says he'll never come to this club again. In fact, he's going to tell anyone named Mark to stay clear of this place. The next time you go to the club, half the folx there are wearing "I Kill Marks" shirts, but there aren't any Marks there, so it doesn't come up. I've been sucker-punched every day, for the last three days in a row by some of the most vile hate-speech and imagery. The accounts are using open registration servers and signing up with variations on the username "heilhitler1488". I fully expect it'll continue as long as we have open registration servers. And no, username pattern blocking alone won't fix this, it'll help a little, but mostly it'll just make them wear a different shirt while they sucker-punch us. #OpenRegistrationHurts

LGBTQIA.Space (lgbtqia.space)

A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:

"""
Moderated registration won't stop Nazis, because they'll just pretend to be human to fool moderators, but it will stop normal people, who won't spend the effort to answer the application question or want to wait for approval.
"""

Okay, I'm going to try to use points that I hope are pretty acceptable to anyone arguing in good faith, and I'm going to expand the definition of Nazis to "attackers" and lump in bigots, trolls, scammers, spammers, etc. who use similar tactics.

Attackers: we can group attackers into two main types: dedicated and opportunistic. Dedicated attackers have a target picked and a personal motive—they hunt. Opportunistic attackers have an inclination and will attack if a target presents itself—they're scavengers. In my years of experience as an admin on multiple Fedi servers, most attackers are opportunistic.

Victims: when someone is attacked, they (and people like them) will be less likely to return to the place they were attacked.

In general: without a motive to expend more effort, humans will typically make decisions that offer the best perceived effort-to-reward ratio in the short-term (the same is true of risk-to-reward).

Why does any of this matter?

Because it all comes down to a fairly simple equation for the attackers: effort > reward. If this is true, then the opportunistic attackers will go elsewhere. If it isn't true, then their victims will go elsewhere.

How can we tip that scale out of the attackers' favor?

By making sure moderation efforts scale faster against attackers' behaviors than against normal users' behaviors.

- A normal user only has to register once, while an attacker has to re-register every time they get suspended.

- A normal user proves their normality with each action they take, while every action an attacker takes risks exposing them to moderation.

- A new user / attacker likely spends a minute or two signing up, while a moderator can review most applications in a matter of seconds. Yes, attackers can automate signups to reduce that effort (and some do, and we have tools to address some of that, but again, most attackers aren't dedicated).

- Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack. As someone who gets targeted regularly by attackers from open-registration servers, I'd personally rather skim and reject a page-long AI-generated application, than spend another therapy session exploring the trauma of being sent execution videos.

I believe this points to moderated registration being the lowest effort remedy for the problem of the Nazi Sucker-punch. So before we "engineer a new solution" that doesn't yet exist, we should exhaust the tools that are already available on the platform today. Yes, we could implement rate limits, or shadow bans, or trust networks, or quarantine servers, but we don't have those today, and even if we did, there's no evidence that those would be a better solution for Fedi than moderated signups.

Will it stop *all* the attackers? No. But it will stop most opportunistic attackers.

Will it deter *some* potential new users? Yes. But communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) (@alice@lgbtqia.space)

Why reactive moderation isn't going to cut it, aka, "The Sucker-punch Problem". Imagine you invite your friend—let's call him Mark—to a club with you. It's open-door, which is cool, because you like when a lot of folx show up. Sure, it might get a little rowdy, but they have a bouncer, and you've never seen things getting out of hand. So, you're busy dancing when a new guy walks in wearing a "I Hate Mark" shirt and promptly sucker-punches Mark. You didn't see it happen, but Mark is upset and tells the bouncer, who kicks the guy out. A few minutes later, the same guy walks back in and sucker-punches Mark again. Same result. Some people in the club say they'll tell the bouncer if they see him come in again. Mark wants to leave, but you tell him it's not that bad—after all, you've never been punched, and you didn't see Mark get punched, so maybe he's just being sensitive. A different guy walks in wearing a "I Plan On Punching Mark" shirt. No one tells the bouncer, because they've never seen *this* guy punch Mark. He sucker-punches Mark. At this point, Mark is pissed and yelling about being punched. The club members talk about putting up a "No Punching Mark" sign, but the owner is worried it'll hurt his club's growth. Another Mark in the club proposes they turn away anyone wearing an anti-Mark shirt or espousing anti-Mark rhetoric at the door, but this gets shot down for the same reason as the sign idea—then someone sucker-punches him. By the end of the night, your friend Mark is beat to fuck and says he'll never come to this club again. In fact, he's going to tell anyone named Mark to stay clear of this place. The next time you go to the club, half the folx there are wearing "I Kill Marks" shirts, but there aren't any Marks there, so it doesn't come up. I've been sucker-punched every day, for the last three days in a row by some of the most vile hate-speech and imagery. The accounts are using open registration servers and signing up with variations on the username "heilhitler1488". I fully expect it'll continue as long as we have open registration servers. And no, username pattern blocking alone won't fix this, it'll help a little, but mostly it'll just make them wear a different shirt while they sucker-punch us. #OpenRegistrationHurts

LGBTQIA.Space (lgbtqia.space)

@kimlockhartga @alice I hated (absolutely hated) the "Sticks and stones" stuff at school, knowing full well the damage that words can do. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the damage from a comment can last just as long, if not longer, and it cuts deep.

@tompearce49 Kim Possible :kimoji_fire: @alice

I dunno man. You ever stab a kid with a Bic pen in the hand for grabbing you and shoving you down into a chair? Because I did once. And the bullies never fucked with me again.

@alice The harm caused when attackers are not screened never really goes away. I got attacked by Nazis on Twitter. I still feel it.

@alice This argument hits the Mark.

@alice

In one of the comments, I read defederation as defenestration

@kimlockhartga @alice I hated (absolutely hated) the "Sticks and stones" stuff at school, knowing full well the damage that words can do. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the damage from a comment can last just as long, if not longer, and it cuts deep.

@alice

In one of the comments, I read defederation as defenestration

@alice
Much love for all of your efforts and those of all moderators, you make this place what it is
🥰🥰

@Twotired oh no! Poor Mark 🥺

@tompearce49 Kim Possible :kimoji_fire: @alice

I dunno man. You ever stab a kid with a Bic pen in the hand for grabbing you and shoving you down into a chair? Because I did once. And the bullies never fucked with me again.

A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:

"""
Moderated registration won't stop Nazis, because they'll just pretend to be human to fool moderators, but it will stop normal people, who won't spend the effort to answer the application question or want to wait for approval.
"""

Okay, I'm going to try to use points that I hope are pretty acceptable to anyone arguing in good faith, and I'm going to expand the definition of Nazis to "attackers" and lump in bigots, trolls, scammers, spammers, etc. who use similar tactics.

Attackers: we can group attackers into two main types: dedicated and opportunistic. Dedicated attackers have a target picked and a personal motive—they hunt. Opportunistic attackers have an inclination and will attack if a target presents itself—they're scavengers. In my years of experience as an admin on multiple Fedi servers, most attackers are opportunistic.

Victims: when someone is attacked, they (and people like them) will be less likely to return to the place they were attacked.

In general: without a motive to expend more effort, humans will typically make decisions that offer the best perceived effort-to-reward ratio in the short-term (the same is true of risk-to-reward).

Why does any of this matter?

Because it all comes down to a fairly simple equation for the attackers: effort > reward. If this is true, then the opportunistic attackers will go elsewhere. If it isn't true, then their victims will go elsewhere.

How can we tip that scale out of the attackers' favor?

By making sure moderation efforts scale faster against attackers' behaviors than against normal users' behaviors.

- A normal user only has to register once, while an attacker has to re-register every time they get suspended.

- A normal user proves their normality with each action they take, while every action an attacker takes risks exposing them to moderation.

- A new user / attacker likely spends a minute or two signing up, while a moderator can review most applications in a matter of seconds. Yes, attackers can automate signups to reduce that effort (and some do, and we have tools to address some of that, but again, most attackers aren't dedicated).

- Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack. As someone who gets targeted regularly by attackers from open-registration servers, I'd personally rather skim and reject a page-long AI-generated application, than spend another therapy session exploring the trauma of being sent execution videos.

I believe this points to moderated registration being the lowest effort remedy for the problem of the Nazi Sucker-punch. So before we "engineer a new solution" that doesn't yet exist, we should exhaust the tools that are already available on the platform today. Yes, we could implement rate limits, or shadow bans, or trust networks, or quarantine servers, but we don't have those today, and even if we did, there's no evidence that those would be a better solution for Fedi than moderated signups.

Will it stop *all* the attackers? No. But it will stop most opportunistic attackers.

Will it deter *some* potential new users? Yes. But communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) (@alice@lgbtqia.space)

Why reactive moderation isn't going to cut it, aka, "The Sucker-punch Problem". Imagine you invite your friend—let's call him Mark—to a club with you. It's open-door, which is cool, because you like when a lot of folx show up. Sure, it might get a little rowdy, but they have a bouncer, and you've never seen things getting out of hand. So, you're busy dancing when a new guy walks in wearing a "I Hate Mark" shirt and promptly sucker-punches Mark. You didn't see it happen, but Mark is upset and tells the bouncer, who kicks the guy out. A few minutes later, the same guy walks back in and sucker-punches Mark again. Same result. Some people in the club say they'll tell the bouncer if they see him come in again. Mark wants to leave, but you tell him it's not that bad—after all, you've never been punched, and you didn't see Mark get punched, so maybe he's just being sensitive. A different guy walks in wearing a "I Plan On Punching Mark" shirt. No one tells the bouncer, because they've never seen *this* guy punch Mark. He sucker-punches Mark. At this point, Mark is pissed and yelling about being punched. The club members talk about putting up a "No Punching Mark" sign, but the owner is worried it'll hurt his club's growth. Another Mark in the club proposes they turn away anyone wearing an anti-Mark shirt or espousing anti-Mark rhetoric at the door, but this gets shot down for the same reason as the sign idea—then someone sucker-punches him. By the end of the night, your friend Mark is beat to fuck and says he'll never come to this club again. In fact, he's going to tell anyone named Mark to stay clear of this place. The next time you go to the club, half the folx there are wearing "I Kill Marks" shirts, but there aren't any Marks there, so it doesn't come up. I've been sucker-punched every day, for the last three days in a row by some of the most vile hate-speech and imagery. The accounts are using open registration servers and signing up with variations on the username "heilhitler1488". I fully expect it'll continue as long as we have open registration servers. And no, username pattern blocking alone won't fix this, it'll help a little, but mostly it'll just make them wear a different shirt while they sucker-punch us. #OpenRegistrationHurts

LGBTQIA.Space (lgbtqia.space)

@alice
Suddenly wondering about a system, which I've seen effectively used on forums, where a new user's posts are held back, and they are effectively silenced until a moderator reads their posts and approves them to interact, perhaps with some sort of time-limit in case moderation doesn't get to it in a timely manner. This would not only mean they don't need to give a reason when signing up, but that they could partially engage without having to wait, and potentially that moderation would be seeing their posts right away.

It might take a new layer of systems to implement, but do you think that would be a good idea?

A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:

"""
Moderated registration won't stop Nazis, because they'll just pretend to be human to fool moderators, but it will stop normal people, who won't spend the effort to answer the application question or want to wait for approval.
"""

Okay, I'm going to try to use points that I hope are pretty acceptable to anyone arguing in good faith, and I'm going to expand the definition of Nazis to "attackers" and lump in bigots, trolls, scammers, spammers, etc. who use similar tactics.

Attackers: we can group attackers into two main types: dedicated and opportunistic. Dedicated attackers have a target picked and a personal motive—they hunt. Opportunistic attackers have an inclination and will attack if a target presents itself—they're scavengers. In my years of experience as an admin on multiple Fedi servers, most attackers are opportunistic.

Victims: when someone is attacked, they (and people like them) will be less likely to return to the place they were attacked.

In general: without a motive to expend more effort, humans will typically make decisions that offer the best perceived effort-to-reward ratio in the short-term (the same is true of risk-to-reward).

Why does any of this matter?

Because it all comes down to a fairly simple equation for the attackers: effort > reward. If this is true, then the opportunistic attackers will go elsewhere. If it isn't true, then their victims will go elsewhere.

How can we tip that scale out of the attackers' favor?

By making sure moderation efforts scale faster against attackers' behaviors than against normal users' behaviors.

- A normal user only has to register once, while an attacker has to re-register every time they get suspended.

- A normal user proves their normality with each action they take, while every action an attacker takes risks exposing them to moderation.

- A new user / attacker likely spends a minute or two signing up, while a moderator can review most applications in a matter of seconds. Yes, attackers can automate signups to reduce that effort (and some do, and we have tools to address some of that, but again, most attackers aren't dedicated).

- Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack. As someone who gets targeted regularly by attackers from open-registration servers, I'd personally rather skim and reject a page-long AI-generated application, than spend another therapy session exploring the trauma of being sent execution videos.

I believe this points to moderated registration being the lowest effort remedy for the problem of the Nazi Sucker-punch. So before we "engineer a new solution" that doesn't yet exist, we should exhaust the tools that are already available on the platform today. Yes, we could implement rate limits, or shadow bans, or trust networks, or quarantine servers, but we don't have those today, and even if we did, there's no evidence that those would be a better solution for Fedi than moderated signups.

Will it stop *all* the attackers? No. But it will stop most opportunistic attackers.

Will it deter *some* potential new users? Yes. But communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door.

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) (@alice@lgbtqia.space)

Why reactive moderation isn't going to cut it, aka, "The Sucker-punch Problem". Imagine you invite your friend—let's call him Mark—to a club with you. It's open-door, which is cool, because you like when a lot of folx show up. Sure, it might get a little rowdy, but they have a bouncer, and you've never seen things getting out of hand. So, you're busy dancing when a new guy walks in wearing a "I Hate Mark" shirt and promptly sucker-punches Mark. You didn't see it happen, but Mark is upset and tells the bouncer, who kicks the guy out. A few minutes later, the same guy walks back in and sucker-punches Mark again. Same result. Some people in the club say they'll tell the bouncer if they see him come in again. Mark wants to leave, but you tell him it's not that bad—after all, you've never been punched, and you didn't see Mark get punched, so maybe he's just being sensitive. A different guy walks in wearing a "I Plan On Punching Mark" shirt. No one tells the bouncer, because they've never seen *this* guy punch Mark. He sucker-punches Mark. At this point, Mark is pissed and yelling about being punched. The club members talk about putting up a "No Punching Mark" sign, but the owner is worried it'll hurt his club's growth. Another Mark in the club proposes they turn away anyone wearing an anti-Mark shirt or espousing anti-Mark rhetoric at the door, but this gets shot down for the same reason as the sign idea—then someone sucker-punches him. By the end of the night, your friend Mark is beat to fuck and says he'll never come to this club again. In fact, he's going to tell anyone named Mark to stay clear of this place. The next time you go to the club, half the folx there are wearing "I Kill Marks" shirts, but there aren't any Marks there, so it doesn't come up. I've been sucker-punched every day, for the last three days in a row by some of the most vile hate-speech and imagery. The accounts are using open registration servers and signing up with variations on the username "heilhitler1488". I fully expect it'll continue as long as we have open registration servers. And no, username pattern blocking alone won't fix this, it'll help a little, but mostly it'll just make them wear a different shirt while they sucker-punch us. #OpenRegistrationHurts

LGBTQIA.Space (lgbtqia.space)

@kimlockhartga I've been tempted to start collecting the attacks I get and publishing them (with content warnings!) because a thing I hear over and over is:

"Really? I never see stuff like that here."

And these (mostly) white (mostly) guys were saying the same thing when #BlackMastodon talks about #Racism.

Or when #FemmeFedi talks about #Sexism.

It's like, dude, you don't see it because you're not the target. ‍

@tompearce49 @alice What that terrible and completely wrong saying was trying to tell us was that our feelings didn't matter. That we should suck it up and not miss work, because it's not like we broke a leg or something. So much about school is preparation to be a reliably productive worker, not a reliably good person. Those perfect attendance awards? To prepare you to never call out sick from work.