A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:
-
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 Tightly argued. Nice.
To the concern that it might deter some new users, I would add "yes, but if the alternative is lots more evil arseholes, it's a minor downside - especially as it is really only a downside for lazy new users".
We already have moderated follows at the user level; having moderated signups at the server level seems like a no-brainer.
-
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)
This is also well-known from hacker circles.
The absolute largest lump of malicious hackers only look for low-hanging fruit.
Dedicated hackers looking to penetrate a well-composed org? Very rare. And completely different from the bulk. This is what red team sessions are for.
-
@alice Tightly argued. Nice.
To the concern that it might deter some new users, I would add "yes, but if the alternative is lots more evil arseholes, it's a minor downside - especially as it is really only a downside for lazy new users".
We already have moderated follows at the user level; having moderated signups at the server level seems like a no-brainer.
-
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 how a single post post from a malicious actor can do much harm and that we have solution available right to prevent real harm are two great point
-
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 "... communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door."
This is a beautiful line and apropo of many situations. I will be adding that to my book of really useful ideas.
Thank you.
-
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 for the readers (I know Alice knows all this):
Perfection is not the enemy of the good. Any attempts to keep out the attackers are better than no attempts to keep out the attackers.
There's such a thing as defense-in-depth. You don't need your registration process to stop every attacker to get in the door. You have moderation tools. You have blacklists. You have defederation. You have TBS. Every attacker-stopper you add makes your instance safer.
Don't give up. Fight back.
-
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 it's very worth repeating, but wow it's frustrating going over this again and again. Nothing about what you're saying has changed in the past 30-odd years since sites with easy signup became a thing, but then every new platform does the same thing of having wide open signups from the start and is "totally shocked" when that leads to the same problems that have been happening for decades.
-
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 The harm caused when attackers are not screened never really goes away. I got attacked by Nazis on Twitter. I still feel it.
-
@alice The harm caused when attackers are not screened never really goes away. I got attacked by Nazis on Twitter. I still feel it.
@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.
-
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)
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.
on its face this is just an awful argument, like ???
99.9% of nazis won't even bother doing that... so it weeds out the vast majority of them
and that's what you have other moderation practices for!!
-
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)
In one of the comments, I read defederation as defenestration
-
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
Much love for all of your efforts and those of all moderators, you make this place what it is
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@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.
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@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.
@wolfinpdx @tompearce49 @alice
My older brother never stopped, but the school bullies did when I fought back (ludicrously, pathetically).
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@alice The harm caused when attackers are not screened never really goes away. I got attacked by Nazis on Twitter. I still feel it.
@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.
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@Twotired oh no! Poor Mark 🥺
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@w_b tbf, that's a valid defense against Nazis too
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@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 @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.
