There’s some heated discussion going on about a community dedicated to Donald Trump and, a few days ago, we started receiving concerning news about bot infested instances.
I believe there’s three additional settings for instance administrators which Lemmy could implement in the future and it’s probably worth discussing first. These would be :
- Block specific users or users from specific remote instances from creating new posts in local communities (or have them require approval).
- Block specific users or users from specific remote instances from writing comments to posts in local communities.
- Block specific users or users from specific remote instances from upvoting or downvoting posts and/or comments in local communities.
These options alone could allow concerned instance admins prevent brigading and content manipulation without necessarily defederating which should be left as a last-resort.
As a small instance admin myself I would be shooting myself in the foot if I were to block a very large instance, but maybe it would make sense to require approval for posts from certain remote users.
That said. One concern I have is that by having too many options we could make things much more confusing. But right now we have too few moderation options and I can’t think of other ways to keep federation while also having a way to prevent brigading or content manipulation.
I don’t think you can go too far with the amount of options for administration. These options sound very useful.
It could probably give admins a breather knowing that certain remote instances cannot manipulate local content, whether it’s controversial users or bot farms.
With the right tools, I’m sure it would also help knowing that an instance could run itself. For example, an instance using a tool to detect suspicious activity and using one of these options instead of something more extreme, like, as you mentioned, defederation.
Mastodon has settings similar to this. I think it’s just a matter of us implementing them. This would have to be a contribution directly to core. I’ll make note of it. Thanks!
