The current "Nicole the fediverse chick" spam wave once again highlights how woefully inadequate Mastodon's moderation tools are.

If there were a way to set up some filters that automatically flag all posts or accounts matching a pattern for manual review, maybe with the option to apply some preliminary action (hide posts or accounts) until review, we could just catch all accounts with usernames "@ nicole (digit digit)" automatically and be done with it.

#MastoMod

Seriously, Eugen – I would tag him, but .social blocked me for criticising him one time too many –, seriously, you need to focus less on "growth" and making Mastodon look like Twitter, stop wasting effort on micromanaging design (cough hashtag bar, cough content note hazard bars), and refocus towards moderation.

Or to put it in words Mastodon gGmbH understands: "growth" is impossible to achieve if "your" network gets a reputation for being a spam-ridden hellhole.

Take a look at the development of email spam filters and take some lessons.

#MastoMod

What Mastodon needs, in one shape or form or another, and better sooner than later, is a comprehensive API that allows third-party extensions to interact with incoming and outgoing traffic.

It must be(come) possible for instances to implement features that automatically filter, report, flag for review, etc. received and sent (and locally created) posts, without having to rewrite and recompile the entire Mastodon software themselves.

There will never be complete consensus on what's needed for moderation, and both implementing options for all ideas, or just implementing the most "popular" (hard to determine on a decentralised network) suggestions, will leave many, many users and admins unsatisfied.

Opening up an interface to plug their own moderation tools into is the only feasible way that moderation can be improved in the way each instance wants while separating the development of moderation tools from the development of Mastodon itself.

Developing a perfect moderation tools suite that as many admins as possible are happy with is a workload Mastodon gGmbH can't handle, but leaving the tools as woefully inadequate as they are right now is a reputational damage the fediverse, as widely synonymous with Mastodon as it sadly is in the eyes of the public, can't handle.

Dear Eugen, do something.

#MastoMod

Want an example of differing needs?

I would love to have a feature that, whenever a new instance makes contact (sends a post or reaction), "quarantines" that instance, that is, silences it immediately and flags it for manual review by the mods. That would, imo, massively cut down on spam and unmoderated bad actors and represent the best compromise between allowlist federation and unrestricted federation where every jojo can spin up a new instance every day.

Others have told me this is a terrible idea that will surely kill the entire fediverse and I'm a horrible, censorship-loving isolationist for suggesting it (you know who you are, not that you can read this post).

With a moderation API as I propose, both of us could implement our respective ideas of moderation without taking the fight to the developers.

#MastoMod

@amberage The thing that might here exists already in other software. MRF can do a lot of stuff in pleroma/akkoma and could likely mitigate a lot of the spam.

There is a issue open here: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/29252 But when and if something like this can or will be integrated into mastodon. Or something else.

There would be other mitigation which might prevent spam but is not popular with bigger instances since it adds friction: Have limited sign-ups where someone needs to approve an account. Then spammers just could not register accounts. But what do I know

Lets hope something is done since this does not only affect mastodon but the whole fediverse and that nothing gets done is frustrating

@stefan heh. We've had our sign-ups closed for ages. But everyone else is so morbidly obsessed with "growth", persuading others to close theirs or even switch to manual approval is impossible.

@amberage I have approvals on mine (not that I have any other users beside me lol)

I think approvals are like the nice middle ground. The only problem is you need someone to fish through the signups and approve or disapprove them.

MRF could solve a lot without the need to close signups. Maybe in a few years we might get it