2 ms·

What are the practical alternatives? I'd imagine this is an issue one would see less often on a Mastodon node, as nodes tend to have fewer users per node so mod

What are the practical alternatives? I'd imagine this is an issue one would see less often on a Mastodon node, as nodes tend to have fewer users per node so moderators / admins can respond more promptly to system failures, and if one doesn't like how an admin is running affairs, one can switch nodes.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JacobThreeThree 4y ago
A federated system like Mastadon seems to be a good technical solution, but I think the more simple solution is to spend your valuable time on platforms that have better moderation, or invest in building your own website/platform.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  The proposed solution is simple, but the problem has always been audience and discovery. Even if you managed to find a perfect platform with a decent userbase, you would still need to rely on people sharing links to your content on the more widely known platforms. Very rarely do people stumble upon blogs and niche social media sites.
IshKebab 4y ago
Offer reasonable options to get it reinstated of course.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  I'm not sure what reasonable looks like when a system has 237 million daily active users and the reinstatement system itself would be intentionally gamed by adversaries. Do we have any examples to draw from operating at that scale? Due to the Musk purchase, we have a rare public disclosure of a major tech giant's internal workings where Twitter claims (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/07/twitter-says-it-suspends-1m-spam-users-a-day-as-elon-musk-dispute-deepens https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/07/twitter-s...) it suspends half a million spam accounts a day. It's trivial to file an appeal, so (because the attackers are by no means disincentivized from appealing) that's probably on the order of 250,000 appeals a day if we assume even half the banned won't bother (and I think that assumption is low, since a reasonable system should probably make it trivial to file an appeal, therefore people will). How does one reasonably handle that? To scale up to thousands of humans handling it, you'd need strict rules to even approximate getting the same result across everyone, and if strict rules worked you could code them into the auto-ban system. One solution might actually be "Stop having 'get every human being on the service' as a goal," but then sucks for the people who can't use the thing.
  - Multicomp 4y ago
    How about an escrow-style thing? "We charge $100 to have a human look at this case, if the suspension was incorrect we reinstate the account and your money. If not, we tell you what actions you can take that would un-violate our policies so you could be re-instated." Spammers doing selenium powered spam would never pay for that, but the real folks who are not tight with large audiences would have an option.
    - dzhiurgis 4y ago
      Kinda agree, but small nitpick - $100 in places where most selenium scraping is done is a ton of money. To compare would average joe in US put 1k towards escrow?
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      I believe there's meat on these bones. This is the approach some states in the US use for allowing challenge to election integrity if the vote count isn't narrow enough to automatically trigger a recount... A candidate who complains can put up the money to have an individual polling district recount the votes, and if the vote count comes out different enough to change the results, the money is refunded. I can't imagine Twitter could get away with this without it being interpreted by the regulatory bodies of various countries as a protection racket. Which is unfortunate, because I think there's potential here.
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    > It's trivial to file an appeal, so (because the attackers are by no means disincentivized from appealing) Well yeah, it's trivial to file an appeal if you just have to click a button, but obviously that's not what I was talking about. Have they tried literally anything else? Solve difficult CAPTCHAs, send a scan of your passport, pay a small amount of money (e.g. $1), put a large amount of money in escrow like someone else suggested, allow other well-known accounts to vouch for you, etc. etc. etc. There's a ton of things you could do. It seems like they've given up without trying any of them.
- freejazz 4y ago
  Even lawyers don't hide behind the word "reasonable" this much!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JacobThreeThree 4y ago

A federated system like Mastadon seems to be a good technical solution, but I think the more simple solution is to spend your valuable time on platforms that have better moderation, or invest in building your own website/platform.

BitwiseFool 4y ago
The proposed solution is simple, but the problem has always been audience and discovery. Even if you managed to find a perfect platform with a decent userbase, you would still need to rely on people sharing links to your content on the more widely known platforms. Very rarely do people stumble upon blogs and niche social media sites.

IshKebab 4y ago

Offer reasonable options to get it reinstated of course.

shadowgovt 4y ago
I'm not sure what reasonable looks like when a system has 237 million daily active users and the reinstatement system itself would be intentionally gamed by adversaries. Do we have any examples to draw from operating at that scale? Due to the Musk purchase, we have a rare public disclosure of a major tech giant's internal workings where Twitter claims (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/07/twitter-says-it-suspends-1m-spam-users-a-day-as-elon-musk-dispute-deepens https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/07/twitter-s...) it suspends half a million spam accounts a day. It's trivial to file an appeal, so (because the attackers are by no means disincentivized from appealing) that's probably on the order of 250,000 appeals a day if we assume even half the banned won't bother (and I think that assumption is low, since a reasonable system should probably make it trivial to file an appeal, therefore people will). How does one reasonably handle that? To scale up to thousands of humans handling it, you'd need strict rules to even approximate getting the same result across everyone, and if strict rules worked you could code them into the auto-ban system. One solution might actually be "Stop having 'get every human being on the service' as a goal," but then sucks for the people who can't use the thing.
- Multicomp 4y ago
  How about an escrow-style thing? "We charge $100 to have a human look at this case, if the suspension was incorrect we reinstate the account and your money. If not, we tell you what actions you can take that would un-violate our policies so you could be re-instated." Spammers doing selenium powered spam would never pay for that, but the real folks who are not tight with large audiences would have an option.
  - dzhiurgis 4y ago
    Kinda agree, but small nitpick - $100 in places where most selenium scraping is done is a ton of money. To compare would average joe in US put 1k towards escrow?
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    I believe there's meat on these bones. This is the approach some states in the US use for allowing challenge to election integrity if the vote count isn't narrow enough to automatically trigger a recount... A candidate who complains can put up the money to have an individual polling district recount the votes, and if the vote count comes out different enough to change the results, the money is refunded. I can't imagine Twitter could get away with this without it being interpreted by the regulatory bodies of various countries as a protection racket. Which is unfortunate, because I think there's potential here.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  > It's trivial to file an appeal, so (because the attackers are by no means disincentivized from appealing) Well yeah, it's trivial to file an appeal if you just have to click a button, but obviously that's not what I was talking about. Have they tried literally anything else? Solve difficult CAPTCHAs, send a scan of your passport, pay a small amount of money (e.g. $1), put a large amount of money in escrow like someone else suggested, allow other well-known accounts to vouch for you, etc. etc. etc. There's a ton of things you could do. It seems like they've given up without trying any of them.
freejazz 4y ago
Even lawyers don't hide behind the word "reasonable" this much!