Hello everyone, We unfortunately have to close the !lemmyshitpost community for
the time being. We have been fighting the CSAM (Child Sexual Assault Material)
posts all day but there is nothing we can do because they will just post from
another instance since we changed our registration policy. We keep working on a
solution, we have a few things in the works but that won’t help us now. Thank
you for your understanding and apologies to our users, moderators and admins of
other instances who had to deal with this. Edit: @Striker@lemmy.world
[https://lemmy.world/u/Striker] the moderator of the affected community made a
post apologizing for what happened. But this could not be stopped even with 10
moderators. And if it wasn’t his community it would have been another one. And
it is clear this could happen on any instance. The only thing that could have
prevented this is better moderation tools. And while a lot of the instance
admins have been asking for this, it doesn’t seem to be on the developers
roadmap for the time being. There are just two full-time developers on this
project and they seem to have other priorities. No offense to them but it
doesn’t inspire much faith for the future of Lemmy. But we will not give up. We
are lucky to have a very dedicated team and we can hopefully make an
announcement about what’s next very soon.
OK, I am going to take a minute away from the shit stirring and potentially provide some insight speaking as an admin who’s had the misfortune of dealing with this so I can maybe shift this comment section into an actually meaningful discussion.
You can have your own opinion and feelings against lemmy.world but, this?
The only thing that could have prevented this is better moderation tools. And while a lot of the instance admins have been asking for this, it doesn’t seem to be on the developers roadmap for the time being. There are just two full-time developers on this project and they seem to have other priorities. No offense to them but it doesn’t inspire much faith for the future of Lemmy.
This is correct. Most lemmy admins likely agree as well, I don’t speak for anyone but myself but I can say that I think it would be hard to find someone who disagreed. What happened today is a result of a catastrophic failure on lemmys end, with issues that should have been addressed over a month ago just being completely ignored. The lemmy devs shared a roadmap during their AMA & they essentially were more concerned with making shit go faster… that’s about it.
Okay, honest question. What mod tools are lacking. If there’s something needed, what is that thing or things?
I went over to the feature request page for Lemmy and I couldn’t find anything massive in terms of requests for moderation tools that would have been sure fire ways to stop this particular event.
That said, there is over 400 open feature requests alone on Lemmy’s github. I obviously couldn’t go through every single one. But coming from the kbin side I’m just curious about our Lemmy brothers and sisters. It sounds dire and I’m woefully under informed on how bad it is.
There aren’t enough roles. There’s admin, moderator, and user, but it would be best to have tiers of user in between. Reports go to 4 categories of user when you file a report. Report a comment for violating a fun rule your community decided to implement (all post titles must contain “Jon Bois Rules!”)? That report goes to: the community moderators (good), the community’s host instance’s admin (bad), your instance’s admin (bad), the user who posted the “offending post”'s instance’s admin (bad).
Only admins can permanently remove illegal content. If a mod “removes” it, it still sits visible to all in modlog, and for the purposes of CSAM specifically, that counts as distribution which is prosecuted as a worse crime than possession. Federation with other instances is effectively binary. You can or cannot federate, you cannot set traffic as unidirectional like you can on most other fediverse platforms. The modlogs make it hard to parse who the moderator performing an action is acting on the behalf of. Was it a community mod? An admin? Your admin?
There’s more but my phone is getting low on battery
Agreed, I don’t know what AutoMod did on Reddit but if what mods need is a rule-configurable post remover then I’d be happy to clobber together something in Python
If you’ve really got the time and energy I think you would see pretty heavy use of such a tool. I think the existing libraries are definitely mature enough. I’ve been surprised that nobody has done it already
I don’t know this for sure, but I have a feeling that a hard fork is in Lemmy’s future. I don’t want to get super into it, but programming is a form of communication. What features you bake into a platform are reflective of the messages you want to propogate on that platform. Lemmy’s devs vision for what the platform should be might not be reflective of what most of us might think it should be. The moderation tools might not be a focus for a while, even if most of us view that as the greatest need
I agree with @Cube6392@beehaw.org, if modtools (one of the reasons for Reddit API protests in the first place) aren’t being prioritized, a hard fork of Lemmy will be inevitable. I know the Lemmy devs are known for being strangely hardheaded about certain issues.
They have shifted gears recently and been pretty receptive to this major critique. Things are going in a much better direction now that 2 months have passed. If I can find the AMA I will link you.
Yeah, unfortunately took a rapid shift away and my optimism is gone. A hard fork is being made from scratch in a new programming language, that I am actively involved in whatever way I can be.
OK, I am going to take a minute away from the shit stirring and potentially provide some insight speaking as an admin who’s had the misfortune of dealing with this so I can maybe shift this comment section into an actually meaningful discussion.
You can have your own opinion and feelings against lemmy.world but, this?
This is correct. Most lemmy admins likely agree as well, I don’t speak for anyone but myself but I can say that I think it would be hard to find someone who disagreed. What happened today is a result of a catastrophic failure on lemmys end, with issues that should have been addressed over a month ago just being completely ignored. The lemmy devs shared a roadmap during their AMA & they essentially were more concerned with making shit go faster… that’s about it.
Okay, honest question. What mod tools are lacking. If there’s something needed, what is that thing or things?
I went over to the feature request page for Lemmy and I couldn’t find anything massive in terms of requests for moderation tools that would have been sure fire ways to stop this particular event.
That said, there is over 400 open feature requests alone on Lemmy’s github. I obviously couldn’t go through every single one. But coming from the kbin side I’m just curious about our Lemmy brothers and sisters. It sounds dire and I’m woefully under informed on how bad it is.
There aren’t enough roles. There’s admin, moderator, and user, but it would be best to have tiers of user in between. Reports go to 4 categories of user when you file a report. Report a comment for violating a fun rule your community decided to implement (all post titles must contain “Jon Bois Rules!”)? That report goes to: the community moderators (good), the community’s host instance’s admin (bad), your instance’s admin (bad), the user who posted the “offending post”'s instance’s admin (bad).
Only admins can permanently remove illegal content. If a mod “removes” it, it still sits visible to all in modlog, and for the purposes of CSAM specifically, that counts as distribution which is prosecuted as a worse crime than possession. Federation with other instances is effectively binary. You can or cannot federate, you cannot set traffic as unidirectional like you can on most other fediverse platforms. The modlogs make it hard to parse who the moderator performing an action is acting on the behalf of. Was it a community mod? An admin? Your admin?
There’s more but my phone is getting low on battery
Agreed, I don’t know what AutoMod did on Reddit but if what mods need is a rule-configurable post remover then I’d be happy to clobber together something in Python
There’s this bot that is used in a couple of communities on feddit.de:
https://github.com/Dakkaron/SquareModBot
Oh great! This was literally how I envisioned my python script – JSON config file and all
If you’ve really got the time and energy I think you would see pretty heavy use of such a tool. I think the existing libraries are definitely mature enough. I’ve been surprised that nobody has done it already
Nice, do you happen to remember what the most popular moderation rules were? So far I can think of:
I have exams in September but if I get a free day it should be enough to get something working
As in Python Lemmy libraries?
Yep. That’s what I’ve been looking at at least
Here’s some things Beehaw admind have been asking for from moderation since June: https://beehaw.org/comment/397674
See github issues #3255 and #3275
I don’t know this for sure, but I have a feeling that a hard fork is in Lemmy’s future. I don’t want to get super into it, but programming is a form of communication. What features you bake into a platform are reflective of the messages you want to propogate on that platform. Lemmy’s devs vision for what the platform should be might not be reflective of what most of us might think it should be. The moderation tools might not be a focus for a while, even if most of us view that as the greatest need
As an admin, how do kbin moderation tools compare?
Also does lemmy.world have the spare cash to offer cash for features?
Kbin moderation tools are worse. And potentially. I guess a bug bounty could be started up.
EDIT: my app attached my reply to the wrong comment. Please ignore in this context
Got a link to this AMA? Couldn’t find it.
I agree with @Cube6392@beehaw.org, if modtools (one of the reasons for Reddit API protests in the first place) aren’t being prioritized, a hard fork of Lemmy will be inevitable. I know the Lemmy devs are known for being strangely hardheaded about certain issues.
They have shifted gears recently and been pretty receptive to this major critique. Things are going in a much better direction now that 2 months have passed. If I can find the AMA I will link you.
OP never delivered. :'(
Yeah, unfortunately took a rapid shift away and my optimism is gone. A hard fork is being made from scratch in a new programming language, that I am actively involved in whatever way I can be.