cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/51288619

Hi All,

Due to some ongoing issues with harassment campaigns, we've had to setup a rudimentary monitoring system for all new users.

• When a user's signup is accepted, they will be automatically enrolled into the monitoring system. The admins team may also add accounts manually if they have been given a strike.
• The system will monitor all posts, comments and DMs sent by new users, and bring them to the attention of the admin team if it appears suspicious. In egregious cases, it will auto-remove posts and comments if required, but a human admin will always review and reverse any false positives as soon as required.
• Once we have validated that the user is not a spammer, they will be removed from the system.

We don't want to go into too much detail on how it all works, but we can say that all the processing is being done locally on the instance server.
For most of you, this wont have any impact, but some of you have been impacted by the systems false positives. It is also a good time to point out that DM messages are not private, and should not be used for anything that requires strong privacy.

There will likely be teething problems, but we are actively working on improving the bot to minimize impact and we are always open to feedback.

For context this is for programming.dev specifially and affects our users rather than something on any fediverse software (figured I would mention that since it was cross posted into the main fediverse com with no context)

Reposting my answer to a comment on the main p.d post just so theres no confusion on this

• Processing is local. Were not sending data to an LLM but the method is hidden so bad actors cant bypass it
• The things that are checked are public (posts, comments, and dms that are also sent to other servers we dont control) and can be moderated on regardless of this. There isnt anything that breaches privacy
• Worst thing it can automatically do is temporarily remove a post/comment until an admin can approve or deny it just so its not there for people to run into (for example if someone spams slurs at someone else the someone else doesnt see that instead of it being there until an admin is able to come online)

I posted this here for cross instance discussion. Based on your response here and in the original thread, I understand your decision a bit better. This is still worth flagging super instance, both in terms of the admin-cultural way to deal with it, if there is stuff we could do on a software level and as an example of how not to communicate such information to the community.

Fair enough. Could you edit your crossposts to the new version of the post that has some clarifications just so there's no misscommunication about this anywhere (you could put the original under a lemmy spoiler block which turns it into a dropdown for people that want to see original wording, details on how to do that here https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/02-media.html. Or some other way you want)

I can’t edit them on my client. The way they are Crossposted here is if the OP is updated, the Crosspost also updates as it is just a link without body.

Uh. I kinda dislike all these closed-source additional moderating systems flange-mounted to the Fediverse. I think in the long-term, we should come up with a good system with good effectiveness, plus (/despite of) transparency, and share it amongst the entire Fediverse.

Who is "we" here? This would be something that would be up to an individual instance surely?

Programming.dev instance only

That's actually a good idea if they're dealing with such campaigns. See it as the moderators (wo exist either way) directing their attention to places where violations are more likely to happen. Sure, DM monitoring sounds a bit intrusive, but admins reading your DMs was always a possibility and with the right user education, it shouldn't be an issue.

When I posted this the OP read like a dystopian sci-fi announcement.

The way it worded now is an improvement but there is still a serious technological handicap ingrained in the platform which makes this seemingly necessary.

We are struggling gaining any meaningful MAU growth afaik, so if some of those new people are treated as “we assume you’re a bot or malicious actor until proven innocent”, that’s only going to hamper platform growth.

It would have been nice if OP had included that key piece of information in the title given that we're not even on programming.dev