this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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FediLore + Fedidrama

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Chronicle the life and tale of the fediverse (+ matrix)

Largely a sublemmy about capturing drama, from fediverse spanning drama to just lemmy drama.

Includes lore like how a instance got it's name, how an instance got defederated, how an admin got doxxed, fedihistory etc

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Tags: fediverse news, lemmy news, lemmyverse

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's this bot that is used in a couple of communities on feddit.de:

https://github.com/Dakkaron/SquareModBot

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Oh great! This was literally how I envisioned my python script – JSON config file and all

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Nice, do you happen to remember what the most popular moderation rules were? So far I can think of:

  • Minimum karma/account age to post/comment
  • Post title must contain X

I have exams in September but if I get a free day it should be enough to get something working

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Wait does lemmy have reporting functionality, so you could use some type of number of reports?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

existing libraries

As in Python Lemmy libraries?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yep. That's what I've been looking at at least

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As an admin, how do kbin moderation tools compare?

Also does lemmy.world have the spare cash to offer cash for features?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Kbin moderation tools are worse. And potentially. I guess a bug bounty could be started up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

EDIT: my app attached my reply to the wrong comment. Please ignore in this context

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was worded a harshly but I'm happy to see you jump in here @[email protected] <3

To users this might seem like it came out of the blue but instance admins know this is has been a big issue for months. The "roadmap" they shared was indeed, optimize the database queries to make things go brrrr, get more funding and update join-lemmy.org

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

100%, ultimately there might be disagreements amongst admins over many things but this is something that there is clear unity on and I felt important to establish it. Hell, I've disagreed with lemmy.world's decisions on numerous fronts as well which you already know. I think the harshness is understandable as well, given you know

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Got a link to this AMA? Couldn't find it.

I agree with @[email protected], 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

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.