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.
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.