Hi All,

Tldr:

  • We are monitoring publically available information (posts, comments and DMs).
  • Monitoring is turned off as soon as the admin team are satisfied the user is legitimate.
  • will only temporary remove, no bans or deletion without a human being involved in the decision.
  • No user data is sent off to 3rd party tools, all processing is done on the instance server. No LLMs are involved.

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 harasser, they will be removed from the system.

We don’t want to go into too much detail on how it all works to prevent bad actors from bypassing it, 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.

  • UlrikHD@programming.devM
    111·
    24 days ago
    • We only monitor new users on our instance, the tool is written by the admin team and no personal data is sent out of the server. The tool operates on the server communicating directly with the lemmy database on the server.
    • Other instances have their methods I’m sure, we haven’t cooperated with any other instances with this tool. I’m sure there’s a spectrum of 100% pure manual moderation to a highly automated process.
    • The tool scans for typical patterns we see in the trolls. Some of the patterns I’m sure you can guess, such as using slurs or uploading images. The tool temporarily removes the content and pings the admin team so that we can manually verify the content and restore it.
    • No it’s a problem across the fediverse, it seems to be people being banned from various instances that creates new accounts to evade bans. We have seen harassment campaigns where the user creates new accounts on multiple instances and attacks the victim via comments and DMs before moving on to the next instance to repeat the harassment.
    • That would only fix the issue for the duration of new applications being closed.

    There isn’t anything new in regards to privacy with this move. We are just adding a tool to help flag content quicker, and we want to be transparent about out moderation. That’s why we made our admin guidelines public.

    • kingofras@lemmy.world
      49·
      24 days ago

      From what I’m gathering is that OP possibly should not be your spokesperson, as your wording sounds far less dystopian and controlling.

      I still don’t like it, but if you are disclosing it properly and you’re not offshoring the data that is monitored, that will earn you some goodwill.

      It really sounds like Lemmy software is trailing behind on keeping up with the bots.

      • UlrikHD@programming.devM
        81·
        24 days ago

        We will have a review of how we write posts and follow up in the comments later today to make sure we are clearer in our communication, and that we don’t end up with 3 different admins chiming in on separate comments.

        I still don’t like it, but if you are disclosing it properly and you’re not offshoring the data that is monitored, that will earn you some goodwill.

        We try to always make pinned announcements when making notable changes to our operation to keep the community informed. Any changes, minor or major, that we believe our users would want to know, we will always post about here.

        It really sounds like Lemmy software is trailing behind on keeping up with the bots.

        Lemmy is trailing behind when it comes to moderation tools just in general, which is what that is forcing us to make our own tools to help with moderation.