“Write a bit about yourself to join this server and if we decide you’re too boring and normal we’ll reject your application and say you’re a spammer afterwards”
Hmm I wonder why normies aren’t flocking to these fediverse platforms, what could be stopping them, couldn’t be the shitty onboarding process could it? Nah asking people to apply is the best onboarding process ever (obvious big ass /s)
I tried to join Beehaw simply because a reddit community I was actively part in went there.
I got told that’s not a valid reason to join, and that further applications from me would be ignored. I mean… okay? Sure… guess I’m no longer part of that community.
I just created this account. I went to Lemmy.world to make a new one and it said I need to fill out an application. I laughed. Get out of here with that nonsense.
It is bullshit and it will hurt Lemmy and the fediverse greatly in the long term since they’ve effectively crippled the onboarding process and turned their instance into a club.
It doesn’t that was the point of my comment, it is sarcastic, because asking normies to write about themselves then manually determine their worth before they join will exclude the vast majority of them. Applications are how you run exclusive clubs, not a social media platform. Which is the biggest reason the Fediverse sucks for regular people.
I don’t want to join a club, I want to join a regular platform. That’s why I joined discuss.online and not any of the other exclusive club instances.
Yeah it’s actually a much bigger problem here than it is on Mastodon. Probably will end up slowing adoption of Lemmy in the future. Especially considering Lemmy is one of those platforms that really needs normie content and normie interaction to keep going, something it’s really struggling at currently.
It also acts as a filter to keep threat actors and spammers out. Open sign ups are actually a bad thing for the overall health of the network. Yes it also keeps out the lowest common denominator normies but those aren’t exactly the ones who contribute to the network as a whole anyway
This isn’t capitalism, there isn’t a need for growth for growth’s sake. There does need to be a more simplified way to onboard users but not at the cost of the health of the network.
Open sign ups are actually a bad thing for the overall health of the network. Yes it also keeps out the lowest common denominator normies but those aren’t exactly the ones who contribute to the network as a whole anyway
This is an elitist mentality that harms the health of the network on its own by limiting the amount of people who interact on the platform and post. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, turning the Fediverse into a club is a horrible way to create a platform where people interact with each other like a social media, because the nature of clubs is that they are small and exclusive.
This isn’t capitalism, there isn’t a need for growth for growth’s sake.
Please don’t mischaracterize the demand for having people interacting on the platform and with as something capitalist, or big tech only for making money, it’s disingenuous because people want to have their posts seen by other people, why else would they even post them publicly? Having more people makes a platform more lively, and having more people voting makes content shift and flow.
Let’s face it, small exclusive clubs are one of the biggest reasons Fediverse hasn’t taken off. And it makes sense since if you don’t let normies in and treat it like a club the place will be dead as fuck and have very few people interacting. Only reason its active now is because many instances used to be open and gained userbases.
There does need to be a more simplified way to onboard users but not at the cost of the health of the network.
No, we don’t need something new and convoluted, that’ll just push out the normies who want to be here or make them not want to. We need to take the page out of big tech’s book, let people and spammers signup freely, and ban the spammers automatically.
No one wants to do this, they want to invent new solutions that are unfriendly, or just kick out normies and then complain that this place is sooooo dead. Stick to what works, it wouldn’t have been done that way on the OG centralized social media if it didn’t work.
Also don’t conflate assholes/trolls with spammers, that’s disingenuous as fuck both because you are over-inflating the spam problem to make your elitist solution seem more appealing and also because the solution does not work for both types of people.
You’re not going to stop all or even most assholes or trolls by asking them questions, they can lie dumbass have you forgotten that or do you think Instance admins are divine beings who can’t be lied to, if Reddit admins aren’t Lemmy admins sure as fuck aren’t.
Some of the biggest assholes I’ve met on Lemmy are on instances with applications, it DOES NOT WORK AGAINST THEM.
I appreciate your take and the thought put into the reply. I don’t mean to gatekeep the fediverse to keep normies out because that isn’t my desire at all. Merely my stance is while I believe that low engagement is very undesirable, high volume of scammers/spammers are equally undesirable.
I’m also thinking of things from a moderator/instance owner point of view where trying to defend your instance from illegal activity, spam, and harmful content is greatly increased by having open sign ups. If the majority of engagement on your posts are from pussy in bio accounts then that is a put off from the end user as well.
Trolls and assholes will always get through if they are motivated enough, fediverse platforms usually gives the end user enough tools to block them.
Your perspective has a lot of valid points as well, I think that there is a compromise somewhere that is slightly more effective than a simple captcha that could also streamline onboarding and validating users. I don’t know if it’s as easy as you suggest to ban spammers automatically but I’m all ears for hearing solutions. I think the fediverse is especially equipped for cooperation that could make that kind of automoderation more successful than on legacy socials
I don’t want the fediverse to be an exclusive club, I am already annoyed about how things can be an echo chamber even worse than legacy socials here at times. My hope that bridges and utilities will come that help people follow each other from bluesky/mastodon and allow account migrations from either as well.
I’m also thinking of things from a moderator/instance owner point of view where trying to defend your instance from illegal activity, spam, and harmful content is greatly increased by having open sign ups. If the majority of engagement on your posts are from pussy in bio accounts then that is a put off from the end user as well.
I don’t particularly agree that it’s “greatly increased” by it. I’m on a server with them and I don’t see that much many more spammers. It seems like fearful hyperbole, I’m not saying there aren’t any I’ve certainly seen a few but it’s not as common as most people think it is.
Your perspective has a lot of valid points as well, I think that there is a compromise somewhere that is slightly more effective than a simple captcha that could also streamline onboarding and validating users. I don’t know if it’s as easy as you suggest to ban spammers automatically but I’m all ears for hearing solutions. I think the fediverse is especially equipped for cooperation that could make that kind of automoderation more successful than on legacy socials
Proof of Work Captchas are very effective when it comes to stopping or slowing down bots, while not impacting regular users much if at all.
As for banning spammers automatically it is very easy to set up scripts that ban people for rapid posting, malicious links (bio, posts, comments, DMs), as well as words or phrases associated with spam (buy my Tshirt, check out my OF, see my pussy in my bio). For illegal content, image hashes can be used to automatically purge images and data that is known from the server, while simultaneously banning the people doing it. Rate limiting of suspicious IPs are also another way.
There’s probably some more ones that can be done, as well as ways to improve these methods, point is they aren’t new, and they improve the situation for new users who can sign up easily and instantly without worry of rejection or too high expectation.
The big thing about these (except for captchas and PoW) is that they are post-signup methods that catch the people doing it in the act. It might seem like a loss for some since you don’t stop them from signing up at all but you need to remember. Spammers don’t give up, they don’t stop, they don’t care, real normie users do though. You can increase the bar and make them seem to disappear, but then you also lose the flow of real users, as most of them are filtered out or quit. Detecting and purging them automatically is the best way to combat them, captcha and PoW stop people using scripts for batch signup but banning them automatically when they start. If done right, spammers would be auto-banned after a few seconds of spamming or account setup depending which flags they trip first.
I don’t particularly agree that it’s “greatly increased” by it. I’m on a server with them and I don’t see that much many more spammers. It seems like fearful hyperbole, I’m not saying there aren’t any I’ve certainly seen a few but it’s not as common as most people think it is.
My mastodon instance rarely ever sees spam despite having open signups either. Maybe my problem is I’m worried about future problems rather than the current state of how things are. My concern comes from personal experience with legacy socials like facebook and twitter when it comes to spam that I report and the frustration of when I get the automoderation notification back and they determine it didn’t break their guidelines.
I don’t want the cesspool of spam to become a problem on the fediverse as these experiences were a major reason I decided to join it.
I appreciate your comments again. You’ve softened how I feel on the challenge of balancing open user sign ups with moderating malicious users.
At least on the Fediverse when it comes to that most platforms will take spam more seriously than monopolized media, since even if they ignore their users they’ll listen to other admins, and if they don’t they become less popular. But there needs to be an initiative to improve on what big tech as done, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Agreed. If someone can’t be bothered to write two sentences, they really have no business being on a discussion platform. Because clearly they won’t be contributing much if anything to the conversation.
Great, so you want to join a club instead of a social media? Is that it? Because that’s what you’re advocating for, small private clubs which most normies don’t have enough interest to join, out of fear of being rejected or just being rejected multiple times anyway. “Wonder why it’s so empty here?” -Lemmy Users trying to figure out why their exclusive Lemmy clubs haven’t taken off.
Most people aren’t satisfied with Lemmy’s very small and stagnant growth, and I can say I’m one of them, asking people to prove their worth and rejecting them for being a normie is a horrible strategy for growth.
Users don’t cost much to keep around, especially if they don’t post. The data needed for the account would be authentication data, and post data, the second of which doesn’t apply to users who don’t post, and the first one being negligible compared to the amount of space available on a common hard drive. So, why not just give them a chance?
The proponents of application registration are elitists who believe that the Fediverse should be run like the most toxic and exclusive club ever known to man, like, the kind you see in movies with bouncers who will assault you for walking past the place, not even trying to get inside.
They try and argue about network health, and continue to bring up the boogeyman of spam, but the reality is that they are elitist and want a specific user group on the Fediverse while keeping everyone else out, and they want everyone else to do it too. The fact of the matter is that what they are doing and encouraging is more harmful to this place than anything else, because without normies, this place is a ghost town.
Oh and spam can be dealt with without kicking out normies, I’ve outlined that systems which automatically ban spammers and purge their spam would work mostly the same as they do on the big tech platforms that almost without exception have open registrations. So stop using the spam boogeyman, it’s an invented problem to justify your elitism and we see right through it.
So many of the people who are most invested in federation are a contradiction in terms; centralized social media is evil and it’s fucked up that it’s the norm, but also anyone who isn’t a cynical, crotchety Gen Xer with a tech degree doesn’t belong on federated social media.
Talk shit about normies all you want but they’re most of the people who repost memes and give communities life, you can’t cut them out and expect to have a thriving community. These practices of elitism and exclusion are the reason why Mastodon and the fediverse as a whole are stagnating.
“Write a bit about yourself to join this server and if we decide you’re too boring and normal we’ll reject your application and say you’re a spammer afterwards”
Hmm I wonder why normies aren’t flocking to these fediverse platforms, what could be stopping them, couldn’t be the shitty onboarding process could it? Nah asking people to apply is the best onboarding process ever (obvious big ass /s)
I tried to join Beehaw simply because a reddit community I was actively part in went there.
I got told that’s not a valid reason to join, and that further applications from me would be ignored. I mean… okay? Sure… guess I’m no longer part of that community.
Beehaw sucks, they embraced the exclusive club mentality harder than anyone else.
Does beehaw no longer federate? Otherwise you can reach that community from lemmy.world and be a part of it you know.
No, they don’t federate any more at all I think.
I just created this account. I went to Lemmy.world to make a new one and it said I need to fill out an application. I laughed. Get out of here with that nonsense.
It is bullshit and it will hurt Lemmy and the fediverse greatly in the long term since they’ve effectively crippled the onboarding process and turned their instance into a club.
Many Lemmy instances are requiring their users to apply for an account.
And that makes it better how?
It doesn’t that was the point of my comment, it is sarcastic, because asking normies to write about themselves then manually determine their worth before they join will exclude the vast majority of them. Applications are how you run exclusive clubs, not a social media platform. Which is the biggest reason the Fediverse sucks for regular people.
I don’t want to join a club, I want to join a regular platform. That’s why I joined discuss.online and not any of the other exclusive club instances.
Yeah. I somehow caught that. I wasn’t responding to you.
It lowers the barrier of entry which may deter some people who just want to check out the space first.
Granted, it also makes it more accessible to scammers, so give and take really.
Yeah it’s actually a much bigger problem here than it is on Mastodon. Probably will end up slowing adoption of Lemmy in the future. Especially considering Lemmy is one of those platforms that really needs normie content and normie interaction to keep going, something it’s really struggling at currently.
It also acts as a filter to keep threat actors and spammers out. Open sign ups are actually a bad thing for the overall health of the network. Yes it also keeps out the lowest common denominator normies but those aren’t exactly the ones who contribute to the network as a whole anyway
This isn’t capitalism, there isn’t a need for growth for growth’s sake. There does need to be a more simplified way to onboard users but not at the cost of the health of the network.
This is an elitist mentality that harms the health of the network on its own by limiting the amount of people who interact on the platform and post. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, turning the Fediverse into a club is a horrible way to create a platform where people interact with each other like a social media, because the nature of clubs is that they are small and exclusive.
Please don’t mischaracterize the demand for having people interacting on the platform and with as something capitalist, or big tech only for making money, it’s disingenuous because people want to have their posts seen by other people, why else would they even post them publicly? Having more people makes a platform more lively, and having more people voting makes content shift and flow.
Let’s face it, small exclusive clubs are one of the biggest reasons Fediverse hasn’t taken off. And it makes sense since if you don’t let normies in and treat it like a club the place will be dead as fuck and have very few people interacting. Only reason its active now is because many instances used to be open and gained userbases.
No, we don’t need something new and convoluted, that’ll just push out the normies who want to be here or make them not want to. We need to take the page out of big tech’s book, let people and spammers signup freely, and ban the spammers automatically. No one wants to do this, they want to invent new solutions that are unfriendly, or just kick out normies and then complain that this place is sooooo dead. Stick to what works, it wouldn’t have been done that way on the OG centralized social media if it didn’t work.
Also don’t conflate assholes/trolls with spammers, that’s disingenuous as fuck both because you are over-inflating the spam problem to make your elitist solution seem more appealing and also because the solution does not work for both types of people. You’re not going to stop all or even most assholes or trolls by asking them questions, they can lie dumbass have you forgotten that or do you think Instance admins are divine beings who can’t be lied to, if Reddit admins aren’t Lemmy admins sure as fuck aren’t. Some of the biggest assholes I’ve met on Lemmy are on instances with applications, it DOES NOT WORK AGAINST THEM.
I appreciate your take and the thought put into the reply. I don’t mean to gatekeep the fediverse to keep normies out because that isn’t my desire at all. Merely my stance is while I believe that low engagement is very undesirable, high volume of scammers/spammers are equally undesirable.
I’m also thinking of things from a moderator/instance owner point of view where trying to defend your instance from illegal activity, spam, and harmful content is greatly increased by having open sign ups. If the majority of engagement on your posts are from pussy in bio accounts then that is a put off from the end user as well.
Trolls and assholes will always get through if they are motivated enough, fediverse platforms usually gives the end user enough tools to block them.
Your perspective has a lot of valid points as well, I think that there is a compromise somewhere that is slightly more effective than a simple captcha that could also streamline onboarding and validating users. I don’t know if it’s as easy as you suggest to ban spammers automatically but I’m all ears for hearing solutions. I think the fediverse is especially equipped for cooperation that could make that kind of automoderation more successful than on legacy socials
I don’t want the fediverse to be an exclusive club, I am already annoyed about how things can be an echo chamber even worse than legacy socials here at times. My hope that bridges and utilities will come that help people follow each other from bluesky/mastodon and allow account migrations from either as well.
I don’t particularly agree that it’s “greatly increased” by it. I’m on a server with them and I don’t see that much many more spammers. It seems like fearful hyperbole, I’m not saying there aren’t any I’ve certainly seen a few but it’s not as common as most people think it is.
Proof of Work Captchas are very effective when it comes to stopping or slowing down bots, while not impacting regular users much if at all. As for banning spammers automatically it is very easy to set up scripts that ban people for rapid posting, malicious links (bio, posts, comments, DMs), as well as words or phrases associated with spam (buy my Tshirt, check out my OF, see my pussy in my bio). For illegal content, image hashes can be used to automatically purge images and data that is known from the server, while simultaneously banning the people doing it. Rate limiting of suspicious IPs are also another way. There’s probably some more ones that can be done, as well as ways to improve these methods, point is they aren’t new, and they improve the situation for new users who can sign up easily and instantly without worry of rejection or too high expectation.
The big thing about these (except for captchas and PoW) is that they are post-signup methods that catch the people doing it in the act. It might seem like a loss for some since you don’t stop them from signing up at all but you need to remember. Spammers don’t give up, they don’t stop, they don’t care, real normie users do though. You can increase the bar and make them seem to disappear, but then you also lose the flow of real users, as most of them are filtered out or quit. Detecting and purging them automatically is the best way to combat them, captcha and PoW stop people using scripts for batch signup but banning them automatically when they start. If done right, spammers would be auto-banned after a few seconds of spamming or account setup depending which flags they trip first.
My mastodon instance rarely ever sees spam despite having open signups either. Maybe my problem is I’m worried about future problems rather than the current state of how things are. My concern comes from personal experience with legacy socials like facebook and twitter when it comes to spam that I report and the frustration of when I get the automoderation notification back and they determine it didn’t break their guidelines.
I don’t want the cesspool of spam to become a problem on the fediverse as these experiences were a major reason I decided to join it.
I appreciate your comments again. You’ve softened how I feel on the challenge of balancing open user sign ups with moderating malicious users.
At least on the Fediverse when it comes to that most platforms will take spam more seriously than monopolized media, since even if they ignore their users they’ll listen to other admins, and if they don’t they become less popular. But there needs to be an initiative to improve on what big tech as done, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Tbf it’s a good way to keep the laziest of shits out
Elitist neckbeards like you are why Mastodon and Lemmy are still boring
I DON’T RECALL GETTING A PAYCHECK TO POST
Agreed. If someone can’t be bothered to write two sentences, they really have no business being on a discussion platform. Because clearly they won’t be contributing much if anything to the conversation.
Great, so you want to join a club instead of a social media? Is that it? Because that’s what you’re advocating for, small private clubs which most normies don’t have enough interest to join, out of fear of being rejected or just being rejected multiple times anyway. “Wonder why it’s so empty here?” -Lemmy Users trying to figure out why their exclusive Lemmy clubs haven’t taken off.
Most people aren’t satisfied with Lemmy’s very small and stagnant growth, and I can say I’m one of them, asking people to prove their worth and rejecting them for being a normie is a horrible strategy for growth.
Users don’t cost much to keep around, especially if they don’t post. The data needed for the account would be authentication data, and post data, the second of which doesn’t apply to users who don’t post, and the first one being negligible compared to the amount of space available on a common hard drive. So, why not just give them a chance?
The proponents of application registration are elitists who believe that the Fediverse should be run like the most toxic and exclusive club ever known to man, like, the kind you see in movies with bouncers who will assault you for walking past the place, not even trying to get inside.
They try and argue about network health, and continue to bring up the boogeyman of spam, but the reality is that they are elitist and want a specific user group on the Fediverse while keeping everyone else out, and they want everyone else to do it too. The fact of the matter is that what they are doing and encouraging is more harmful to this place than anything else, because without normies, this place is a ghost town.
Oh and spam can be dealt with without kicking out normies, I’ve outlined that systems which automatically ban spammers and purge their spam would work mostly the same as they do on the big tech platforms that almost without exception have open registrations. So stop using the spam boogeyman, it’s an invented problem to justify your elitism and we see right through it.
What percentage of people who join platforms like Twitter or Bluesky actually post anything though?
So many of the people who are most invested in federation are a contradiction in terms; centralized social media is evil and it’s fucked up that it’s the norm, but also anyone who isn’t a cynical, crotchety Gen Xer with a tech degree doesn’t belong on federated social media.
Talk shit about normies all you want but they’re most of the people who repost memes and give communities life, you can’t cut them out and expect to have a thriving community. These practices of elitism and exclusion are the reason why Mastodon and the fediverse as a whole are stagnating.