Post #1186677

2025-11-04 19:24 UTC

https://mas.to/@markwyner/115489852379410925 In this thread, this mod complains about users who are angry about a Nazi making an account, defends the mod team from criticism, and repeats that closed registration is not an option. At no point does the mod apologize or admit fault on behalf of the team. Now obviously the instance policy is not the doing of that sole mod so no, he's not individually responsible for what happened. But the team is. Open registration makes so much more work for the rest of us, putting the burden on the network of smaller instances to clean things up due to the few massive instances that, as @welshpixie pointed out, prioritize growth over safety in their choice to maintain open registration. Several notorious serial harassers who show up in fediblock literally every week wouldn't be able to keep up their harassment without instances like mas.to, mastodon.social, mstdn.social, and others with open registration. That policy allows these stalkers to make hundreds (not an exaggeration) of alt accounts for free, quickly. Their large size also punishes our users when we are forced to defed them to keep our users safe, cutting them off from many mutuals and also limiting the reach of their fundraising posts (which as I have previously stated are more prevalent on BQL due to the impact of employment discrimination, institutional racism, etc on all Black queers). This is what it means to enable abuse. This is what complicity looks like. It brings me no joy to have to say this, but it's the truth. #FediBlockMeta

Replies (3)

@amelia@gts.spoonstack.org 2025-11-04 19:44

@tillshadeisgone @welshpixie flips through her extensive collection of ready-to-tap signs Ah yes, this one: https://ideas.starshipgender.com/quotes/non-apology.html

Open ##1483726
@shiri@foggyminds.com 2025-11-04 19:57

@tillshadeisgone @welshpixie I had my instance on open registration until last year (closed because I couldn't guarantee reliability until after I moved to someplace safer)... and honestly it's a hard balancing act. Those with open registration are the fediverse evangelists trying to grow the network and usually with the awareness that any friction in registration will drastically reduce adoption... But then you get situations like this which are an extremely valid reason against... Given that the open registration problem won't practically go away outside of whitelist only networks (which are inherently very small)... we really need better tools to manage these instances from the outside (since we can't control the inside) I'm genuinely curious what ideas people have that could help? I've been mulling over the idea of figuring out a system for collaborating on blocklists so moderators or users who trust eachother can expand their response time and power to quickly shut down these problem users. (Yes, I'm aware that blocklists also get used to compile lists of people for various reasons, but that's just assholes using a random tool that's not even good at that job) This makes me think that maybe we need settings on the various platforms to do things like hide users under a certain age. Or maybe blocklists of problem email addresses so they can be blocked from registration without also having to set up a new email account?

Open ##1483727
@jpaskaruk@growers.social 2025-11-04 20:45

@tillshadeisgone @welshpixie What I don't understand... what are they getting out of running the near-largest instance, anyways? Is it just pure ego? Have they convinced themselves there will be ?????+PROFIT some point?

Open ##1483736