Moderation. It’s a roller coaster.
Today, a (literal) nazi opened an account and began harassing people. We received ~80 reports within minutes. That may be a record.
We suspended the account, of course. But not before a lot of people yelled at us. For the record, this is not preventable when registration is open. We can only react. So be nice.
My gratitude and love for the person behind this report. It made me chuckle. 🫶🏻
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This entry was edited (2 months ago)
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Vincent 🌻🇪🇺 en 🌹☘️
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Vincent 🌻🇪🇺 en 🌹☘️ • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Some clarity on how Mastodon registrations work.
Admins can use closed or open registration. New accounts need approval if closed, while anyone can register when open. Mas.to is open. When we get an influx of bad accounts, we close for a bit.
The only way to guarantee no rogue accounts is with closed reg. Open reg means bad folks can appear. But we react as quickly as possible when that happens. Which requires reports from y’all.
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Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •We’re a huge server. One of the biggest. So we get targeted. A lot.
For every nazi account you may see for a brief moment, you don’t see hundreds of others that we managed to catch before you saw it. We block some email domains and IPs when we can. We do tons of pre-emptive work behind the scenes.
We’re also volunteers. We have a team that spans many time zones. But that doesn’t mean we have someone on guard 24/7/365. Shit happens. It’s no reflection of the integrity of our team/server.
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Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •One last note, then I’ll STFU about this…
Feedback is appreciated. IF it’s kind and helpful.
It hurts me that a nazi slipped through today. Like, it crushes my soul and makes me sad. And I want for us to prevent that.
So we’re going to use this as a learning moment to see what else we can do moving forward.
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Gabriel Pettier
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Gabriel Pettier • • •LucileDT
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •El Duvelle
in reply to LucileDT • • •I have the same question 😀 we have closed registrations on our server and it's working well to filter out bad actors (we never had to moderate one of our own accounts at least for now). It's really not a big cost to look through the list of requests and click "accept" when they seem genuine and justified. We sometimes discuss the ambiguous cases between mods.
Of course we are a very small instance and I imagine having a lot more account requests would be more time-consuming... but isn't it worth it?
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to El Duvelle • • •@elduvelle
It is worth it. We’re also volunteers. We do what we can.
@luciledt
El Duvelle
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Do you mean that you don't have enough mods to deal with closed registrations? If so - why not recruit a few more from your instance members? That's also something we do from time to time, we'll usually ask those of our users who regularly send "good" reports if they'd like to help by becoming a mod. Some accept and it is definitely helpful! We are now 4 mods for a ~200 regularly-active userbase.
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Vincent 🌻🇪🇺 en 🌹☘️
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •As in cyber security, you can’t put all your effort in perimeter defense - you have to have intrusion detection.
Don’t beat yourself up - in my view the system worked.
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Vincent 🌻🇪🇺 en 🌹☘️ • • •McWabbit 🇺🇦🍋🌻🍉
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Something we rarely experienced on VC/billionaire owned platforms, that rather punish antifascists for calling out nazis than banning nazis.
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to McWabbit 🇺🇦🍋🌻🍉 • • •Alex
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •You're enabling Nazis. That's what open registration means.
Just say you're okay with hurting minorities in the name of growth and your own comfort.
Type "white supremacy comfort" into a search engine sometime. The results don't use the words "kind and helpful" but it's very very close.
Goddess forbid you had to listen to uncomfortable feedback.
Jeri Dansky
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Another moderator here. We used to have open registrations but moved to closed after one of the spam attack waves. But before we made that change we've been in a position similar to yours (but less extreme, since we're not nearly as large and it wasn't a Nazi).
So: Much love to you and the moderation team. I know how frustrating it is when something like this happens. If it's incredibly uncommon, I'd say you're doing a terrific job. I know I've heard only good things about mas.to.
(We saw two reports of Nazi accounts yesterday, and at least one of them was on a site other than yours.)
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Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Jeri Dansky • • •Kevin Karhan
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •also hats off for being transparent, honest and upfront.
Kevin Karhan
2025-11-05 03:16:27
Deborah Pickett
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Feedback from an admin who has also been a mod on a medium server (thousands of users):
Little instance owners like me have no leverage to convince Gargron to add badly needed moderation tools, but your server, as a well-known large server, is in a unique position to dictate to him what new technical measures Mastodon should add to prevent harm to the Fedi.
That may take the form of restricting the ability of new users to DM off-instance; or a digest email sent to mods listing the users who just signed up along with their bios and avatars; or preventing new users from following the same remote users that banned users followed.
Have a think about how this user you suspended behaved and how you could have prevented it from escalating. Then ask Gargron for that feature.
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Kevin Karhan
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •also even then closed / approval-only registration is no guarantee against bad actors starting off behaving at first, nor against bad actors in the form of Administrators & Moderators!
Kevin Karhan
2025-11-05 03:21:28
Furbland's Very Cool Mastodon™
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •RE: mastodon.social/@GroupNebula56…
@markwyner feedback:
Furbland's Very Cool Mastodon™
2025-11-04 08:33:13
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Furbland's Very Cool Mastodon™ • • •Furbland's Very Cool Mastodon™ reshared this.
Furbland's Very Cool Mastodon™
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Furbland's Very Cool Mastodon™ • • •None taken. It was received well. Thank you. And Alice is good people. I’m sure they’d receive it with grace as well.
@alice
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Colin H.
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Seven posts before this on my home feed was someone calling out mas.to (and others) as a badly moderated. I just don't see how that sort of thing is in any way helpful.
Thanks for all you do, and please keep up the good fight.
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Colin H. • • •Calligrafae
in reply to Colin H. • • •Colin H.
in reply to Calligrafae • • •@welshpixie To clarify, it's the hyperbole that I think is unhelpful. Throwing "nazi bar" accusations at an instance because it took their mods, what - an hour or two? - to suspend an asshole account is unfair. Also I suspect that Mark takes user safety very seriously, and it would be insulting to suggest otherwise.
Instead it would be more helpful to spread the word that those in marginalised/high-risk groups may be better served at a smaller, more curated (non-open reg) instance.
Calligrafae
in reply to Colin H. • • •amy tech (bones)
in reply to Colin H. • • •Colin H.
in reply to amy tech (bones) • • •Clinton Anderson SwordForHire
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •reshared this
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Kevin Karhan
in reply to Clinton Anderson SwordForHire • • •@ClintonAnderson it's alyways an act of #SelfDefense and #MutualDefense per very definition.
In doubt | EXIT-Germany We Provide Ways Out Of Extremism
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JuliesBits 🇺🇲 🍑
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •I've moderated forums in the past and it is a challenging and somewhat thankless job.
Thanks for all you do to keep this environment safe & fun for everyone.
PS: I chuckled at the post you shared too. Love it!
Joe Brockmeier
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Moderation and management of open services is a thankless, soul-crushing task sometimes. I hope you know that more people appreciate your work than find fault with it. And the people getting angry with you are mostly angry that Nazis exist, and misdirecting it at y'all.
Anyway, please keep up the good work and banning the baddies.
Calligrafae
in reply to Joe Brockmeier • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
Unknown parent • • •gunstick
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to gunstick • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
Unknown parent • • •@samess
Wow. What a fantastic and meaningful reply. Far more informative than mine. Thanks for your edifying explanation.
@legendary_creeper @kathleenbelew
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
Unknown parent • • •@alice thank you, Alice. I really appreciate that you took the time to say this. I respect and appreciate you for the human being you are and for everything you do for fedi.
I’ve been targeted since I posted about this. Some people have sent me some really nasty shit (some anti-Semitic). It sucks. And it’s ironic given the context. I just wish people would stop demonizing us.
Anyway, thank you. Your kindness is a gift. 🫶🏻
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
Unknown parent • • •@samloonie 😂
Thank you. But our team actually spans multiple time zones. So we can cover quite a bit over a 24 hour period.
That isn’t exhaustive, though, because moderation isn’t our full-time job. We’re volunteers who do what we can when we can. But that time-zone span sure helps.
GunChleoc
Unknown parent • • •I have seen the 8's in Asian casino spam account names 😁
The new account name rules feature will have a choice of outright blocking or putting the account in a moderation queue to be approved manually.
Number codes can be tricky, so those better go into a queue rather than outright blocking them.
Sara
Unknown parent • • •Ein Köhler
Unknown parent • • •@sarae @kenjen
people born in 1988 feel you -_-
賢進ジェンナ
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •I don't know if this was the same thing, but I saw(and boosted) posts talking about people who literally had Nazi-esque usernames. Is that the situation here? If so, how can open registration not have a blacklist of names that, at the very least, would be quarantined(to deal with things where bad words in one language appear in other languages in more favourable contexts)?
Also, thank you for all the work you do to improve the community.
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to 賢進ジェンナ • • •@kenjen I can’t speak to what you saw. But I can say that we certainly wouldn’t allow anything nazi-related as a username, real name, avatar, poster, etc.
Unfortunately, we can’t block everything preemptively. Some stuff gets through. We only have the tools Mastodon makes available to us. We do our best with them. But people are sneaky and crafty.
It takes a village. We all have to work together.
Ein Köhler
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •@kenjen
Is hybrid possible?
Like if somebody has "88" in their name it gets set on a watchlist or set to need approval on a usually open server.
Or x reports dropping from long term accounts to result in an account lock that can be reviewed.
I get that no automated solution will solve this problem and people misdirect their anger, so thanks a lot for your effort!
GunChleoc
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •@kenjen Mastodon 4.5 will have username rules, so moderators will be able to ban some common strings for signup.
If course, people will learn to circumvent that, but it will at least keep away some of the trash.
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
Unknown parent • • •Kevin Karhan
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •meanwhile #WelshPixie is self-circlejerking like we all know her…
Clearly ignoring that NOONE wants to use an instance that is run by a bully and thus mostly defederated!
Kevin Karhan
2025-11-05 03:16:27
Agnieszka R. Turczyńska
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Add ability to block words in usernames by Gargron · Pull Request #35407 · mastodon/mastodon
GitHubMark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to Agnieszka R. Turczyńska • • •gapneyj
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •“for the record, this is not preventable when we deliberately don’t do the thing that would make it preventable”
absolutely brilliant
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schratze
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Mark Wyner Won’t Comply
in reply to schratze • • •Shrig 🐌
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Shrig 🐌 reshared this.
schratze
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •are you still married to the idea of growth for the sake of growth?
I'm not on the fedi because it's the biggest social network. I'm here for the quality of interactions. I'm here because I don't have to deal with nazi trolls on a daily basis.
If people want to become part of this community, they can wait a few hours or days for their account to be approved.
What people cannot accept, and what keeps turning people away from the fediverse forever time and time again, are the racist bullies on here. And your moderation policies prioritize racist bullies over long-term users who just wanna chill.
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schratze
in reply to schratze • • •mastodon.social recently allowed a new user with hitler in the name who immediately uploaded a swastika pfp and started harassing people, including posting gifs to induce epileptic seizures.
I sincerely hope you at least do a bare minimum regex rejection on new signups on your instance to prevent things like this from happening again.
Mastodon.social actually got into legal trouble over this because hosting hate symbols like these is illegal in Germany
Cairo Braga
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •Misofist
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •@schratze That friction is essential to keeping Fedi a safe environment for everyone.
The fact that you got 80 reports in minutes just shows that at least 80 people were exposed to vile & unsafe content in minutes. Given that fact, do you really think that a reactive moderation approach can ever keep this platform safe?
The reason people are on Fedi is not because it is the biggest social network. People come here for quality and safety. So please put those things first.
Li ~ Crystal System
in reply to Misofist • • •@Misofist @schratze mm your kinda right, except theres also to consider that said quality and or safety should be accessible .. it shouldnt be hard to feel comfortable and whatnot .. having closed registration is somewhat inacessible .. and puts a bit of a barrier to that .. i dont know ...
(i mean i also don't really feel safe on the fediverse too much either, i frequently encounter kinda horrible shit, just a different flavour of it.. i guess.. its better than other centralized sites, but eh, far from quality or safe really.)
Misofist
in reply to Li ~ Crystal System • • •@Li @schratze Then just take steps to reduce the friction of the closed signup process. Instead of tasking your moderators with removing hateful content within minutes, task them with approving accounts within minutes.
In fact, you don't even need to mention that your instance has manually-approved-signups. Just let people register as normal, and once they register tell them that their account is pending approval and will be activated soon. (e.g. say "usually within 10 minutes")
tillian (BIRTHDAY!!!!!)
in reply to Mark Wyner Won’t Comply • • •i think you seem to forget to ask yourself why they're leaving corporate mainstream social media.
let me give you a hint.
because bigots and rightwing asswipes run around.
slowing down registrations reduces their numbers significantly.
so mull on that.
or don't! if you like people sending epileptic gifs and have names a la "hitler1488" around, sure! but then we will just isolate you, bc you're a community threat.