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.
We'll take the fact that you haven't noticed much spam as a compliment.
The most recent spam that we have seen is harassment/doxxing campaigns that target specific users. It's not something the average user would notice as the harassment is often DMs or pings on random posts. That, and a ban evader with a recognisable writing style.
As you pointed out, there is no monetary interest on our end. We are just volunteers looking to fix the blindpots in the moderation tools. We have no interest in needlessly censoring speech, and if you ever feel we moderate the instance too harshly, we are open to taking feedback. You can always check the modlog to see our activity. The guidelines for our moderation can be seen here.