this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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Ok.....so then doesn't that take ALL power away from every mod?
Let's say you ban [email protected]
But then I could create [email protected]
And you could ban it. And I could create [email protected] (or however it's formatted).
And then this cat and mouse could happen, all day every day. Just a series of me creating accounts, you blocking them, but it then becoming a full time job making sure I'm currently banned, and me evading the system.
Or am I missing something?
The thing is, when that happens, the mods/admins of the trolls new instance ban them there, without the original admin having to do anything.
Abandoned instances, or instances that simply don't moderate, get defederated, so it's quite manageable.
The only case where it's not that clear cut, is where the troll is a big issue for one admin, but not another. Take trans issues for example. I have a zero tolerance policy on transphobia on this instance, but not all lemmy admins are as aware of the dogwhistles as I am, so I will block some users that other admins won't. It's not ideal, but it's manageable, because I can stop their brand of transphobia from reaching my instance even if they're not banned by the remote admin. And if that pushes the troll to create another account elsewhere to get through the instance ban, then that becomes harassment, and the other admins will act, even if they wouldn't before.
Nah, you're not missing anything, and that is already happening. There's a few users who keep creating new accounts on alternate instances to post troll threads. But it's on a small-enough scale that it's trivial for mods/admins to deal with. And realistically, it's more work for the troll than it is for the mods, so eventually the troll user will either tire themselves out or simply run out of instances to make new accounts from.
It's definitely an intrinsic problem that ActivityPub doesn't really have a reasonable solution for yet. It's sort of a necessary evil in order for the rest of the Fediverse to function freely, and part of the compromise that users and communities need to accept and live with in order to keep things running. But, I don't think it'll become a major issue unless the Fediverse sees a massive influx of users, like the sort of scale that Bluesky saw with Twitter's exodus.
Also, ban evasion is not exactly fixed in other contexts either. The only absolute solution is identity verification.
I wanna add to what other users already answered that this problem is not created by federation, only exacerbated.
If I'm mod of a community and I ban your [email protected] account, I cannot stop you from creating, e.g. [email protected] and coming back. Most servers have some barriers against spam account creation in place, but I'd wager you could easily create a handful of accounts on a server until they start to grip.
Even completely centralized platforms such as Twitter and Reddit are the same. You can easily ban/block evade a couple times per timeframe.
That's true for every service, centralized ones included.
You just might need to use something else for your name.