There’s some heated discussion going on about a community dedicated to Donald Trump and, a few days ago, we started receiving concerning news about bot infested instances.
I believe there’s three additional settings for instance administrators which Lemmy could implement in the future and it’s probably worth discussing first. These would be :
- Block specific users or users from specific remote instances from creating new posts in local communities (or have them require approval).
- Block specific users or users from specific remote instances from writing comments to posts in local communities.
- Block specific users or users from specific remote instances from upvoting or downvoting posts and/or comments in local communities.
These options alone could allow concerned instance admins prevent brigading and content manipulation without necessarily defederating which should be left as a last-resort.
As a small instance admin myself I would be shooting myself in the foot if I were to block a very large instance, but maybe it would make sense to require approval for posts from certain remote users.
That said. One concern I have is that by having too many options we could make things much more confusing. But right now we have too few moderation options and I can’t think of other ways to keep federation while also having a way to prevent brigading or content manipulation.