Why reactive moderation isn't going to cut it, aka, "The Sucker-punch Problem". Imagine you invite your friend—let's call him Mark—to a club with you. It's open-door, which is cool, because you like when a lot of folx show up. Sure, it might get a little rowdy, but they have a bouncer, and you've never seen things getting out of hand. So, you're busy dancing when a new guy walks in wearing a "I Hate Mark" shirt and promptly sucker-punches Mark. You didn't see it happen, but Mark is upset and tells the bouncer, who kicks the guy out. A few minutes later, the same guy walks back in and sucker-punches Mark again. Same result. Some people in the club say they'll tell the bouncer if they see him come in again. Mark wants to leave, but you tell him it's not that bad—after all, you've never been punched, and you didn't see Mark get punched, so maybe he's just being sensitive. A different guy walks in wearing a "I Plan On Punching Mark" shirt. No one tells the bouncer, because they've never seen *this* guy punch Mark. He sucker-punches Mark. At this point, Mark is pissed and yelling about being punched. The club members talk about putting up a "No Punching Mark" sign, but the owner is worried it'll hurt his club's growth. Another Mark in the club proposes they turn away anyone wearing an anti-Mark shirt or espousing anti-Mark rhetoric at the door, but this gets shot down for the same reason as the sign idea—then someone sucker-punches him. By the end of the night, your friend Mark is beat to fuck and says he'll never come to this club again. In fact, he's going to tell anyone named Mark to stay clear of this place. The next time you go to the club, half the folx there are wearing "I Kill Marks" shirts, but there aren't any Marks there, so it doesn't come up. I've been sucker-punched every day, for the last three days in a row by some of the most vile hate-speech and imagery. The accounts are using open registration servers and signing up with variations on the username "heilhitler1488". I fully expect it'll continue as long as we have open registration servers. And no, username pattern blocking alone won't fix this, it'll help a little, but mostly it'll just make them wear a different shirt while they sucker-punch us. #OpenRegistrationHurts

Dear open registration servers, each day so far this week, I've opened my Mastodon client, only to see slurs, swastikas, and death threat videos of "me" being hanged. This is the Nazi bar problem. They're standing on the curb and your doors are wide open. Sure, you're kicking them out after they walk in and punch a few customers, but is that really how you want your bar to be known? As the place that apologizes *after* the Nazi assaults you? With the current US election results rolling in, it looks like we're in for another predictable wave of butthurt GravySeals aching to own the libs in a sad attempt to bring meaning to their poor little wannabe white power lives. It's time to close registrations and step up moderation to protect the communities you helped grow. Racism is chasing Black folx off Fedi. Queerphobia is chasing LGBTQ+ folx off Fedi. Sexism is chasing women off Fedi. Do you want another incel white boys club like Twitter? Because inaction is how you get there. #FediAdmin, #FediMods, don't be a #NaziBar.

Okay "These sea slugs with both male and female genitalia mate by delivering sperm reciprocally from one end of their double-ended penis. They use the other end to stab each other in the head, possibly affecting neural function." has to be the weirdest phrase I'm going to read today.

So many of the absolute worst accounts I suspend should *never* have gotten past signup 😮‍💨 If your username contains a slur, hate-speech, or a well-known troll or dogwhistle reference, then it is a failure of your moderators and administration if that account ever sees the light of day. If someone walks into your instance doing a Nazi salute and you don't slam the door in their face *hard* then you've let your community down. I'm looking at you mastodon.social, mas.to, vivaldi.net, ... #FediAdmin #FediMods

The moonrise over downtown Seattle was gorgeous yesterday. My girlfriend and I went to Lovey's Point for our date, and picked love locks together as the sun set. #AlicePics #PNW #Sunset #Date #Photography

How to spot a nonconsensual porn account: 0. They're posting photos/clips of *someone else*. 1. They're not part of the community (they don't reply to posts, and they're hardly following anyone). 2. They do a *lot* of hashtag stuffing (30+ hashtags, and they're all NSFW). 3. They post nudes with no credit or attribution (some provide a nod to the model or site, but no links to support them). 4. They don't provide alt-text (because, again, they don't care about community or accessibility). 5. They have wording like "I don't claim to own any of the images I post", and "DM me to have photo removed". 6. They have account names like "XXXPornBot", "Hot4Dick", or "BigNaturals". 7. Their profile photo looks like it was scraped from OnlyFans (and probably was). 8. They post porn photos/clips *prolifically* (and the format is nearly identical). If you see accounts displaying these behaviors, please report them. They're stealing other people's work and posting photos of their nude bodies without the subject's' consent. It's wrong, and in many places, illegal. Mods like actionable reports, so be sure to tag appropriate posts and leave a note like "Reposting porn without subject's consent", so we can quickly determine the best course of action. Lastly, if you like porn, support original content by local creators. There's plenty of it if you look,nand who knows, maybe you'll find some awesome folx and help build a better Fedi in the process. #DamnTheBotsSaveTheBoobies #SexWorkIsWork #SaveSexySelfies #Porn #Bots #Admins #Moderation