#UnpopularOpinion: Open registration is an anti-pattern for the #Fediverse.
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#UnpopularOpinion: Open registration is an anti-pattern for the #Fediverse. A minimal human intervention like a personal invitation (to create a lightweight Web Of Trust approach) or approval by the admins is the better, more Fediverse way. This is my personal opinion. Please feel free to (respectfully) discuss in the replies. I might be wrong, I am open for criticism.
@jwildeboer I remember when gmail was like that.
It was still very easy to get an account. Especially joining an IRC channel and asking. And then passing on to your friends/family invites.
I got my gmail account back during that time even. -
And a more detailed, complicated topic: new accounts that have been opened for less than 48 hours (or longer, unsure what makes most sense) should be limited in following accounts. In that first period, every follow must be approved by the account they want to follow. After these 48 hours (or longer) that limitation could be lifted.
@jwildeboer I'd agree that open registration is not great. Not sure if I want to go so far as to call it an anti-pattern, but it can be and is being abused.
ISTM that a specific registration window or restriction would be gamed, though.
A while ago I suggested moving to either a paid registration - a token amount that would go toward funding the instance - and/or an invite model. "Oh, I know Jan, I'll invite him to my server. If Jan misbehaves, my account is at risk, but I think Jan will be a good person to have on the site."
The silver lining, I guess, is that the Fediverse has reached the critical mass to attract spammers and scammers?
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@jwildeboer I'd agree that open registration is not great. Not sure if I want to go so far as to call it an anti-pattern, but it can be and is being abused.
ISTM that a specific registration window or restriction would be gamed, though.
A while ago I suggested moving to either a paid registration - a token amount that would go toward funding the instance - and/or an invite model. "Oh, I know Jan, I'll invite him to my server. If Jan misbehaves, my account is at risk, but I think Jan will be a good person to have on the site."
The silver lining, I guess, is that the Fediverse has reached the critical mass to attract spammers and scammers?
@jzb Agreed mostly. I maybe should have opened with "Now that the Fediverse is big enough to attract the bad breed, let's look at what a Fediverse immune system could look like".
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#UnpopularOpinion: Open registration is an anti-pattern for the #Fediverse. A minimal human intervention like a personal invitation (to create a lightweight Web Of Trust approach) or approval by the admins is the better, more Fediverse way. This is my personal opinion. Please feel free to (respectfully) discuss in the replies. I might be wrong, I am open for criticism.
Adding friction will discourage newcomers.
I tested Mastodon after learning about it at a FOSS event, if there was a need to ask permission or whatever, I wouldn't be here today.
Of course, some people may consider that to be good... -
Adding friction will discourage newcomers.
I tested Mastodon after learning about it at a FOSS event, if there was a need to ask permission or whatever, I wouldn't be here today.
Of course, some people may consider that to be good...@lienrag Adding friction also discourages abusive forces. It's a complicated balance. But worth a discussion, in my opinion.
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@lienrag Adding friction also discourages abusive forces. It's a complicated balance. But worth a discussion, in my opinion.
Sure.
The idea would be to add friction to bad users and not to good faith newcomers.
Maybe a trickle down of new rights, rather than a binary system ?
Like being able to follow up to five accounts the first day, ten the next, and so on ?
Also getting a message on the fifth follow encouraging to write an introduction or at least a post, so that people could see what's the account about ?
(though with LLMs, that could be automatized, alas) -
Sure.
The idea would be to add friction to bad users and not to good faith newcomers.
Maybe a trickle down of new rights, rather than a binary system ?
Like being able to follow up to five accounts the first day, ten the next, and so on ?
Also getting a message on the fifth follow encouraging to write an introduction or at least a post, so that people could see what's the account about ?
(though with LLMs, that could be automatized, alas)@lienrag The question is "who decides?". If it is the instance of the new account, they can change/patch the code to circumvent. The Fediverse way would be to distribute that to the target accounts and make it work in decentralised ways, upping the cost of abuse.
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#UnpopularOpinion: Open registration is an anti-pattern for the #Fediverse. A minimal human intervention like a personal invitation (to create a lightweight Web Of Trust approach) or approval by the admins is the better, more Fediverse way. This is my personal opinion. Please feel free to (respectfully) discuss in the replies. I might be wrong, I am open for criticism.
@jwildeboer I agree, but I can already hear the cries of the people in the back who think that picking a server is too high a hurdle.
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#UnpopularOpinion: Open registration is an anti-pattern for the #Fediverse. A minimal human intervention like a personal invitation (to create a lightweight Web Of Trust approach) or approval by the admins is the better, more Fediverse way. This is my personal opinion. Please feel free to (respectfully) discuss in the replies. I might be wrong, I am open for criticism.
@jwildeboer
I think that's a sensible approach, even though I definitely benefitted from open registration when I joined.
I'm not sure if something like invitation is the best way to go but some kind of additional interaction seems useful to deter bad actors.I like the idea of having a cool down before following others is fully unlocked
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And a more detailed, complicated topic: new accounts that have been opened for less than 48 hours (or longer, unsure what makes most sense) should be limited in following accounts. In that first period, every follow must be approved by the account they want to follow. After these 48 hours (or longer) that limitation could be lifted.
If you put yourself in the shoes of of a first time user, you remember that when you first open your Mastodon account, there is not much to see.
You have to actively seek hashtags, people to follow, etc. In my view, limiting ability to follow would make the first time user’s first experience worse. Which would be counter-productive.
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And a more detailed, complicated topic: new accounts that have been opened for less than 48 hours (or longer, unsure what makes most sense) should be limited in following accounts. In that first period, every follow must be approved by the account they want to follow. After these 48 hours (or longer) that limitation could be lifted.
Not really great. Ofc. this depends on intended purpose.
It's great to repel new users. Having no way to follow what one discovers in those intense early hours will dampening the will to further interact. And interaction is what I would think as being the main way to distinguish social media from media outlets.
If it's about discouraging bots it'll be absolute useless. Even the dumbest bot programmer is able to split registration from automated following using a cron job. Don't you think so?
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If you put yourself in the shoes of of a first time user, you remember that when you first open your Mastodon account, there is not much to see.
You have to actively seek hashtags, people to follow, etc. In my view, limiting ability to follow would make the first time user’s first experience worse. Which would be counter-productive.
@MichelPatrice Yes. But I started with my own instance in 2018. And getting the feedback that people accept me as follower meant a lot to me. It's a complicated balance, as I've said. But pull-in goes both ways.
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Not really great. Ofc. this depends on intended purpose.
It's great to repel new users. Having no way to follow what one discovers in those intense early hours will dampening the will to further interact. And interaction is what I would think as being the main way to distinguish social media from media outlets.
If it's about discouraging bots it'll be absolute useless. Even the dumbest bot programmer is able to split registration from automated following using a cron job. Don't you think so?
@Computeum Ah, the German "yes, but" to kill any discussion
Let's see what other opinions show up before we decide to shut it down, OK? -
@Computeum Ah, the German "yes, but" to kill any discussion
Let's see what other opinions show up before we decide to shut it down, OK?I'm sorry if this reads like there's a "yes" part of any sort. That wasn't intended in any way. Both points should describe why it'll not produce a positive change.
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I'm sorry if this reads like there's a "yes" part of any sort. That wasn't intended in any way. Both points should describe why it'll not produce a positive change.
@Computeum So it's an absolute NO to you. Got it. What has triggered me here is that absolute no. No "in my opinion". But you saying there is no "yes" and you own the truth and only you. That's the German "yes, but"
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#UnpopularOpinion: Open registration is an anti-pattern for the #Fediverse. A minimal human intervention like a personal invitation (to create a lightweight Web Of Trust approach) or approval by the admins is the better, more Fediverse way. This is my personal opinion. Please feel free to (respectfully) discuss in the replies. I might be wrong, I am open for criticism.
@jwildeboer That’s rich coming from a single user instance.
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#UnpopularOpinion: Open registration is an anti-pattern for the #Fediverse. A minimal human intervention like a personal invitation (to create a lightweight Web Of Trust approach) or approval by the admins is the better, more Fediverse way. This is my personal opinion. Please feel free to (respectfully) discuss in the replies. I might be wrong, I am open for criticism.
@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net
Not that unpopular among regional instance admins. Edmontonian Social was and is invite only. I see this as a necessity since it is trying to encourage people to meet face-to-face, and find build local connections. Invitations kinda necessitate people meeting in-person to join in the first place. I don't mind slow adoption as it helps me keep on top of moderation, as I learn the ropes of hosting a social platform.
Our members can create invitation codes once a day. This is to prevent malicious people from mass creating invites, thus opening bot accounts fast. Also new users are prevented from creating new invites for some time. It may seem excessive, but people I met mostly welcomed the thought put into deterring bots and spammers. -
And a more detailed, complicated topic: new accounts that have been opened for less than 48 hours (or longer, unsure what makes most sense) should be limited in following accounts. In that first period, every follow must be approved by the account they want to follow. After these 48 hours (or longer) that limitation could be lifted.
But these would be some kind of "script kiddie" limitations today, regarding bots or trolls.
Some kind of imposed automated old school BBS netiquette for human users (but at that days, somebody explained this person to person, why it's better not trigger immediately the noobs/newbie alarm and why you won't like to get roasted by flame throwers).
I think this works with games, but not with social media today. So we need more gamification and a user level system. Only if you are able to recite complicated spells are you allowed to post something or to ban somebody (am I talking about IRC???)
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@jwildeboer That’s rich coming from a single user instance.
@lil5 That's logical coming from an instance that is here since 2018 and explicitly being single user
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But these would be some kind of "script kiddie" limitations today, regarding bots or trolls.
Some kind of imposed automated old school BBS netiquette for human users (but at that days, somebody explained this person to person, why it's better not trigger immediately the noobs/newbie alarm and why you won't like to get roasted by flame throwers).
I think this works with games, but not with social media today. So we need more gamification and a user level system. Only if you are able to recite complicated spells are you allowed to post something or to ban somebody (am I talking about IRC???)
@echopapa Every time one of my posts gets mildly "successful", I get a bunch of accounts following me, typically from mastodon.social, typically being some AI generated profile picture of a pretty woman with 0 followers, created less than 24 hours ago, with a bio that reads some variation of "Just a simple girl looking for cool guys to talk to".
