IMO, Lemmy would gain far more users if you were able to create a user account without having to be approved by a server first.
If communities want to remain invite only that’s fine. But I really, really think you guys should decouple account creation from the requirement of being approved by a server. It’s a barrier to entry that imo will prevent many users from registering.
Edit: If not global auto-approving of user account creation, I think what would be a more reasonable request is an indicator of whether a server auto-approves account creation or whether it is invite only.
Then the solution I suggested would already solve the problem you described IMO.
If someone implements it on the per-instance basis, it works and is not resource heavy, great. But it will be a while, before someone actually gets there.
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As I replied to another thread, that would be possible. You can try to create and issue for it.
hmm I am not convinced it would work.
Lemmy had a slur filter in the early days, that blocked certain words from being able to be posted, and a lot of people hated that. Dunno why, but well.
An automod slur filter should be server specific and implemented by the admins who run that server. Decentralization requires that any user can create any account that they want in my opinion. Trying to censor anything is antithetical to Lemmy’s stated goal. Lemmy’s devs don’t have to allow hate speech servers to be discoverable from the join-lemmy site, but banning an account wholesale like this for any reason defeats the purpose of this platform.
Accounts can’t be banned wholesale. They can only be banned by the admins of a server.
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It was. Again, you could do with the slur filter whatever you wanted as an instance admin. And admins of other instances can defederate with your instance for your decision, too.
I fully and wholeheartedly support that. I think the best solution now after some reflection would to just add an indicator the join-lemmy.org server listing page on whether a server automatically approves accounts or if they are invite only. Would that be agreeable to you?
I was just talking from experience. I believe that the spammer could easily create a new account and then just spam offending images, whatever.
I mean, again, automod could easily be configured to solve that if they build it into the platform. A server being invite only is totally fine to me, reddit has that functionality as well. I fully support the ability to make private servers with account approval processes.
Yes, I wouldn’t mind a theoretical automod that helped with admin work. I am not against that. I am trying to explain how we arrived at the situation we are at today, where all servers are with application only.
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Your account is 3 hours old, what do you think is the ethos of Lemmy?
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My guess is once the software matures some some more open instances will pop up. The basics are still being figure out and honed, and with the higher user accounts the past few days admins are already struggling to keep things running. I’ve seen several of the larger instances go up and down all day (hence why I fired up my own for myself)
Question then, would a viable solution to what I’m suggesting be simply adding an indicator of whether servers auto-approve user account creation or not on the join-lemmy.org site?
Yep! That would be the place for them.
I’m not aware of any open instances that exist at the moment though. Eventually once some automatic moderation tools start developing they’ll probably start (slowly) popping up.
I opened a github issue for this here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2899
Yeah as long as there is an indicator of whether a server is an open instance or not would immediately solve the issue I’m describing, for myself at least.