David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)The root problem with a lot of Fediverse moderation is a problem that is well known the reputation-system literature:
If the cost of creating a new identity is zero then a reputation system cannot usefully express a lower reputation than that of a new user.
A malicious actor can always create an account on a different instance, or spin up a new instance on a throw-away domain. The cost is negligible. This means that any attempt to find bad users and moderate them is doomed from the start. Unless detecting a bad user is instant, there is always a gap between a new fresh identity existing in the system and it being marked as such.
A system that expects to actually work at scale has to operate in the opposite direction: assume new users are malicious and provide a reputation system for allowing them to build trust. Unfortunately, this is in almost direct opposition to the desire to make the onboarding experience frictionless.
A model where new users are restricted from the things that make harassment easy (sending DMs, posting in other users’ threads) until they have established a reputation (other people in good standing have boosted their posts or followed them) might work.
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