March 2023 Instance Updates – Mistakes Were Made, but Also a Learning Experience

With that, I want to briefly summarize what happened in the past week. Yes, mistakes were made, and I unintentionally put a target on my back. However, moderation is new as it wasn’t put up to the test now. I never moderated a community before, so there are going to be some mistakes made.

I probably have announced some actions that got the trolls’ attention, and they will act on that and keep piling on that. Sure, I came up with additional protections, but adding those will affect regular users, like blocking VPNs for a signup especially. It has legitimate uses, and I do use one, too, even if bad actors use it to hide their identity. After hearing feedback, we will block freely accessible burner emails and domains of the worst instances out there.

From that, we have learned what not to do:

• For example, putting any information on the about page that can make us a target. (Too much information)
• Announce every moderation action unless it’s not already mentioned in Fediblock.
• Taunting trolls (although fun at first, can get very tiring)
• Doing anything that might make the trolls keep continuing their attack.
• Going it alone with moderation, which is something I should probably not do. I can’t be there all the time, making sure nothing goes wrong.

In addition, we plan to hide the moderation list. This is because some tools scrape the moderation list, which can make it a target for bad actors. Also, with a moderation team only being one person, I think it might be a bad idea to open it to the public when the list is enormous. So instead, the list will be available privately if the person asks for it. I also removed my name from my about page and replaced it with the administrative account for sending notices. The lists is similar to Urusai.social’s with a handful of blocks that aren’t made yet, but are made on Mastodon.art and Artisian.chat. The moderation list is available on request via email as long you are using it to check it before joining. Also, moderation actions will only get posted on the Hoshino Aiko-tan account (@sakurajima).

As expected, managing a Mastodon instance and a community is a new experience, and I’m still learning. I realized that I shouldn’t be the only one doing the moderation. I admit that when I created this instance back in the end of October that I probably took on more than I can chew and I need some help. With that, I’m asking for volunteers to help me reduce the workload.

Since many bad instances are already blocked, the workload is not as heavy as other instances. However, one needs to look at the federated timeline occasionally, respond to any reports we receive and approve new signups.

As always, I want to improve the moderation situation and how I handle the instance in the future. Feel free to direct message me with any suggestions. I plan to shorten the about page to only show the information the user needs to know.

With that, I have learned much from this situation on what to do and not do. So with that, I won’t make any mistakes that can affect me mentally. After all, moderation is not an easy job, and one has to have thick skin to deal with these people. So maybe it’s time to grow some. After all, I do want to make a pleasant and safe community for Anime Bloggers. Japanese media content creators, and fans of Japanese media. It looks like I’m going to need more help in doing so.