I bet you could do it with ring signatures

a message signed with a ring signature is endorsed by someone in a particular set of people. One of the security properties of a ring signature is that it should be computationally infeasible to determine which of the set’s members’ keys was used to produce the signature

I agree that it’s bad that there’s a false impression of privacy, but I think it would be better to allow this as an extension or something and not include it as a feature in the UI, or at least not on by default. That way people who otherwise wouldn’t bother won’t be tempted to drive themselves crazy looking for imaginary enemies.

So it is a way for Lemmy instances to let people log in with their Reddit accounts? Neat

Check out Nostr, ActivityPub alternative that does authentication separately from content, works more like that.

I guess that’s somewhat true if you are sharing an implementation around, but even avoiding the feature being widely known could make a difference. Even if it was known, I think the scoring could work alright on its own. A malicious removal could be quickly reversed manually and all reporters scores zeroed.

I had an idea for a system sort of like this to reduce moderator burden. The idea would be for each user to have a score based on their volume and ratio of correct reports to incorrect reports (determined by whether it ultimately resulted in a moderator action) of rule breaking comments/posts. Content is automatically removed if the cumulative scores of people who have reported it is high enough. Moderators can manually adjust the scores of users if needed, and undo community mod actions. More complex rules could be applied as needed for how scores are determined.

To address the possibility that such a system would be abused, I think the best solution would be secrecy. Just don’t let anyone know that this is how it works, or that there is a score attached to their account that could be gamed. Pretend it’s a new kind of automod or AI bot or something, and have a short time delay between the report that pushes it over the edge and the actual removal.

Is there a community for criticisms of moderation? I’d subscribe to that

The feature only lets you filter posts, not users from that instance.

Not really, you’re saying if people you dislike are associated with something then you automatically write it off without understanding it. That’s self mockery.

Coming from Reddit, the very existence of this thread is a breath of fresh air. That there are mod logs at all to be able to document this, that there is a place where it can be posted that is not under control of the mods being criticized, is an enormous improvement over an unaccountable centralized platform.