This morning I was forced to ban about 18 users for being obvious spambots. That deleted their content on my instance. Are they now banned on other instances, too? I'm just trying to figure out what the best process is for eliminating these spambots for good before they flood all of our feeds.
As far as I understand it, the instance that hosts the user and the content is the only instance that can propagate deletions of the content/user. So if that user's home instance bans them, then the ban propagates. Otherwise, the ban is only local.
So is the right process to report the post? (I'm assuming reports go to the home instance's community moderator.)
And if that's the case, does that mean we need to avoid clicking the checkmark to "resolve" the report on our instance until the remote moderator has done something about the problem?
I'm actually not clear on how the reports work, but my assumption is that they go to both the instance you're reporting from and to the instance that hosts the content. I would also assume that the resolve status is local to each instance so it shouldn't matter when/if you click the resolve button.
But these are all assumptions, I don't actually know how the reports work.
Do you have some time to test it? You can post something to Ninja Tea Room and then report it. Let me know and I'll confirm that the report exists on our site. Then you can resolve the report and I can confirm one way or the other whether the status changes locally here, and whether the reason propagates. We will take care not to ban you. :-)
Resolving the report on your side seems to have had no effect on our side. In Lemmy UI, there is a very subtle color difference in the checkmark before and after it is clicked, so I took a screenshot of the report.
Before:
After:
I guess there's a chance that it may take time for the change in state to propagate to me, so I'll watch it over the next 20 minutes or so to see if it changes.
My guess is that actually the report doesn't get federated back out. I think reports are only federated to the instance that hosts the content and the instance the reporter belongs to. So in this case, lemmy.ninja is both the instance that hosts the content and the instance to which you belong to.
In the opposite direction, when I reported the first post, it went to my instance since I am the reporter. And to your instance, since your instance hosts the content.
Assuming I am correct, this could end up being a bit of a problem. That means, users on my instance could go about spamming the fediverse, and I would never see reports of their activity unless they are spamming communities on my instance. The only way I have to know that they're being bad users is if I notice we get defederated or if an admin of another instance specifically reaches out to me.
At a minimum, I would like to be able to click on a user's name, and be able to report them to their home instance.