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this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Technology
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A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
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Mental bandwidth. By adding the requirement of a mod approval before creating a new community will cause most people to not bother at all.
As a counterpoint to that: any new community that gets created on an instance is now a possible liability the site admins have to own.
Makes a lot of sense that you wouldn't want anyone to make anything on your site, since that's how you end up with /r/jailbait, and /r/fatpeoplehate and so on.
Seems reasonable you'd want to make sure you understand who is creating what and why on a platform you're ultimately responsible for.
It's really not difficult to delete a unwanted community. The cost benefit analysis I think still leans towards open for all, as a breakaway success story makes up for it.
It's not just the difficulty, it's that the fediverse runs on reputation.
If you get a reputation for being an instance that has offensive/illegal content, you'll get defederated and your users will get a materially worse experience than the rest of the instances that are federating with each other - and it really only takes one or two things to get that reputation.
sh.itjust.works is a prime example: it didn't take an awful lot to get them down the defederation road, and I suspect most admins would want to maintain their reputation and an easy way to do it (until we get like... moderation tools) is to just gatekeep what communities show up on your instance.
Actually that problem is usually registered users going into established communities of other instances and trolling, not new communities pooping up that nobody knows about.