Programming.dev Meta

Hi All,

Tldr:

• We are monitoring publically available information (posts, comments and DMs).
• Monitoring is turned off as soon as the admin team are satisfied the user is legitimate.
• will only temporary remove, no bans or deletion without a human being involved in the decision.
• No user data is sent off to 3rd party tools, all processing is done on the instance server. No LLMs are involved.

Due to some ongoing issues with harassment campaigns, we've had to setup a rudimentary monitoring system for all new users.

• When a user's signup is accepted, they will be automatically enrolled into the monitoring system. The admins team may also add accounts manually if they have been given a strike.
• The system will monitor all posts, comments and DMs sent by new users, and bring them to the attention of the admin team if it appears suspicious. In egregious cases, it will auto-remove posts and comments if required, but a human admin will always review and reverse any false positives as soon as required.
• Once we have validated that the user is not a harasser, they will be removed from the system.

We don’t want to go into too much detail on how it all works to prevent bad actors from bypassing it, but we can say that all the processing is being done locally on the instance server. For most of you, this wont have any impact, but some of you have been impacted by the systems false positives. It is also a good time to point out that DM messages are not private, and should not be used for anything that requires strong privacy.

There will likely be teething problems, but we are actively working on improving the bot to minimize impact and we are always open to feedback.