Ideally a lot more things on the fediverse would be 'approve upon first use' instead of 'auto-accept'. Admins should approve signups, but also an account's first post should go through an approval queue. PeerTube already has this. These could all be really quick approvals without much thought, but at least it's a threshold.

What does this do? That small forgotten instances automatically stop sending. They don't turn into spam-relays like now.

Also on the incoming side any new domain should get in a queue, which an admin can once a day mass approve before federation is possible and the queued posts are placed in the timelines.

For each new unknown account on a known server the same thing should happen. Posts are queued until an admin approves, unless the known server was marked as trusted due to having a controlled sign-up process.

What does this do? It means that admins of small instances can go to bed letting a server just run. Existing connections can keep communicating, while spam and block evasion can't happen and their users are safe. Just that new connections will have to wait a bit.

Also, each first interaction between accounts needs to be approved by the receiving account. Receiver will not get notifications, and can always revert this decision. This way any spam, harassment, etc, is sidetracked to an easy to ignore side-queue with easy mass-deny functions.
#fediverse #spam #antispam