Advice for community managers:
Use the Olivia Hill rule.
It's surprisingly easy to enforce:
Fascists get really upset and will talk to you about why the rule is bad.
You then ban them.
That's it, that's all the work it takes!
So, unsurprisingly, the rule keeps working.
Behold this person, who immediately asked for a sharp definition of fascist.
This is the kind of person you're ejecting before they create problems.
As close as I can tell from what little information I can glean, I don't think this person is a fascist, but he's definitely not someone I want in my spaces.
This is why it works.
Got one who decided to respond to the deeper explanation to talk down to me about we need the definition to be more explicit.
I'll reiterate: anyone questioning the rule "no f fascists" directly is going to be a problem. There are no "false positives" because the signal is "willing to argue with a no fascist policy" not "full throated fascists!."
If you haven't adopted a code of conduct yet, that's where you put examples of bad behavior. If you're worried about folks not picking up on the subtly of the trap, put that example there.
And while you should absolutely get community input on rules, some things need to be deal breakers. Protecting fascism is high up that list. Also, ban anyone who questions the value of having a code of conduct. See previous statements about being a drain on community management resources.
. . . This post is 4 months old and I get a new person thinking they're the smartest special one that the rule won't apply to.
This is precisely why the rule works: This person just openly announced they'll be an unlimited drain on community resources with no actual prompting from me.
@pathunstrom i bet this is shockingly effective at cutting down community problems, too.
@pathunstrom i have been called a fascist for telling people to vote for kamala harris instead of jill stein
@AVincentInSpace It would be way more funny to just block you for this, but I'm gonna be nice this once:
The reason this works, besides fascists self selecting into being vocal about it, is because the kinds of people who are willing to quibble on a rule that says no fascists?
They're going to push on all of your rules. They will be an explicit drain on community management resources.
Frankly: letting rules lawyers overwhelm your community is a fast way to end up with a community with low trust and exhausted volunteers.
@pathunstrom thank you for the additional explanation, this was not clear to me before!
@pathunstrom @AVincentInSpace and now it's so easy to spot fascists, they don't hide anymore
@filobus @pathunstrom and people wonder why I don't trust people who call themselves leftists.
literally beyond parody
@pathunstrom lol, you eased up on your own rule to be nice, and just a little bit down the page the person demonstrates that your rule was 100% spot on
@Tattie It's absolutely fascinating how effective it is!
Just every reply guy goes "I will be the one to convince them this rule is wrong!" and just, immediately demonstrates why it's effective.
@AVincentInSpace @pathunstrom and would you want to be in spices run by those people? the rule cuts both ways.
@horsedreamer @pathunstrom of course not. but i would like such people not to pretend that it is a common sense rule that only ever excludes fascists and not just people the moderators are too tired to be civil to.
otherwise, everyone would adopt it, and, well, very quickly, the internet would have a shocking number of "fascists".
@AVincentInSpace mmm... and yet the effectiveness of the rule bears out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm too old to try to make other people correct.
@horsedreamer i won't deny that banning anyone you're too tired to be civil to does reduce your workload as a moderator
Nov 14, 2025, 11:56 AM@pathunstrom but, but… if there are no fascists how will I know who to punch? 😉
Nov 17, 2025, 1:36 PM@liamo @pathunstrom This is a high-end problem to have. I could adapt to it.
@pathunstrom how do you define fascists? To be able to determine who to ban?
Nov 14, 2025, 2:18 PM@pathunstrom
Relevant cartoon, looking at some of the replies.
Nov 14, 2025, 10:15 PM@pathunstrom if you don't even know what "fascist" means, you don't get a say on who gets banned either =3
@pathunstrom That sure is a Just Asking Questions vibe
@pathunstrom It gets some self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist liberals too. But there's a relevant Disco Elysium quote.
Steban, the Student Communist - "[...] The only people who actually call themselves liberals are mouth-foaming reactionaries."
Echo Maker - "Basically indistinguishable from fascists. You'd need an x-ray machine to tell the difference."
@pathunstrom god I wish that question of "definition" had a useful answer. Life would be a hell of a lot easier
@jan_leila
There are resources if you want to get on the more academic side of things. Like, the classic, Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism, or Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works. Or any philosophical essay on those.
Yet on the internet you need CQC-philosophy. To which an excellent tool is the Popper's Paradox. And the usage is same and simple as above: they fail PP and you ban them, or they question PP, you link the comic or the meme »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Fascism_Works
@jan_leila
« about PP in social contract terms, and your choice of ban, mute, or other applicable actions.
@pathunstrom the poínt is that someone might have a skewed definition in the same way some people would call anarchists fascists
and then when its a large group who knows what the person enforcing thinks.
its better to spend the effort and write what you dont want more explicitly
Nov 19, 2025, 11:19 AM@pathunstrom omfg this is brilliant and super effective, just awesome ✨🤜🏼😹
@pathunstrom
https://youtu.be/IKICKcMU3MU
I love the line from this classic - "why the fuck are you a voluntary Nazi Safety Advocate? That's a funny thing to be concerned about, the wellbeing of hypothetical Nazis"
@pathunstrom also 1 week time outs for people trying to argue or reason with or mansplain fascism to the fascists, like that's ever worked
Apr 16, 2026, 11:00 PM@pathunstrom
(this was just boosted and that's why i'm responding)
i'm neurodivergent and vaguely defined rules are kinda uncomfortable for me. i'm pretty sure they are much more uncomfortable for some more autistic people.
while i believe i understand what fascism is quite well - and am deeply antifascist - i wouldn't immediately assume someone is an apologist just for asking. definitely a sign to be suspicious tho.
@pathunstrom Thanks for this, and for the screenshot alt text. While on the latter point, you have a typo there: "p3pa" should be "p4pa".
@pauamma fixed, thanks for calling attention!
Also, this thread seems to bear out the principle that skeletal profiles are suspect, as well.
@pathunstrom it's super effective
Nov 17, 2025, 12:54 PM@pathunstrom A couple of years ago, I was brought in as a moderator to help de-fascist a community that had practically turned into 4chan, in one of the most fundamentally-abuse-attracting and difficult-to-moderate categories of community (privacy/security-related).
The policy was set as "no fascists, no alt-right, nothing that looks like it" and people would either get banned immediately (if clearly intentionally abusive) or get a warning otherwise that they were expected to take seriously (doubling down would be grounds for a ban). Every ban was permanent but revocable if someone showed genuine reflection and commitment to do better - this sometimes took minutes, sometimes months or even longer, sometimes never.
Randos complained for months. "You just call everyone a nazi", "how do you define fascist then", "you're being unreasonable", "the alt right aren't fascists", and so on, and so forth. Without exception, the ones complaining about it the most were the ones who already had a track prior record of being an asshole in different ways. A lot of the bans were the result of brigading attempts from, well, fascists who objected to being pushed out, pretending to be 'new users' and mysteriously immediately knowing about previous bans that happened before they joined.
It took a while, but they eventually gave up. The result was a pleasant community to be in, unusually pleasant for a privacy/security community. I haven't been around there for quite a while now, but my understanding is that it's still a nice place to this day.
"No fascists allowed" works, even under the worst conditions, and the "no, seriously, this is not up for debate, the moderator decides" is a critical component of making it work.
@joepie91 @pathunstrom If there's a "decision algorithm" (run by humans or otherwise), they will exploit it - so yeah, "mods decide" is the last word and they should be glad it's a ban and not a bullet
Nov 17, 2025, 5:22 PM@flippac @pathunstrom Yep, that was exactly the rationale behind that policy. And I'd explain the ban at length to other people (as long as they had a track record of reasonably genuine participation), but questioning from the banned person or his buddies would be shut down quickly.
Prevented a lot of concern trolling while still teaching a lot of other folks about how to recognize dogwhistles etc. - the flipside of that was that it cost a lot of energy initially, it only got easier later as people started explaining it to each other.
@joepie91 @pathunstrom
We are going to need this kind of work in a few years to cleanup the sludge left behind by the folk who are operating the government of the US right now.
@joepie91 @pathunstrom Can we just implement that IRL?
@joepie91 @pathunstrom Unlike the US, where we just went ahead and made a fascist President. Because why not?
SMH
@joepie91 Key to this or any similar policy is a formal doctrine backing it up, and here I must address the so-called but MISNAMED 'paradox of tolerance'. It is NOT a paradox to be intolerant of intolerance. Polity (people getting along) is a social contract, not a doctrine. Those who violate it lose their right to be defended by it. People confuse this social contract with superficially similar religious doctrines, which are unto themselves.
@joepie91 @pathunstrom bookmarking this to potentially remember and show off to other communities/spheres i might enter in the future
@ShadowJonathan @joepie91 @pathunstrom How often do you commune with The Spheres?
Nov 18, 2025, 9:49 PM@joepie91 @pathunstrom yknow kinda wish i didn't just outright leave a (a certian vita hacking group, due to issues with the other ones..) id never be able to do this now (honestly i dont know if id be mentally 'able too' either but i digress,)
@pathunstrom Lucky for us, fascists REALLY love to be the victims, so they can't stop complaining about "being censored" 😁
@pathunstrom I haven't seen such a sweet honeypot in a while!
@pathunstrom it's a great rule. It relies on having a very accurate fascist detector. Luckily, in many situations the fascists self-identity.
@guyjantic @pathunstrom
there's no detector more accurate than some rot-scrote's internal "I feel threatened by seeing people potentially creating spaces that may not be designed explicitly with my unrestricted comfort and freedom in mind" alarm going off.
@wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing @pathunstrom I know this is not necessarily a Fully Official Policy discussion, but... how do you know the rot-scrote's internal dialogue? Now we need an internal dialogue detector, too.
@guyjantic That's the Olivia Hill rule. If one feels an uncontrollable urge to "well actually" when one sees a space applying it, it's because one immediately feels instinctively threatened that the space may one day place some restriction on one's personal comfort and freedom to toot some edgy fascist-adjacent 'just asking questions' rhetoric. It's like you said, they self-identify. they cab'f help it.
@pathunstrom is it possible this is the only rule you need?
I feel like it's maybe good practice to use something akin to the Contributors Covenent and make it explicit.
But it can be reasonably summed up as "don't be a dick", which is a societal norm.
@astraluma @pathunstrom In my experience it's the most important rule but all you really need is three in my limited experience. No fascists aka fuck off fascists, treat others as you want to be treated, don't argue with the mods.
@pathunstrom Good rule! I'm enjoying seeing all the replies to posts I can't see from accounts I've already muted for other reasons, confirming the efficacy 😁
Nov 19, 2025, 11:06 PM@pathunstrom ⏫ my thing is, if people make it illegal to listen to music files.. with that fact as well as the we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, I would love some sort of enforceable rule that I opt out of allowing fascists to listen to me sing and if they do hear me sing it is because they are stealing the experience
@VoxOfGod @pathunstrom You could put a required checkbox on your music purchase page that affirms the purchaser is not a fascist. If they don’t check it, the Buy button stays inactive. That will leave them stumped for several minutes, with no one to argue with. 🤣
@pathunstrom NO FACISTS I DONT LIKE THEM
@pathunstrom I hate the position this person is expousing so much.
"Question everything!" Absolutely, ponder things from whatever angle you are able to, try and understand the how and the why behind it, but that is not their position is it?
Their "question everything" is, "don't think about how or why; demand an explanation for everything you don't like", which is more or less the opposite.
@pathunstrom This is really clever! That's similar to what we call a "honeypot" in cybersecurity.
A honeypot is a server in a controlled, isolated environment containing data that appears to be legitimate. With the purpose of luring attackers to target this server instead of the real one.
That way information security analysts can detect vulnerabilities, recognize patterns and understand the attackers.
That's exactly what the Olivia Hill Rule does 😀. Making people reveal by themselves they won't follow the rules.
@pathunstrom I feel like I should open with saying it's always funny to watch fascists faceplant themselves squarely into the "find out" after trying to fuck around...
But you can employ this same sort of tactic to insta-ID someone from any group that you want to exclude from your community. Just say explicitly "No _____ Allowed" and anybody who tries to argue the point just outed themself and gets a kickban.
People are way too eager to argue the point and try to make you shift the goalposts.