Anonymity is not impunity

The question we get most often: with no accounts, how do you stop people from being vile?

The honest answer is that we don't stop it completely. We just make the cost higher than the payoff.

Four layers, none perfect

• A server-side filter that refuses serious insults and threats. It targets slurs and harassment, not smut: swearing is part of the local heritage.
• A per-device rate limit: one message every two seconds, and the same message three times in a row goes nowhere.
• Three-vote reporting: three different people on the same bench, and the author leaves until midnight.
• Local muting, instant, which tells nobody and asks nobody's permission.

Ephemerality helps more than you'd think. A harasser needs duration: find the target again, come back, accumulate. Here, at midnight, the target no longer exists, nor does their name, and the bench where it happened has been dissolved.

That doesn't replace the four layers. It makes them sufficient.