Mastodon: Deactivate/suspend user account temporarily

[rixx]

Pitch

As an administrator and moderator, I'd like to suspend or deactivate user accounts temporarily. Currently, my only moderation options are a stern word or complete deletion/annihilation of the users' data. I'd like to be able to take more moderate actions, such as

• Deactivating an account for a set time (a day, a week, a month), which may serve as a way to deal with violent discourse.
• Deactivating an account indefinitely while an issue is being resolved
• Deactivating an account in preparation for account suspension/removal. This would allow the impacted user to still download or migrate their account, without allowing them to post.

Motivation

I strongly dislike deleting a user's complete social media history – while it's sometimes warranted, sometimes it would be better to give a user the opportunity to migrate to a more suitable instance, or to give them some time to cool off when they have not been thinking straight in a discussion. The all-or-nothing moderation choices force us to be more combative than we need to be, and I'd like to see a more moderate option.

[ThibG]

You still have the option to disable login for a local account, which is similar to your need, although it doesn't signal anyone that the account is being investigated

[rixx]

Ah, see, I didn't know that you could disable accounts even without a report, because it's hidden behind the "warn" button (and disabling a user account is decidedly not intuitively a subtype of warning).

Since there is no explanation included in the warning interface, I don't know if disabling does the thing I want: Does it permit login, but prohibit actions? If so, it is what I want, except that I'd like to see a time-bound action for this, e.g auto-enable after a set amount of time.

[JamesABDL]

I think suspending just the login isn't enough in many cases, a deactivation should also hide posts, remove the user from search etc..

There should also be a way for users to deactivate their own account themselves.