cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/87753

Checked the fediverse observer and I see a lot instances with barely any activity skyrocketing to the top of registered users. I can only surmise they’re being flooded with spam accounts and haven’t noticed.

Example: https://cubing.social/

How much should we worry about this? Should we be taking pre-emptive steps to defederate them to avoid those spam accounts being utilized against the threadiverse?

The spam problem is already on our doostep and we need to seriously start considering how we’re going to handle it ASAP. We need to take knowledge from how email dealt with it and find ways to quickly distribute knowledge about spam instances.

  • SeeJayEmmEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Maybe start by alerting those admins of the potential problem and give them a chance to respond.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Sorry but no. I am not going to start going around doing that. I would be doing nothing else with my life. Same way that if someone sets up an open email relay, it’s nobody else’s fault when email providers start blacklisting them.

      • SeeJayEmmEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Except this is much smaller and more nascent than email, which has been around for decades. I don’t think proactively de-federating instances that have done anything yet is the wrong approach at this time.

  • stux⚡ @geddit.socialEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Yes… They really should enable captcha if they haven’t already. Like .world also ours got ‘abused’ by idle spam accounts

    Not sure yet why but many Lemmy instance user numbers don’t add up anymore

    (Plus it’s also causing major mail issues, at least with Mailgun)

  • Bilb!@lem.monsterEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I noticed that a bot had started rapidly creating accounts on my instance. None of them used a real email address though, and email verification is required. I’ve since started requiring an application though, anyway.

    Edited to add: Fediverse observer reports that lem.monster has 306 users, but this is completely wrong. I wonder how they’re getting these stats.