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Comment on 2 Instances are being used for coordinated vote manipulation, and should be defederated. chinese.lol lemmy.doesnotexist.club

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asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The bots are from those two instances as you can see in the screenshot. Furthermore, lemmy.doesnotexist.club had dozens of bots at least since 2023 (2 years after domain creation, found via the web archive). Since at least 2023, the admin hasn’t been doing anything, or even interacting with anyone. That account seems pretty much dead. But they keep hosting the instance for some reason. It is also a possibility that someone else indeed is using these two instances because they are “abandoned”, but it is highly likely that it is the admin. It is very suspicious that the registrations have been open unguarded against bots since at least 2023. These two instances have been invaded with bots long ago, so defederation is still the right thing to do.

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keegomatic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
FWIW:

Around then, captchas were turned off by default and a lot of bots were registered on a good number of instances. It was also when a lot of new instances were sprouting up because Lemmy was just gaining momentum.

I have personally let certain things I host go on for years without checking them, because developers have ADHD more often than not, and autopay will keep your zombie in service for a long time if it’s not making a dent big enough to make you shut it down (hosting a low-activity anything is not usually very expensive).

Not impossible that it’s just an absent admin.
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LandedGentry@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
[deleted]
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- asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well yeah, there is no concrete evidence that it is the admin (or the admins). But the hints I found seem to be pointing that they are the one behind this. Of course there is a possibility that it is someone else, but it baffles me why anyone would leave the registrations open for 2 years, keep the instance running, but never interact with the fediverse through it themselves. And this isn’t exactly like kbin.social, the admin eventually did respond and close down the instance (not to mention, the admin was still communicating with the people). This instance and its bots have been going on for over 2 years, with not even a single sign of activity from the admin(s).
  
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