You can always ban users. Still, instances with a culture specifically promoting those users (such as instances dedicated to reposting from Reddit, or a hypothetical instance that is hell-bent on trolling everyone) will make sure you have a steady amount of work maintaining that banning policy indefinitely. Defederating makes a lot more sense because moderator time and attention are finite resources.
Comment on Opinions wanted: defederating with bot spam instances
TheGreatFox@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Possible alternative that doesn’t involve defederating: Banning those two bot accounts from lemm.ee. That way, any users on those sites would still be able to participate in posts here.
… Though, I’m not sure how many of those there actually are. Looking at the sidebar, zerobytes.monster has had 18 users in the last 6 months, and lemmit.online a grand total of 1 user in the last 6 months.
amio@kbin.social 9 months ago
TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 9 months ago
This is actually a super good idea
Rescuer6394@feddit.nl 9 months ago
i don’t think you can subscribe to lemmit.online, the only user is the bot, and the only purpose of the instance is to archive stuff.