Comment on Paging Mr. Manager
mrmanager@lemmy.today 2 months agoYeah I didnt see this until now. Thanks!
There has been a huge wave of spam accounts recently, and I recognize some of the names on this list. Of course these accounts gets banned quickly.
Getting a fake email address is really easy, so I don’t think it makes any difference whatsoever. On fastmail which im using, I can even create fake ones with a click on a button. It’s built into the service to have different emails for different sites.
Having closed signups will not stop any spam accounts. It just adds a delay between registration and being able to log in. There is no way to know if it’s a spam account or not before they sign in. Of course, some of the names in the list makes it obvious, but they just change to ordinary sounding names then.
I think it’s frustrating for new users to have to wait for a random time period to get accepted, specially when it serves no purpose. I’m not going to be any wiser if I approve the registration now or 12 hours later.
Or am I wrong?
Hi!
I can’t speak for all users of lemmy.today but as a user of lemmy.today I would prefer it if we took reasonable steps like email verification to be a good neighbor, especially if it prevents other instances from de-federating us. Just my 2 cents. :)
Yeah it makes sense. After reading all the arguments here, I guess if it helps to slow down spammers, it’s a good idea. Let’s do it. :)
I will enable it tomorrow and I would be very grateful for some extra admin help. I will contact you tomorrow. :)
Excellent!
Very good :)
Admin approval with some text that needs a little bit of thought to fill out is surprisingly effective and definitely slows down spammers a lot.
Sure, it will not totally prevent it and they can move to another instance, but if all the nicer instances enable it, it becomes much easier to defederate the badly run ones that don’t.
Thank you, it does make sense. We will enable it tomorrow. This thread changed my mind. :)
Greatly appreciated! :)
Feel free to join us in the Matrix channel where we keep each other apprised of spammers and trolls and other problems. You show up as a member already, but we never see you in there. That’s how we catch so many of these so fast.
I’ve been there a few times, but will log in more and catch up. :)
Admin approval with some text that needs a little bit of thought to fill out is surprisingly effective and definitely slows down spammers a lot.
I had to do that on dbzer0 and I think beehaw, they were both a fun exercise and took no time at all. Hell, I ended up submitting a wall of text about Sacco and Vanzetti on dbzer0 if I remember correctly, lol. But if nothing else they knew that it was 1) a human, and 2) I really believe what I was saying.
If the point is to get regular users who are thoughtful participants in online communities, requiring an email address and the typing of a few coherent words on their own behalf is NOT a barrier to entry, or even a much of a bar. After all, these people are applying to join a forum in which they are presumably going to spend unlimited time typing statements of their own creation in the future. Instance owners are just requiring a bit of that up front, and it’s not a huge ask.
It is, however, a very frustrating requirement for people who want to open multiple accounts for spamming and trolling purposes, and for that reason alone is a great filter for applicants.
As someone who went through the application system to join my instance, it is really not that bad. Just have your potential users write a few sentences on their lemmy history, why they want to join your instance and what content they are looking for.
This can be answered in a few minutes, but it is already enough to discourage almost all bad faith applicants. The few hours of wait period while you check their application for copy pasting are also contributing to deter them, simply because spam users often want to do some mischief right now, waiting until tomorrow doesn’t work well for those impulses.
In all for trying it. Will enable it tomorrow then. Thanks!
You’re welcome, and good luck! Hope it works out
I think it’s the right choice to agree to some measures being taken. Even if it has marginal effect, it sends a message that you are doing what you can.
ptz@dubvee.org 2 months ago
Thanks for responding.
You only temporarily ban them from what I’ve seen in the modlog. You may not know this (I didn’t until recently), but a home-instance temp ban will override a remote instance perma ban (there’s a PR in the works to fix this , but it’s the way things are currently). And when someone has a username like
https://lemmy.today/u/JewKiller64g, I really don’t think they’re going to suddenly change their ways in 30 days and come back after a temp ban a better person.It adds at least an extra step they’ll have to go through if they’re spinning up a new account to evade a ban. The one in question has admitted they’ll just keep spinning up new accounts because it’s easy. Adding a slight inconvenience won’t stop everyone, but it would at least help prevent becoming a base camp for trolls.
That’s also 12 hours where your instance can spin up accounts with no one able to do anything about them and everyone else has to deal with that.
You don’t, but at least with some form of barrier they’re not free to go crazy with no oversight.
You’re not wrong there, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, they’re targeting yours because there’s no barrier to entry whatsoever.
Not as long as the admin is responsive and takes measures to address the problems.
Most instances require this, as do pretty much all mainstream platforms. I don’t think anyone is particularly annoyed by this.
InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
The way things work now is annoying.
Troll creates an account on instance A, posts racist shit or other uninspired bait on instance B.
Gets instantly permabanned from instance B.
3 days later, home instance A decides to ban them for a week.
Thus, a week later, user is automatically unbanned from home instance and all federated instances, including where they were permabanned.
Current behaviour is bananas.
This particular troll’s lack of creativity is unsurprising.