cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/177673
Cross posting this here for visibility since lemmy.ml federation has been very hit or miss the last week. Original post from @sunaurus@lemm.ee
Today, a bunch of new instances appeared in the top of the user count list. It appears that these instances are all being bombarded by bot sign-ups.
For now, it seems that the bots are especially targeting instances that have:
- Open sign-ups
- No captcha
- No e-mail verification
I have put together a spreadsheet of some of the most suspicious cases here.
If this is affecting you, I would highly recommend considering one of the following options:
- Close sign-ups entirely
- Only allow sign-ups with applications
- Enable e-mail verification + captcha for sign-ups
Additionally, I would recommend pre-emptively banning as many bot accounts as possible, before they start posting spam!
Please comment below if you have any questions or anything useful to add.
Sadly, this may signal the end of open federation. I can’t see how trust by default is going to work long term.
It depends on how federated platforms react, it’s necessary to control who signs up in some way, if that’s “globally” accepted trust can hold well long term.