• BasicWhiteGirl
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    1411 months ago

    This is just really disappointing and gross. Is there any way to not have bots absolutely everywhere?

    • @MicroWaveOP
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, it’s absolutely disappointing and gross. Bots have been actively probing for obscure instances without registration validation and flocking to them. Good thing the top real lemmy instances (like lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.ca) have been much more vigilant about that.

        • @MicroWaveOP
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          411 months ago

          What’s your take on it?

          • @Candelestine
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            511 months ago

            My (different person here) take is it’s probing behavior. Who benefits? Anti-reddit-protest trolls want to see this fail, and some could have the resources. Savvy criminal organizations see potential profit. Major tech companies see at least a research opportunity at minimal expense. White hats want to find and raise awareness of vulnerabilities.

            Only governments would really have no major motive beyond the usual surveillance of a social space. So I think the question should really be, who’s not doing it? Because if people aren’t wholesale fucking around yet, they’ll start very soon. It’s only the savvy or lucky that are aware of us still, but that will not be true for long. Snowball is rolling now, that’s pretty plain to see.

            I mean, we’re just a big and growing pile of consumers. What else do you do with those?

      • @AbouBenAdhem
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        611 months ago

        Which is a shame, because in theory it seems like creating a self-hosted instance for your personal account has a lot of advantages (not worrying about the host doing something screwy or abandoning the instance, having full control over who you federate with, being able to customize the interface, etc.)

        But that may end up going the way of self-hosted email servers, where differentiating yourself from a spam server becomes impossible and everyone ends up on the equivalent of gmail.

      • @necrxfagivs
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        611 months ago

        Are those instances defederating from the bot-filled ones?

        • @MicroWaveOP
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          1211 months ago

          Yeah, those instances are defederating from the bot-filled ones, but new ones are still popping up (although seems to be slowing down a little for now).

          • @necrxfagivs
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            311 months ago

            I hope there’s some way to block that, bots are useful or funny sometimes (like the ones to download videos, reminders, etc). But I asume most of them have the sole purpose of advertising or brigading.

            I can’t wrap my head about Lemmy 0.18 dropping capchas.

      • spriteblood
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        111 months ago

        If we have the ability to identify them or where they’re coming from, could our various platforms just defederate or block the ones who aren’t dealing with the bot problem down the line?

    • NotAPenguin
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      -1811 months ago

      I don’t see how that could be done, the bot owners can always just spin up their own new instance where they control sign up requirements.

      Other instances can then defederate from the spam instance but they can quickly spin up a new one.

      Gonna be interesting to see how it’s solved.

      • Drunemeton
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        111 months ago

        Require that membership in the Fediverse be approved?

        • NotAPenguin
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          -1511 months ago

          The fediverse is decentralized, anyone can start their own lemmy/kbin/mastodon/whatever server and make an account they just approve themselves.

          If you mean some kind of global approval then that destroys the whole point of the fediverse.

          • Drunemeton
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            111 months ago

            Just throwing out ideas.

            If the Fediverse cannot control the bots then where does that leave actual users?

      • @Omgarm
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        111 months ago

        This is going to be the real skynet fight.