We are proposing a defederation from lemmy.org until they update their instance settings to reduce spam signups

9 months ago by Otter to c/main

Since early December, someone has created 65+ accounts with variations of the same name, and they have used those accounts for vote manipulation.

We reached out to the admin of the instance 4 weeks ago, recommending that they enable registration applications, upgrade the captcha difficulty, and/or require an email address to prevent this. We have not received a reply.

When we checked the logs this week, we saw that a new chain of accounts was created. This is creating extra work for our admin team to find and ban these accounts.

Defederation will block the instance, their communities, and their users from everyone on lemmy.ca and piefed.ca. Similarly, it will block content from lemmy.ca and piefed.ca from going to their instance.

Currently, less than 10 users from lemmy.ca are subscribed to a community there, the majority of which are subscribed to 1 community max.

You can view their communities here: https://lemmy.org/communities

Please share your feedback about this action in this thread.

kunstbanause 76 points 9 months ago

Sounds reasonable, thank you for informing us. I support the proposed move.

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Curious_Canid 46 points 9 months ago

I very much appreciate you communicating about this.

I agree that defederating seems like the right solution.

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avidamoeba 44 points 9 months ago

No objections. It looks like a small instance. Can refederate if improved.

The admin seems related to some AI ad tech firm. Also I'm curious how they got lemmy.org. It was registered in 2020. I imagine it was registered speculatively.

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squirrel 28 points 9 months ago

The admin seems related to some AI ad tech firm

I found a mastodon account with the same tagline. Everything including the avatar, uploaded media and toots seem to be AI generated.

path: 0 21664694 21665556, hotness: undefined, score: 28, children: 2

AzuranAurora 20 points 9 months ago

Seems we won't be losing anything of value from defederating, then. That shit doesn't belong here.

path: 0 21664694 21665556 21668176, hotness: undefined, score: 20, children: 0

RickyRigatoni 5 points 9 months ago

The first entirely ai generated lemmy instance.

Today we see history being made, fellas.

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JohnnyCanuck 40 points 9 months ago

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breakfastmtn 31 points 9 months ago

Four weeks with no reply? Fire away, I say.

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slothrop 24 points 9 months ago

Don't delay, defed today.

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AzuranAurora 22 points 9 months ago

Go for it. They're not bringing anything positive to our experience.

path: 0 21668195, hotness: undefined, score: 22, children: 0

Shadow 20 points 9 months ago

This is now done.

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MyBrainHurts 19 points 9 months ago

Absolutely, seems like they're making the fediverse worse.

Thanks for your work and letting us know/vote!

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CanadianCorhen 17 points 9 months ago

Sounds like a great reason, and i doubt any of the 10 users will notice.

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AFKBRBChocolate 14 points 9 months ago

Doesn't look like the negative impact would be very significant - thumbs up from me.

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engene 14 points 9 months ago

Yes please! Part of the reason to move to this platform is the content and more importantly spam and bot manipulation.

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k_rol 12 points 9 months ago

Seems like a good enough reason to defederate.

path: 0 21664211, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0

veeesix 12 points 9 months ago

Why not? A quick glance shows it’s basically one guy spamming links to…himself?

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Omega_Jimes 12 points 9 months ago

This is the beauty of federated services. If someone is making more work for you, you have every right to defed.

path: 0 21670253, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 0

FreeBooteR69 10 points 9 months ago

If they are acting against the interests of the community de federate.

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Luci 8 points 9 months ago

This is why we can defederate. I’m for it

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yeather 7 points 9 months ago

👍

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WizardGed 7 points 9 months ago

Go for it. if you're running a lemmy instance and cant manage simple comms between other instance admins you really can't complain if they defederate from you. It doesn't seem very busy either with most of the posts being mirrors of other instances.

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SethranKada 7 points 9 months ago

I vote yes

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Mouselemming 6 points 9 months ago

Do it.

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MasterOKhan 6 points 9 months ago

This is the way, defed until they update their settings.

path: 0 21665936, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

RollingZeppelin 6 points 9 months ago

Sounds good to me! The fewer bots, the better.

path: 0 21682524, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

Aarrodri 5 points 9 months ago

Imagine a gif of ben Stiller saying "do it ".

P.s. how can I add gif responses?

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otter 16 points 9 months ago

You can find a link to a gif, and then add it with the image formatting

For example:

![description](https://example.com/do-it.gif)

Or

![](https://media1.tenor.com/m/HtRwK466tTIAAAAC/do-it-ben-stiller.gif)

Which becomes

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MyBrainHurts 6 points 9 months ago

Amazing, I've wondered about that!

path: 0 21666120 21666194 21667784, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

recentSlinky 4 points 9 months ago

Yes, i agree too. Defederate!

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julian 4 points 9 months ago

The unfortunate thing is that this has a negative effect on the Lemmy brand, even if not affiliated.

This gets into copyright enforcement territory, though, which I don't know if Lemmy is interested in doing.

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4am 7 points 9 months ago

It’s a trademark thing, not a copyright thing (those work differently) but you are correct that it will be brand-damaging.

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MadMadBunny 4 points 9 months ago

Okay, thank you for doing this!

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ech 2 points 9 months ago

It looks like ttrpg.network is also being used. Will that instance be blocked as well?

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otter 2 points 9 months ago

If we do, we will reach out to them first with any concerns and then make another post here prior to blocking them.

Based on the time stamps, it does look like the same person made 17 accounts on ttrpg.network on December 8th before going back to making them on lemmy.org. Running a more robust query, in total I'm seeing 88 of those accounts on lemmy.org and the 17 accounts on ttrpg.network, all of which are banned on here.

Right now I'm thinking that we will keep an eye out for more accounts, and then reach out to admins if it becomes a problem on another instance

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ech 2 points 9 months ago

That sounds fair.

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melsaskca 2 points 9 months ago

The customer is always right, used to be a thing.

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nevyn 2 points 3 months ago

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otter 1 point 3 months ago

Are you seeing the errors on our sign up page too? Our captcha difficulty is set pretty low

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nevyn 1 point 3 months ago

path: 0 24853479 24853916 24854187, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

juspie 2 points 9 months ago

I support the proposal to defederate.

Thank you admins for your efforts, and also for soliciting this feedback before taking the proposed action!

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Washedupcynic -1 points 9 months ago

I am on more than one lemmy.world group. To say that your community won't feel an impact is disingenuous.

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Shadow 9 points 9 months ago

Lemmy.org not lemmy.world

path: 0 21675869 21676064, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1

Washedupcynic 3 points 9 months ago

My bad, I misread

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k0e3 6 points 9 months ago

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding something, but aren't lemmy.org and lemmy.world two different things?

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Washedupcynic 3 points 9 months ago

My bad. I misread

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Bonus -1 points 9 months ago

It's CM002, isn't it?

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otter 3 points 9 months ago

I haven't looked into CM002, but this is a different situation.

For this one, all of the accounts were made on that instance and follow a format of phrase01, phrase02, etc

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pixeltree 2 points 9 months ago

No, he does accounts on different instances, these are all on the same one

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