this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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PSA: Many Lemmy instances are currently experiencing massive automated sign-ups (bots)! If you run an instance with open sign-ups, please read! (zemmy.cc)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Zetaphor@zemmy.cc to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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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:

  1. Close sign-ups entirely
  2. Only allow sign-ups with applications
  3. 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.

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[–] Cinner@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is one place where 2-of-3 multisig crypto could truly excel. If posters were required to have, say, $5 in XYZ per account per site, but that $5 will get you access to every site on the fediverse AND you can withdrawal it whenever you want, but it will close your accounts. Like a $5 participation escrow. Spammers could still spam, but they'd need to have $5 per account created to do so. I'm sure there are pros and cons to this, but it is technologically feasible.

[–] minus5m@fedia.io 1 points 1 year ago

This is a really interesting approach to this!

[–] Zetaphor@zemmy.cc 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You just described token gating, not multisig. Also you can do multisig without involving any money (or tokens)

[–] Cinner@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

My comment says deleted by creator (I didn't delete it) so I don't remember exactly what I said, but the point is to temporarily (as long as the account exists) put money on the books, which can be taken if you spam but you can withdrawal it when you close your account if you don't. There would need to be a trusted signing authority so instance admins couldn't just take it.