Please. Captcha by default. Email domain filters. Auto-block federation from servers that don’t respect. By default. Urgent.
And yes, to refute some comments, this publication is being upvoted by bots. A single computer was needed, not “thousands of dollars” spent.
Sigh…
All of those ideas are bad.
- Captchas are already pretty weak to combat bots. It’s why recaptcha and others were invented. The people who run bots, spend lots of money for their bots to… bot. They have accessed to quite advanced modules for decoding captchas. As well, they pay kids in india and africa pennies to just create accounts on websites.
I am not saying captchas are completely useless, they do block the lowest hanging fruit currently. That- being most of the script kiddies.
- Email domain filters.
Issue number one, has already been covered below/above by others. You can use a single gmail account, to basically register an unlimited number of accounts.
Issue number two. Spammers LOVE to use office 365 for spamming. Most of the spam I find, actually comes from *.onmicrosoft.com inboxes. its quick for them to spin it up on a trial, and by the time the trial is over, they have moved to another inbox.
- Autoblocking federation for servers who don’t follow the above two broken rules
This is how you destroy the platform. When you block legitimate users, the users will think the platform is broken. Because, none of their comments are working. They can’t see posts properly.
They don’t know this is due to admins defederating servers. All they see, is broken content.
At this time, your best option is for admin approvals, combined with keeping tabs on users.
If you notice an instance is offering spammers. Lets- use my instance for example- I have my contact information right on the side-bar, If you notice there is spam, WORK WITH US, and we will help resolve this issue.
I review my reports. I review spam on my instance. None of us are going to be perfect.
There are very intelligent people who make lots of money creating “bots” and “spam”. NOBODY is going to stop all of it.
The only way to resolve this, is to work together, to identify problems, and take action.
Nuking every server that doesn’t have captcha enabled, is just going to piss off the users, and ruin this movement.
One possible thing that might help-
Is just to be able to have an easy listing of registered users in a server. I noticed- that actually… doesn’t appear to be easily accessible, without hitting rest apis or querying the database.
This is all 100% correct. People have already written captcha-bypassing bots for lemmy, we know from experience.
The only way to stop bots, is the way that has worked for forums for years: registration applications. At lemmy.ml we historically have blocked any server that doesn’t have them turned on, because of the likelihood of bot infiltration from them.
Registration applications have 100% stopped bots here.
But even then, however, what’s to stop an army of bots from just ChatGPTing their way through the application process?
I went to a website to generate a random username, picked the first option of polarbear_gender, and then just stuck that and the application questions for lemmy.ml into ChatGPT to get the following:
I want to join Lemmy.ml because I’m really into having meaningful discussions and connecting with others who have similar interests. Lemmy.ml seems like a great platform that fosters a diverse exchange of ideas in a respectful way, which I like.
When it comes to the communities I’d love to be a part of, I’m all about ones that focus on environmental conservation, wildlife preservation, and sustainability. Those topics really resonate with me, and I’m eager to jump into discussions and learn from fellow passionate folks.
As for my username, I chose it because I’ve got respect for polar bears and how they live with the environmental challenges they face. And throwing in “gender” is just my way of showing support for inclusivity and gender equality. Building a more just and fair society is important to me.
I don’t know the full criteria that people are approved or declined for, but would these answers pass the sniff test?
I’m just worried that placing too much trust in the application process contributes to a false sense of security. A community that is supposedly “protected” from bots can be silently infiltrated by them and cause more damage than in communities where you can either reasonably assume bots are everywhere, or there are more reliable filtering measures in place than a simple statement of purpose.
As I said in my post-
There are very intelligent people who make lots of money creating “bots” and “spam”. NOBODY is going to stop all of it.
The only way to resolve this, is to work together, to identify problems, and take action.
If I decide I want to write spam bots for lemmy- there isn’t much that is going to stop me. Even approvals, aren’t hard to work around. Captchas are comically easy to get past. Registered emails? Not a problem either. I can make a single valid email, and then re-use it once on every single instance. Writing a script that waits for approvals, is quite easy.
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“are you human?"
Heh, stupid AI can’t even be more smarter than me
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Btw, what’s the deal with your instance? I noticed you’re from one of the original servers from 4 years ago. Do you know why it was founded or can you direct me to some information?
I’m from the reddit migration, although a bit more experienced than most (having been here over 2 weeks makes me a unicorn on my server).
I’d like to spread some more knowledge among my fellow newbies about the history of the platform and what kind of different servers are out there. Problem is, I don’t have any knowledge! Help!
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Ah, I see. So tchncs.de hosts other federated platforms, and someone probably decided to set up a Lemmy site when it was originally created 4 years ago. But it was likely pretty empty until the past couple weeks.
Ok good to know, I don’t really know about XMPP/Jabber but I like what I see on wikipedia. Thanks!
I admin a decent sized facebook group, at 10.8k members currently.
Luckily, the facebook group is specifically for people living in a certain geographical area. As such, I am able to make questions, only somebody living in the area would know.
You would be surprised, there are LOTS of spammers who answer all of the questions. (Just- getting the wrong answer on the area-specific questions)
Duct-cleaning spam has been a real problem. lmao.
You’re right that captchas can be bypassed, but I disagree that they’re useless.
Do you lock your house? Are you aware that most locks can be picked and windows can be smashed?
captchas can be defeated, but that doesn’t mean they’re useless - they increase the level of friction required to automate malicious activity. Maybe not a lot, but along with other measures, it may make it tricky enough to circumvent that it discourages a good percentage of bot spammers. It’s the “Swiss cheese” model of security.
Registration applications stop bots, but it also stops legitimate users. I almost didn’t get onto the fediverse because of registration applications. I filled out applications at lemmy.ml and beehaw.org, and then forgot about it. Two days later, I got reminded of the fediverse, and luckily I found this instance that didn’t require some sort of application to join.
Don’t read the first sentence, and then glaze over the rest.
I am not saying captchas are completely useless, they do block the lowest hanging fruit currently. That- being most of the script kiddies.
chatgpt.
Despite all the hype about these things being able to solve all the worlds problems, they can’t answer a series of contextual questions.
Boom. Roasted.
Wait what’s the difference between the suggested auto block and you historically blocking instances without applications? Is there other criteria you use to determine the block?
Not saying I know the answer, just curious.
Haven’t you heard of the “Swiss cheese” model of security?
The best way to ensure your server is protected is to unplug it from the Internet and put it in an EMF-shielded Faraday cage.
There’s always a tradeoff between security, usability and cost.
captchas can be defeated, but that doesn’t mean they’re useless - they increase the level of friction required to automate malicious activity. Maybe not a lot, but along with other measures, it may make it tricky enough to circumvent that it discourages a good percentage of bot spammers.
I disagree. I think the solution is moderation. Basically, have a set of tools that identify likely bots, and let human moderators make the call.
If you require admins to manually approve accounts, admins will either automate approvals or stop approving. That’s just how people tend to operate imo. And the more steps you put between people wanting to sign up and actually getting an account, the fewer people you’ll get to actually go through with it.
So I’m against applications. What we need is better moderation tools. My ideal would be a web of trust. Basically, you get more privileges the more trusted people that trust you. I think that should start from the admins, then to the mods, and then to regular users.
But lemmy isn’t that sophisticated. Maybe it will be some day, IDK, but it’s the direction I’d like to see things go.
HackerNews does something similar where new users don’t have the ability to down vote until they have earned enough upvotes from other users.
We could extend that, and literally not allow upvotes to properly register if the user is too new. The vote would still show on the comment/post, but the ranking of the comment/post will only be influenced by seasoned users. That way, users could scroll down a thread, see a very highly upvoted comment bang in the middle, and think for themselves “huh, probably bots”.
Very hierarchical solution, heavily reliant on the mods not playing favourites or having their own agenda.
I disagree. I think the solution is moderation.
But- that is basically agreeing with the context of what I said.
So I’m against applications.
I don’t like them either, but, the problem is, I don’t have ANY other tools at my disposal for interacting with and viewing the other users.
What we need is better moderation tools.
Just a way to audit user activity and comments would be a big start. I honestly cannot find a method for doing this via the UI. Having to resort to querying the database just to dig up details.
Maybe I’ll work on this. I’m trying to get more involved in lemmy-adjacent dev work, so this might be a fun project.
Well, I dug around and built a pretty simple webassembly GUI for lemmy just now-
It would appear, the API is actually missing easy ways to just… query users, and actions. However, skipping past the lemmy api and going directly to the database, is easy enough.
And, from there, its pretty easy to run each user’s post history through say, a piece of ML, which detects the potential for spam, and reports on the highest risk users.
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This right here.
Op, if you’re not ready to moderate, don’t spin up your own server or do your own private instance. If you’re going to moderate, do it properly and don’t spew bad ideas while hiding behind a dumb “alert” throwaway.
To be honest, I’m surprised that that username was allowed (or not reserved). It seems like it would introduce a risk where people could pose as Lemmy developers or something along those lines.
Lemmy is very “open” right now; some might say by design, other might say flawed. OP is maybe coming from a good place and actually wants to help, but instead of doing it tactfully, OP is becoming the exact thing they’re advocating against — a spammer posting garbage.
I’m not really enthusiastic about email filters either, from a privacy standpoint. Plenty of companies that go harvest email addresses to link identities to activity. And even if the instance admin isn’t doing that, it’s one more thing that someone could break into a server and swipe.
If the CAPTCHA can’t handle it, then it ain’t doing its job.
No, you’ve (maybe) limited your singular solitary instance’s growth: your instance is not “Lemmy” and admins should do whatever they find works for them, is something they can easily enforce, and resolves the problem.
If you want to geoip limit signups to Skokie, Illinois? Great! If it works for you and keeps your instance from being The Problem, then it’s a valid solution.
(I don’t disagree that email domain blocks are not a singular solution to any abuse problem, but I also think that whatever works for the individual admin is perfectly reasonable, and email blocks CAN be worthwhile.)
I believe you can literally just add a . To the end of your own gmail and it will go to yours. Ie hello.1@gmail.com will go to hello@gmail.com.
Actually, hello.1@gmail will go to hello1@gmail.
The one you are thinking I believe is hello+1@gmail will go to hello@gmail
Correct, Gmail essentially doesn’t “see” dots hello@gmail is the same as h.e.l.l.o@gmail
hello+anything@gmail will also be delivered to hello@gmail. This is great for signing up for mailing lists or subscriptions then creating a filter afterwards to do with it what you please.
Correct, Gmail essentially doesn’t “see” dots hello@gmail is the same as h.e.l.l.o@gmail
There’s one exception to that. If you originally created the email address with a dot in it, as in, signed up for gmail as “hello.2@gmail.com,” it’s treated as a literal character in the username portion and is required.
It’s still not required in this case…
Then that has changed at some point. Used to be that if you registered it with a dot in the name, you had to always use that dot.
maybe in the past, but i did that a few years ago and switch between the dot and not
Yeah, it had to have changed at some point then. It used to be required that you use the dot if you registered it with the dot.
Ahh, yea that’s right. Regardless, just all the more reason that it’s kind of silly to do what OP is talking about. Sure, you could filter out the + signs as well but overall it’s a pretty pointless implementation.
BTW, it might be more inclusive language to use “allow list” and “block list”
I can’t imagine being so obsessed with race politics as to think that purely technical terms like “white list” and “black list”, which have never had any connection to race relations whatsoever, are somehow non-inclusive.
With all due respect, it’s from NIST’s guidance
As someone with his own email domain, screw you for even thinking about suggesting domain filters.
Blacklist domain filters are fine, it’s whitelist domain filters that get small personal domains.
Thank you for voicing this out! Was literally my first reaction as well
This. Domain whitelist are the worse thing you can do.
I second this
Lemmy is just getting started and way too many people are talking about defederation for any reason possible. What is even the point of a federated platform if everyone’s trying to defederate? If you don’t like federation so much, go use Facebook or something.
This. Defed is not the magic weapon that will solve all your problems. Captcha and email filters should be on by default though.
Just to add to that, imagine people would start defeding email. Like WTF is that even? Defed should not even be an option.
imagine people would start defeding email
There are literally globally maintained blacklists of spam email sources. When people lease a static IP address the first thing to do is to check it against the major email blacklists.
It happens to email ALL THE TIME, we just call it something different when it happens to email. Evaluating email for SPAM potential is an every-day common place occurrence, and for at least the past 10 years, a factor called ‘domain reputation’ is part of the equation. Entire domains get spam blacklisted because they refuse to enforce rules for their users. The end result is that some domains completely refuse to accept mail from some other domains.
Blacklisting an entire domain can and does happen daily. It just doesn’t have the same triggering ring as the word “defederation” has.
It happens because spam is illegal in many countries.
Certainly it should. If you connect with a server that breaks all your core rules you shouldn’t force mods to deal with that constant stream of garbage. Just cut off the source.
Use Facebook then. Or Reddit.
Lol, no. Defederatioon is a tool. Sometimes it is the right call to use it. Go use Gab or something if you want a voat like hellhole filled with neo-nazis and Q-tard conspiracy nonsense. I don’t want to be part of a community that allows that shit though.
Again, go use Facebook or Reddit. They will suit your needs and wishes.
Again, go use Gab or Daily Stormer. They protect the “freeze peach” (aka right wing hate speech) you are so concerned about.
My understanding from the beehaw defed is that more surgical moderation tools just don’t exist right now (and likely won’t for awhile unless the two Lemmy devs get some major help). Admins only really have a singular nuclear option to deal with other instances that aren’t able to tackle the bot problem.
Personally I don’t see defederating as a bad thing. People and instances are working through who they want to be in their social network. The well managed servers will eventually rise to the top with the bot infested and draconian ones eventually falling into irrelevance.
As a user this will result in some growing pains since Lemmy currently doesn’t offer a way to migrate your account. Personally I already have 3 Lemmy accounts. A good app front end that minimizes the friction from account switching would greatly help these growing pains.
As a user this will result in some growing pains since Lemmy currently doesn’t offer a way to migrate your account.
Because you shouldn’t. Just like with other federated systems like e-mail or OAuth/OpenID, you don’t create accounts everywhere, you use ONE account everywhere instead.
Personally I don’t see defederating as a bad thing.
You should. Imagine e-mail server admins would start banning other e-mail services based on political or religious views and whatnot, that would fragment e-mail system and eventually destroy it. The only reason to defed other instance if such instance breaks the law. Just like we blacklist fraudulent mail server. Not because we don’t like fraud, but because it’s illegal.
Lemmy.world has rules that are up on https://mastodon.world/about - if posts from other instances do not follow these rules the posts will be deleted and if needed the user will be warned/banned. If there is an entire instance that might be a problem, they might ultimately become defederated. Yes this is the last option, but sometimes it’s also the only option. Mod and admin tools are quite limited currently and there’s just some content we don’t want to be linked with.
Read more about the defederation of exploding-heads.com here: https://lemmy.world/post/747912
EH was not defederated because it broke LW rules, it was defeded because it breaks laws. Defeding a porn instance because LW doesn’t allow porn won’t happen. Defeding a child porn instance will happen for sure.
You shouldn’t defed some instance because their rules are different, because all rules are different. That will destroy fediverse before it starts. Everyone who disagrees simply doesn’t understand the point of Fediverse.
Did you read that post? I don’t think you did because that explains the entire reasoning why it was defederated. Had nothing to do with them breaking the law.
Ok, I guess you’re from Belgium. Tell me one thing - is racism legal in Belgium? Because EH is clearly supporting and endorsing racism. That alone makes it illegal. At least here in the UK. There’s no need to invent some explanation for this specific case.
So because the rules we put on lemmy.world also match with laws - it’s because of the laws we decided to not federate with them? Not because we don’t want to deal with that kind of people in general? Because we personally don’t like bigots, racists and homophobes? And it wasn’t because we didn’t want to give them a platform here? Cool, I didn’t know.
Look up the origins of IRC’s EFNet, which was created specifically to exclude a server that allowed too-easy federation and thus became an abuse magnet.
Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time… a long time
Folks running new federated networks gotta learn this stuff!
Wow it’s been so long since I’ve thought about IRC. Does anyone you know still use it regularly?
Yes, people still use it all the time. More people use IRC day to day than they do Lemmy at the moment. Though Lemmy’s numbers are close without the bots. Lemmy will overtake IRC soon if it’s not already. I’ve got a v3 IRC client right here on my desktop.
What’s the requirement to become federated? Say someone starts their own server, are they able to load it with bots prior to federating then suddenly go online and fuck shit up before they get defederated?
I guess what I’m asking is there action needed by every instance before they are federated with a new instance. Do the admins of each instance have the opportunity to do their due diligence before federating with someone or is it automatic?
If someone really wants to attack the network, they’ll attack it with custom software, not just by clicking on a lot of buttons in the web UI.
Auto-block federation from servers that don’t respect.
NO! Do NOT defederate due to how an instance chooses to operate internally. It is not your concern. You should only defederate if this instance causes you repeated trouble offenses. Do not issue pre-emprive blanket blocks.
If they choose not to take measures against bots defederation is the only way to keep that wave out of your own instance.
Do not make assumptions on how other instances are operating. You don’t know what measures they’re taking. If they did not cause you trouble yet, don’t try to predict it by making generalizations. It creates an echo chamber Internet.
Agree! Defederation is a nuclear option. The more we do it, the more we reduce the value of “the fediverse”, and the more likely we are to kill this whole project.
I think defederation should only be a consideration if an instance is consistently, frequently becoming a problem for your instance over a large period of time. It’s not a pre-emptive action.
Isn’t this what all you lemmy-worlders got mad at Beehaw for doing? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for a small statement from people as an anti-spam measure (a sort of advanced captcha), though of course the big problem there is reviewing all the applications in a timely manner. Still, I think there’s room for more and less exclusive instances. The tools are there for instance owners to protect their instances however they choose.
Mine got blown up a day or two ago before I had enabled Captch. About 100 accounts were created before I started getting rate-limited (or similar) by Google.
Better admin tools are definitely needed to handle the scale. We need a pane of glass to see signups and other user details. Hopefully it’s in the works.
Email domain filters
Okay, gmail should definitely be blacklisted, because it’s extremely easy to abuse. Microsoft email domains too. What domains should be allowed then?
Email domain filtering makes no sense when it is easy enough to just set up your own email server for bots. It will only hinder legit users and low level bad actors, not the real threat of major bot farms.
The admin https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/db0 from the lemmy.dbzer0.com instance possibly made a solution that uses a chain of trust system between instances to whitelist each other and build larger whitelists to contain the spam/bot problem. Instead of constantly blacklisting. For admins and mods maybe take a look at their blog post explaining it in more detail. https://dbzer0.com/blog/overseer-a-fediverse-chain-of-trust/
db0 probably knows what they’re talking about, but the idea that there would be an “Overseer Control Plane” managed by one single person sounds like a recipe for disaster
I hear you. For what it’s worth it is mentioned in the end of the blog post, the project is open source, people can run their own overseer API and create less strict or more strict whitelists, instances can also be registered to multiple chains. Don’t mistake my enthousiasm for self run open social media platforms for trying to promote a single tool as the the be-all and end-all solution. Under the swiss cheese security model/idea, this could be another tool in the toolbox to curb the annoyance to a point where spam or bots become less effective. Edit: *The be-all and end-all *not be and end all solution
Neat, but I appreciate the email model of spam protection more than simple dumb whitelists. I won’t list my domain on any whitelist as whitelists discourage what Lemmy needs the most: People who run their own instances. At the end of the day, spammers will automate the process of listing themselves, and the person who runs their own instance has to go around doing everything manually.
Obviously biased, but I’m really concerned this will lead to it becoming infeasible to self-host with working federation and result in further centralization of the network.
Mastodon has a ton more users and I’m not aware of that having to resort to IRC-style federation whitelists.
I’m wondering if this is just another instance of kbin/lemmy moderation tools being insufficient for the task and if that needs to be fixed before considering breaking federation for small/individual instances.
He explained it already. It looks for a ratio of number of users to posts. If your “small” instance has 5000 users and 2 posts, it would probably assume a lot of those users would be spam bots. If your instance has 2 users and 3 posts, it would assume your users are real. There’s a ratio, and the admin of each server that utilizes it can control the level at which it assumes a server is overrun by spam accounts.
for larger instances, this makes sense. For us smaller instances, just add a custom application requirement that isn’t about reddit. though i’ll be adding captcha too if they keep at it (every hour, 2 bots apply).
I’ve seen bots trying to create accounts, it’s the same boring message about needing a new home because “random reason about reddit”. I’ll borrow a quote from Mr Samuel Jackson: “I don’t remember asking you a god damn thing about reddit”… and application is denied.
actually needing a new home from reddit is the exact terminology I used. That doesn’t mean bots lmao
I mentioned Reddit in an application. I feel like that would come up in legitimate applications at the moment. Is it easy to tell the bots from actual applicants?
In my case, yes. I asked for a reason written in code (working or not). Since I intend to be a DevOps focused instance, there’s no excuse. Most humans would read the application and I don’t feel bad for denying based on this requirement.
Also helps that after 8 of those bots apps, the message is very similar. If there was a human in that mix, they can dm me and ask for reconsideration.
Image Transcription: Meme
[‘Man vs. Giant’ - Dramatic artwork depicting ‘Yhorm the Giant’ from ‘Dark Souls 3’ towering over the protagonist from ‘Dark Souls 3’, ‘Ashen One’. The giant figure holds a massive sword that is planted in the ground with both hands, while the comparitively tiny ‘Ashen One’ holds a regular sized sword in his right hand and adopts a fighting stance. Text placed over the stomach of the giant character, and over the smaller protagonist figure, reads as follows]
BOTS
LEMMY
^I’m a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^
Lmao are you the guy from yesterday?
Everyone is talking about how these things won’t work. And they’re right, they won’t work 100% of the time.
However, they work 80-90% of the time and help keep the numbers under control. Most importantly, they’re available now. This keeps Lemmy from being a known easy target. It gives us some time to come up with a better solution.
This will take some time to sort out. Take care of the low hanging fruit first.
Plus, if this becomes the “bot wild west” at such an early stage, the credibility hit will be a serious hindrance to future growth…
Just saw a WAVE of bot art flow down the “Top New” feed. It then promptly stopped. And then when I reloaded the page, it was gone. So I think it’s working…
