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133

Introducing The Lemmy Overseer (overseer.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@beehaw.org

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/95652

Hey everyone, you may have noticed that some of us have been raising alarms about the amount of spam accounts being created on insufficiently protected instances.

As I wanted to get ahead of this before we're shoulders deep in spam, I developed a small service which can be used to parse the Lemmy Fediverse Observer and retrieve instances which are suspicious enough to block.

The Overseer provides fully documented REST API which you can use to retrieve the instances in 3 different formats. One with all the info, one with just the names, and one as a csv you can copy-paste into your defederation setting. You can even adjust the level of suspicion you want to have.

Not only that, I also developed a python script which you can edit and run and it will automatically update your defederation list. You can set that baby to run on a daily schedule and it will take care that any new suspicious instances are also caught and any servers that cleared up their spam accounts will be recovered.

I plan to improve this service further. Feel free to send me ideas and PRs.

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[–] isosphere@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Important question; author kind of answers here:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/204729

If I were to rely on this for my instance, I would require that it be completely transparent and open source. It doesn't look like this is; you have to trust that it is making good selections, and give it power over your federation status. It's a dangerous tool, IMO, but I can understand why it would have appeal right now.

[–] Dee_Imaginarium@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would require that it be completely transparent and open source. It doesn’t look like this is

Are you sure? Kinda seems like it is.

[–] isosphere@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"The Lemmy Overseer" as I understand it is a backend service that gives us an API to use.

There is an open-source script for interacting with it. However, it does not tell you how that backend service works, exactly. It's a black box with well defined interfaces, best case, as I understand it.

[–] admin_lemmy@lemmy.webgirand.eu 3 points 1 year ago

The python script only uses the open source Lemmy API. Everything else is contained within its few lines of code.