Thanks for your reports on it. We try to action it as quickly as we can, and your reporting it helps us. We are attempting a few other Beehaw-only Lemmy changes to mitigate this sort of spam; short of de-federation. One of the major issues is that Kbin does not federate moderator actions. So they could have already dealt with the spammer and removed the posts, from Kbin. Those actions don't get to us on Beehaw and the spammer posts still lives.
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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One of the major issues is that Kbin does not federate moderator actions
OHHHH! This explains a lot. I had assumed kbin was doing nothing, but they could be removing the posts/accounts, but that doesn't carry over to us.
Wow, that's a HUGE drawback to how federation is handled, isn't it?
It’s a major hole with regards to spam, but in a hypothetical whistleblower scenario it makes it hard for a single entity to silence and remove all evidence.
There are simply trade offs, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.
Given the nature of the internet, I feel that spam is a much bigger problem than a potential whistleblower being silenced, and wouldn't that kind of action show up in the logs anyways?
As a former admin, I guarantee no one seriously reads those logs outside of happenstance. It takes the users speaking up to warrant that.
The whistleblower can read (or ask someone to read) the logs and find out who silenced them, then whistleblow that/get get whoever did it defederated.
Deleting spam isn't optional. If you leave it there your community is dead.
What I meant with whistleblowing in terms of the fediverse is:
Whistleblower posts to instance A, and it gets mirrored on instance B.
Someone like Musk erases the post on instance A.
As the Fediverse currently works, the whistleblowing still exists on instance B, and cannot be deleted by an admin on instance A.
Asking a Musk to divulge who did the silencing is an exercise in futility.
That said, I’m totally on board with better tools to handle spam.
For real. I knew that Lemmy was a mess but this feels inexcusable. How could you NOT federate mod actions!?
It's a bug which Ernest is working to correct.
It's not a bug, and I don't think it will be corrected. It's fundamental to how federation works on Lemmy.
That is not what I have read Ernest say elsewhere.
Can't say we're 100% responsible for the reduced spam lately; but wanted to get your thoughts. Has there been less Kbin spam lately? Do you feel our countermeasures are working well since a few weeks ago?
I’ve been reporting the spam as much as I can, since I’m seeing a lot too, but that explains why it’s still hanging around. Thanks!
I remember a website that used a gamified interface that would pic a random picture uploaded by users and ask you to classify it. It was completely optional, accessible through a link and a great way to kill time.
Maybe a similar interface could be put in place, with proper warnings about the possible sensitivity of the posts you’ll see. The user sees the post and says if it’s spam or not spam. The randomness makes it somewhat tamper resistant.
I would gladly do it sometimes, instead of doom scrolling.
That would open us and the user up to legal ramifications of certain content.
i could write a lengthy comment here but to be brief: this is a great example of how a lack of good mod tools can basically ruin everyone's experience in a federated system. both kbin and lemmy lack them so both become vectors of abuse and sincere users suffer because of it. everyone is worse for the lack of tooling here and it all but necessitates walled gardens or huge numbers of mods.
Appreciate the level-headed reply in this thread. There's a lot of fingerpointing and hostility going on and I'd appreciate it if people would make less assumptions / jumps to attack people. I'm not sure if you or anyone else can confirm, but I agree with ernest that federation of mod actions was working once before. Without knowing exactly why it stopped, it's hard to say what is going on.
For instance, I just coordinated with the admins of startrek.website as their latest maintenance started blocking user agents with curl in it, which is what kbin sends, meaning all kbin instances stopped being able to get images from their instance. It seems like this is true for multiple other lemmy instances. I didn't follow up with any other admins at the moment, but I think from that, and the fact that back when I originally signed up people would constantly complain kbin federation was broken when it was lemmy.ml that was blocking kbin, it's not a good idea to jump to assumptions on why something isn't working.
Spam isn't a reason to defederate imo. Report and block them.
I'm sorry. No offense, but I was specifically asking other bees in the beehive. I'll clarify this in my post.
Weird gatekeeping there bud
This is Beehaw Support, and I'm asking opinions of people on Beehaw.
But go ahead and feel oppressed because I don't want your "important" opinions to be drowned out, and have fun on my blocklist
To be fair to them, I also have a Beehaw account, but saw this post from my Lemmy.ca account, I'm not going through the extra effort to change accounts just to make it known that I'm in the hive. I understand your point, but lets take a breather here pal ❤️
Because of how the fediverse works, we are all effected by this change.
I'm asking strictly from the point of view of Beehaw, considering this is Beehaw Support and all. Please accept that your voice is not needed or welcome in this post, and move on. I'm trying to be polite.
And we're pointing out that's not how federation works and that you're being weird about it
Please move on from this comment chain; you've made your point.
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If moderation isn't federating from kbin, then reporting them does nothing to help non-kbin users. If the spam gets out of control and there's no other option, defederation is the only solution.
I'm on kbin and never see spam, ever...
That's good, but you should see it from the end of federated instances. I can't possible explain to you how much spam there is coming from kbin.
Honestly, I've been using an alternate account on Mastodon, and until recently, I wasn't aware that this was such a significant issue on other Lemmy instances until you started to clearly communicate it to me. I've temporarily taken a few additional steps to reduce the spam intensity. By the end of September, kbin.social will receive an update that should address the federation issues.
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/465872/Spam-from-unmoderated-communities-magazines#entry-comment-2427760
https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/466266/Removed-Kbin-social-communities#entry-comment-2428078
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i can't keep up with the blocking and reporting. the same spam keeps showing up. i suppose i could just fuck off of gaming@kbin and get my gaming news and complain about unity elsewhere.
Make gaming the community it should be! Post your complaints about unity there :P
Yeah, if gaming@kbin is going to become a spam-filled cess-pit it's going to quickly become undesireable (even if dedicated kbin accounts don't see the spam).
If kbin being unmoderated on Federated servers is by design, is there a chance that it just gets defederated, same as lemmy.world?
I tend to browse all: new because I like to see fresh content. I've always been this way, even in my reddit era. I tend to block the communities I don't want to see, such as the porn ones. I generally don't complain because it's my choice to access the content this way.
These spam accounts do concern me though because they're clearly trying to scam vulnerable people. I've reported so much, but it's like chopping off the heads of a hydra. From what I'm hearing, our reports do help though, so that's good.
i do that too! well i used to. admittedly i don't browse all/new very much anymore because some people really do try to make it difficult for people to browse and find new content.
for me, it's not so much about the scamming aspect of it, it's more that the spam drives people away and dilutes the feed. people put in effort to post relevant articles that won't get seen/discovered because of all the spam. it sucks.
FYI Lemmy.world defederated with all Kbin instances https://lemmy.world/post/5289864
They just removed all the spam communities (or mags) (and also removed spam kbin accounts), and one of the kbin mods said the 2fa is on the roadmap.
https://lemmy.world/comment/3557964
Not just on the roadmap, already in :) (fingers crossed no bugs, no promises ><) example
I don't have a kbin account for now so I don't know that, thx
Interesting, I'm on kbin and beehaw and have not had the same issue while browsing either. And I'm on them pretty frequently. I'll see a few here and there but not like you're describing. Is it mostly when browsing new? At any rate, just wanted to put it out there that I don't think defederation is necessary, as it is not a problem for everyone. Though I'm struggling to come up with a solution as your point is valid to not want to see that stuff. Here's hoping someone smarter than me can come up with something!
Someone else is manually cleaning up the mess Kbin is creating. So you don't see it.
I typically make a post that say "Please stop spamming", then I block the user. Worked for me, but maybe your communities of interest have more issues. I have noticed this issue on kbin communities but not on the Behaw communities.
It definitely appears to be exclusive to kbin, yes. I usually make a comment calling it out for the benefit of unsuspecting users, and then I report it.