Dave

I would like functionality similar to this. One problem with a big list is that different instances have different ideas over what is acceptable. I'd love to "subscribe" to, say, Lemmy.world's bans and then anyone they ban would get banned on my instance as well. Of course this makes a bigger mess to clean up when someone gets banned by mistake.

Technically it is still there. However, when a user is banned, you can also choose to remove their content. You could choose not to, but then what's the point in automatically banning a spam account if you have to go and remove the spam posts yourself.

If you choose to remove them all, and you accidentally hit a real user, you'll remove all their posts and comments. Lemmy doesn't provide an easy way to restore the content. And although there are automated solutions, you come to the next problem of knowing which posts to restore. Many posts were removed by mods of communities, many were removed by the user themselves. You don't want to restore those items, instead you need to remember which you removed and restore only those ones - this is different functionality to Lemmy's option to remove all their content.

This actually exists in some form, there is an AutoMod that keeps a log of removed content for banned users and allows a restore of that content. So it's a solved problem, just would need a similar solution to be built for a ban list.

One thing you'll learn quickly is that Lemmy is version 0 for a reason.

Certain (but not all) thumbnails have been sort of proxied for a while, but it's complicated. But for example if someone posts a link to some questionable content on imgur, your instance will have a copy of that cached (and never delete it, because... Lemmy reasons). The recent changes just mean you can now enable other images to be proxied, though this is disabled by default. This proxy has an age (a day or a week or whatever you set) and content is deleted if it hasn't been accessed in that timeframe - this is in contract to the normal Lemmy image stuff that I believe still stays forever unless that was fixed recenty.

And many instance owners would be allergic to that as it leaves them on the hook for storing content

This is already a risk whether via the existing thumbnail storage or via user uploads. It's a pretty common recommendation that you should never host a website like Lemmy on a home server, always use a VPS for this reason. Then make sure you understand your local laws as well.

In a recent Lemmy version they added support for proxying images. So for people worried about this, see if you can find an instance (or set up your own) that does image proxying.

Before you ask, I'm not aware of any but I'm sure there are some.

Also on that page:

If you would prefer to contact us without using this form, you can email us at support@protonmail.zendesk.com.

I love simplelogin (and Firefox relay, which I used before I got a proton plan). One of the best things is that I recently changed what my main email address was, and on day 1 I changed where they get forwarded and bam, hundreds of sites and accounts are now pointing at the new email.

Heathcote resident, Thomas Healey said he was against cycleways in general but he was circulating a petition at the rally to submit in opposition to KiwiRail’s move.

“The safety is more important than the cycleway [itself].”

He didn’t use the trail, but its sectional closure would force cyclists onto Port Hills Rd, a 60km zone which was “a number one hot spot for speeding”.

This bloke is against cycleways, except this one that helps keep the cyclists out of traffic. Unlike the intent of all the other cycleways 🫤

Yes it was obviously a bad decision and when asked about it they reversed it. I'm tempted to say this is a move of an inexperienced government, but they have been there for almost a year now and Gerry Brownlee is currently the longest serving member of parliament. There are no excuses.

It's brilliant!

"Why are people not clicking on ads enough, give me ideas on increasing engagement!"

"We could use AI to browse the internet on behalf of people, so they have to see and click the ads?"

"That's brilliant, you've earned yourself a promotion!"

This make me think that we should maintain a community curated blocklist in, for example, a Git repository.

There would be a few problems I can think of with this approach. The first one is who controls it? Whoever that is, you haven't solved the issue because now instead of only the instance with the user being able to federate the ban now only the maintainer of the git repo can update the ban list.

If you have many people able to update the repo, then the issue becomes a question of how do you trust all these people to never, ever, ever get it wrong? If you ban a user and opt to remove all their content (which you should, with spam), then if you are automating this you end up with the issue of if anyone screws up then how do you get someone's account unbanned on all those instances? How do you get all their content restored, which is a separate thing and Lemmy currently provides no good way to do this. How do you ensure there are no malicious people with control of the repo but also have enough instances involved to make it worthwhile?

There is a chat room where instance admins share details of spam accounts, and it's about the best we have for Lemmy at the moment (it works quite well, really, because everyone can be instantly notified but also make their own decisions about who to ban or if something is spam or allowed on their instance - because it's pretty common that things are not black and white).

I would honestly have expected something like this to already exist. I think it’s partly the purpose of Fediseer, but I’m not completely sure.

Fediseer has a similar purpose but it's a little different. So far we have been talking about spam accounts set up on various instances, and the time it takes for those mods and admins to remove the spam. But what happens if instead of someone setting up a spam account on an existing instance, they instead create their own instance purely for spamming other instances?

Fediseer provides a web of trust. An instance receives a guarantee from another instance. That instance then guarantees another instance. It creates a web of trust starting from some known good instances. Then if you wish you can choose to have your lemmy instance only federate with instances that have been guaranteed by another instance. Spam instances can't guarantee each other, because they need an instance that is already part of the web to guarantee them, and instances won't do that because they risk their own place in the web if they falsely guarantee another instances (say, if one instance keeps guaranteeing new instances that turn out to be spam, they will quickly lose their own guarantee).

Fediseer actually goes further than this, allowing instances to endorse or censure other instances and you can set up your instance to only federate with instances that haven't been censured or defederate from instances that others have censured for specific reasons (e.g. "hate speech", "racism", etc).

It's quite a cool tool but doesn't help the original discussion issue of spam accounts being set up on legitimate instances.

Its pretty random outside the Russian misinformation sites (which I haven't seen in a while, but they probably got better at hiding).

Its hard to give you a link because mods or admins remove the posts or ban the accounts pretty quick most of the time. But there is a new spam account at least every day (I can think of at least two today. Edit: 4). They come in waves so sometimes there are a whole bunch.

That's probably another thing you need to know. I'm on Lemmy.nz, you're on sh.it.works. If some new spam account signs up on Lemmy.world and posts to lemm.ee, then if it's removed by an admin on your instance it is only removed for people on your instance. Everyone else still sees it as your instance is not hosting either the community or the user so it can't federate our anything to deal with it. The lemm.ee instance could remove the post or comment with the spam in a way that federates out to other instances, but can't ban the user except for on their instance. Only the Lemmy.world instance can ban the user in a way that federates out to other instances. This is something you'll get a better understanding of over time.

Lemmy.world has a lot if help so they don't have issues, but often the spam will come from obscure instances while the admin is asleep and there is no backup, so every other instance has to remove the spam for their own instance. Then you have to work out how to mitigate that for your own instance when you are asleep. Most admins are pretty understanding that this is a hobby and don't expect everyone to be immediately available, but if you have open registrations then you are likely to be targeted more and need a better plan.

I will add that if you have open registrations you will be a target for spam and trolls, and if you don't take quick action then some other instances are likely to defederate from your instance.

This depends on the instance, some will have a low tolerance and defederate pretty quickly, some instances will defederate temporarily until the spammers or trolls move to a different instance, and some won't care. But you likely won't know it's happened unless you notice you aren't getting content from that instance anymore.

One other thing is that if you're going to run an instance and aren't already on Matrix, make an account. It's how instance admins tend to keep in contact with each other.