Alex K.
Cory DoctorowLearning that today's massive Mastodon spam attack was carried out by conspiracy-addled Japanese middle-schoolers whose previous spam run was shut down when admins got in touch with their parents who confiscated their devices is definitely straight of the Shitty Timeline Little Brother.
Das@pluralistic wow
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦@pluralistic I do think that fedi handled this one pretty well.
Doesn't seem like there was a lot of disruption.
Some fedizens (myself included) had to deal with a bunch of spam, but reporting worked, moderators did a fantastic job, and by and large most people don't seem to have even noticed?
Ben Butler
stux⚡️@benfrog @rysiek @pluralistic There's been sooooo much 
Suspended hundreds of accs today
Ted Garrison
paul
David W. Jones@rysiek
I saw no spam, didn't even know it happened, so GOOD JOB, #FediMods #FediModeration
@pluralistic @Szescstopni
I saw no spam, didn't even know it happened, so GOOD JOB, #FediMods #FediModeration
@pluralistic @Szescstopni
Szescstopni@dancingtreefrog @rysiek @pluralistic Neither did I. I wonderif a centralized system would handle it any better.
@Szescstopni
I don't know. FediVerse has a lot of ways to manage connections and a lot of admins to handle them. Centralized (like the late Twitter/X) don't have nearly as many admins now, I suspect. Plus I think it profits from the spammers, so has no motivation to stop them...
@rysiek @pluralistic
I don't know. FediVerse has a lot of ways to manage connections and a lot of admins to handle them. Centralized (like the late Twitter/X) don't have nearly as many admins now, I suspect. Plus I think it profits from the spammers, so has no motivation to stop them...
@rysiek @pluralistic
tonytins@rysiek @pluralistic I'm only hearing about this now. My instance is small. I imported a huge block list of bad or questionable actors to avoid future headaches. So that one might have already been preemptively blocked.
Misty@rysiek Speaking as a server admin, I can say the moderation load has been highly disruptive. 😅 I'm grateful most users don't have to notice, but for those who got hit it was intense - both for end users, and for moderators who had to clean up.
@misty I imagine. I submitted a couple dozen spam reports myself. It's somewhat intense for me, I cannot imagine what moderation teams are dealing with.
Oblomov
Colin the Mathmo@ColinTheMathmo of course, spam filters only raise the bar and can be circumvented, but at the moment that bar is basically underground, so even just a little bit would help ;-)
I'm honestly thinking about a small script myself as a user, but I don't know if it's possible to automate the reporting.
Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦@rysiek @pluralistic well I'm still noticing ;-)
🌬️
@pluralistic hold on I have to check my bingo card for this one
Mx Verda@pluralistic well shit. Now I feel kinda bad for posting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_4adkAymrg in response a few times.
But also, that explains why I could almost read it without much effort (kids use fewer kanji, which are like letters, words, or phonemes — parts of words with meaning when combined? Idk, I’m not a linguist, just a long covid addled dweeboid with insomnia)
BIG SHOT - Traditional Japanese Version
Preston Is Not My Real Name@pluralistic wow I had no idea there was even an attack. Somehow, your explanation leaves me with more questions than if I knew nothing at all
matthewfarrer@pluralistic Shittle Brother?
faraiwe
Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️⚧️@pluralistic Conspiracy? iirc they're a massive cyberbullying gang that doxxes people?
Jason Dyer@pluralistic why are we talking about this past tense? My last spam message was 43 minutes ago, still rolling in regularly
Tushar Chauhan@pluralistic Aha. That explains all the kanji I'm seeing in the most popular tags for the day.
Deborah Yoon Zacharias@pluralistic I didn't notice anything, but the story blows my mind.
Gnorzaps@pluralistic Kind of disappointed now that I missed out on the fun.
alchemistmuffin@pluralistic Police might be considering charges, regardless of what parents and school say. After Kadokawa hacking incident, they are not dinking around with cybersecurity anymore.
Gary Houston@pluralistic now I'm curious and want to see some of this spam. Is there any left anywhere?
@ghouston If you're serious, I have some in the reports that included posts.
CC: @pluralistic
Ruby Jones@pluralistic wow, that's actually kind of reassuring. Kids at least have a chance to grow out of it.
LisPi@pluralistic @cstross > conspiracy-addled Japanese middle-schoolers
I'm quite curious which conspiracies too.
I'm quite curious which conspiracies too.
Chris@pluralistic The issue isn't the Japanese middle-schoolers. The issue lies yet again with shitty instance admins allowing for open registration while not having the capacity nor the interest in maintaining their instance.
Iron Bug@pluralistic haven't heard of any attacks. do they have any coverage on the issue?
Angus McIntyre@pluralistic “Parents take away the devices of Internet pests” is a model that could substantially improve the Internet and should be more widely applied.
Sadly, some of the worst offenders are not subject to parental discipline for one reason or another.
Paul@pluralistic @cstross I loved Little Brother so much, I bought 5 copies to give out to friends in appreciation of letting me read it for free. A book I'm now hoping my 13 year old will love it
Keen Grasp@pluralistic very reassuring today to see that "midokuri" hashtag graph, that had been going sharply up, now going symmetrically down to nothing.
Ben Rosengart
LeBonk