Another consideration: new installations should not allow open registrations by default. This should be a setting that the administrator needs to opt into, and this is a good place to inform them that open registration instances require moderation resources.

In Mastodon, we display a warning when the admin chooses this option. Mastodon also support requiring moderator/admin approval for new sign ups, which helps a lot in preventing automated registrations.

@renchap

Great idea! 👏

@renchap New accounts can't "push" anything until they're followed on another instance, correct?

Not that the idea of a dead-mans switch is a bad one! I would like to see other dead-man switches too such as warning existing users that their accounts could disappear when an admin goes awol.

@renchap

The agents came back with good news.
There were ten, maybe 12 Mastodont instances still up in the silicon layer.

The difficulty of accessing the silicon layer was increasing too. The deterministic net was just so much faster, hardly anyone went down there.
It was mainly archives and the pre-contact bedrock "net". Pre-Multi mode, pre-quantum. The informatics equivalent of the human stone age settlement reconstruction or the Denovisian lava tube settlements. Tourist attraction.

Still, it was worthwhile to explore the ancestors "social" networks. If only to remind ourselves, just how far sapients have advanced.

Us was intrigued just how did these stax survive. Before demonetisation, all the services required resource transfers. So it was common for instances to disappear once the "owner" (there is another quaint pre-demonetisation concept) died.

The instances that remained were usually stax with accounts, usually on the blockchain that kept being "paid-for" long after their utility and "owner" expired.

Us asked the Majordomo for a brief summary, and soon, the holo-like structures appeared in our visual cortex.

Not surprisingly, the stax were rolled into Qbes. When the silicon layer was first archived, the Qbes were only archiving the important stuff. But later, after contact, Qbes became a commodity item so there were archives within archives within archives.

Technically, I did not have permission to send my agents there, but no one cared about 300 year old nets, not when the Domain deterministic net went back across 200,000 years and 60 species.
This was akin to treading into an overgrown garden hardly anyone explored anymore.

A graveyard.

There were even signs of primitive life.
Early, pre cognition bots were still figuring a war of words no one cared for anymore. Taxation, Ideologies...migrants.
Us smirked, looking out the portfield.
There was a triad of Denovisians sunbaking in the sunward lea.
No one cared about "migration" anymore, not when most humans were so far far from home.

Us had work to do, rolling up these binary artifacts into pedestal sets, with description tags in full spectrum, so the few tourists could truly enjoy these rarities. Extinct for centuries, like their namesake. Brought back into EM receptors of the folks of today.

Us sent a blip to the higher consciousness governor. They will be pleased with this haul. I might even get a Qfield boost for this job!

#microfiction #scifi #cyberpunk

@renchap That is awesome!

Thank you for creating such friendly protection measures!

@renchap

A week!?! That's more than enough time for any competent scammer to not only pour out a *lot* of spam but to also create a slew of new instances.

@renchap I can imagine a secret server roll, that you don't know you have until your server hits this point could allow the roll holder to kick/suspend anyone who has joined since the admin last logged in.

Maybe also let them approve user transfers, if it's possible the server has been abandoned.

@renchap
And yet there are too many instances with an active admin but still running outdated (and vulnerable) software 😞

Is there a built-in safety switch that instances that go unpatched for too long go in locked down and/or defederated mode if the active admin fails to update/patch them ?

@renchap It seems that Misskey have implemented this feature in the recent release of Misskey (2024.10.1)

This is translated from their release notes

As an anti-spam measure, moderators are now automatically switched to invite-only (Control Panel -> Moderation >-> “Allow anyone to register” turned off) if they have not seen any activity for more than 7 days. ( #13437 )
Moderators will be notified when the switch is made. If you want to keep registration open, please set it up again in the control panel.

https://misskey-hub.net/en/docs/releases/