Mastodawn

Renaud Chaput Oct 17, 2024

I would encourage every Fediverse software project to implement a “dead-man switch" on registrations: if nobody with moderator permissions has been active in the last week, then disable new account creation.

The Fediverse has a significant number of abandoned instances that are used by bad actors to create accounts and send spam.

We implemented this in Mastodon (https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/29318) and it has been highly effective.

Automatically switch from open to approved registrations in absence of moderators by ClearlyClaire · Pull Request #29318 · mastodon/mastodon

This is not meant to replace #29280, but supplement it to avoid unmonitored servers keeping open registrations indefinitely. Automatically switch away from open registrations if no user with the pe...

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Justin ⏚Oct 17, 2024

@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.

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🐧DaveNull🐧 ☣️pResident Evil☣

@JustinH No, it get pushed if they're followed OR they mention people from other instances. Bad actors mass-mention people randonly se their shit get pushed.

You can't programmatically block all posts with "many mentions", there is plenty of legitimate group discussions. So it's not that easy to handle it…

Reporting and block tsunamis of spams is inefficient and time-consumpting… Badly designed. You have to report and block (user) or verify and block spam (admin) accounts one by one…

@renchap