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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qbi Oct 18, 2024

@renchap Can you tell how many instances have switched over time?

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GunChleoc Oct 18, 2024

@qbi @renchap This was introduced with version 4.2.8. You can do the math from there: https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon/versions roughly 80% of Mastodon servers are already running this patch.

FediDB, Fediverse Network Statistics

FediDB is a cutting-edge service providing detailed statistics and insights into the Fediverse network.

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qbi Oct 18, 2024

@gunchleoc @renchap Thanks, but I guess my question was a bit to unspecific.
I wanted to know how many servers had registrations open and then were switched off. Can this be seen from some statistics?

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Renaud Chaput Oct 18, 2024

@qbi @gunchleoc Nothing is visible from the outside when this happens, so I am not sure how it could be tracked. Maybe one of the website collecting data about fediverse servers is tracking if registrations are open, but we (Mastodon) do not. And if thats the case, you would not be able to know if an admin closed the registrations, or if it came from this automation.

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GunChleoc

@renchap @qbi You can see which servers currently have closed registrations via instances.social if the server is signed up there, but there is no historical data.