Mastodawn

3xfactorial May 30

The Russian botnet has now created over 2,500 inauthentic accounts on 180 Mastodon servers. These accounts spam propaganda, follow each other to increase federation, connect to Bluesky via the bridge to spread their content there, and create unlimited invite links for their bots to follow.

IFTAS reports each one we find, and to date roughly 60% of these accounts have been suspended.

Our AUD denylist would silence or suspend the bulk of the remaining 40% of accounts.

https://about.iftas.org/library/suspected-portal-kombat-accounts/

Coordinated botnets don't sleep, and neither can our Trust & Safety infrastructure.

We keep our tools, libraries, and denylists free and open for every server admin and moderator, but we need to pay our own bills.

Can you spare just 1 (£, €, $) a month to help safeguard our network and support the volunteers running it?

Be the one. Help us find our 500 core supporters:

https://givebutter.com/iftas-power-of-one

Power of One

Help keep IFTAS online and independent. 500 supporters to donate the equivalent of just 1 a month to fund core infrastructure. Small change, big difference, be the one to join the 500.

IFTAS

@[email protected]
So we now have centralized political #censorship and #algorithms powered surveillance across #Fediverse. And you ask community for money to continue this great job 😀

siq moryn May 29

@azeuzexa
I'm curious if @[email protected] uses #AI in their #surveillance for the users

FinchHaven sfba May 29

"The Russian botnet has now created over 2,500 inauthentic accounts on 180 Mastodon servers. These accounts spam propaganda, follow each other to increase federation, connect to Bluesky via the bridge to spread their content there, and create unlimited invite links for their bots to follow."

And yet, for the very instance you're on, we find:

"We actively "defederate" masto.nu from other instances that are incompatible with our fundamental rules, in an effort to protect our users."

So you object and complain about such support, and instead spend your time protecting yourself?

"And you ask community for money to continue this great job 😀"

Also, we find:

"It is not required to pay for continued access to your account, but if you feel obliged to help cover the cost of running masto.nu, please visit one of our sponsor pages to help keep us going."

So

You're just a free-thinking parasite who expects no help from anyone then, as you bravely go it all alone

Got it

Bye...

ProScience 🇪🇺May 29

You act like a failing Russian troll and are therefore very familiar with Russian cencorship including murder.

Here on Mastodon, howeverm we just laugh at and then block you pro-Russian fascists:

You're not just losing the war you imposed on Ukraine but you're losing here, too.

#blockedforfascism

Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm)May 29

#BotOrNot certainly looks like a bot when your pending follow requests are also all from bots!

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸May 29

@azeuzexa lol. Banning fake bot accounts is “political censorship”?

Shut up Vlad.

Thibaultmol 🌈May 30

@azeuzexa lol,
lmao even

IFTAS does a lot good for work to make the fediverse actually usable and not riddled with spam and other stuff.

udo m. rader ☕ 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 🐧May 30

@iftas yes, I've also seen this on the instance I'm on, and it's getting worse by the day. The local feed has become more or less unusable.

Unfortunately the admins appear to be unresponsive. Any ideas what to do about it?

https://sigmoid.social/@riaschissl/116629296136277143

udo m. rader ☕ 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 🐧 (@[email protected])

@thegradient don't want to bug you or anything , but since the sigmoid local feed has only gotten worse in the past days (see below), I'm trying with a PM ... can you please have a look? As you will see, those are accounts that mostly post in languages other than English, like Greek, Finish, ... Currently the feed is more or less unusable, and I think those accounts are also violating the sigmoid TOS ... https://sigmoid.social/@riaschissl/116589143705586357

Sigmoid Social

@riaschissl we have tried to contact the operators through every available channel, no reply, sorry we can't be of more help.

udo m. rader ☕ 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 🐧May 30

@iftas thank you nevertheless!! A real pity that the admins don't seem to be around.

Jimijamflimflam May 30

If the admins are unresponsive, it sounds like it’s time to migrate to a new instance.

Total 2562
% Mitigated 59.21%
% DNI or AUD 35.60%
% Pending 4.06%
% False Positive 0.55%

Jimijamflimflam May 30

These bots are also not leaving their follow/followers lists open anymore. It made it easier to run down the lists and report them.

@Jimijamflimflam The botnet operators are here watching and listening (and occasionally posting), so if identification methods are made public then they will adapt accordingly.