The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers.
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@mirabilos Oh, now I remember. Yes, it was weird that their followING showed up before their followERS. No idea what was up tbh but it seems to have sorted itself out.
@timbray thanks
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@timbray thanks
@timbray ah! Apparently, it was a move only half-federated at that time, and when the follow request arrived, my instance could not yet see even a filled-out profile.
(People, if you move, perhaps post first on both the old and new profile that you’re doing it; after the move, you cannot post on the old one any more, and absence of such makes it seem illegitimate way too easily.)
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@timbray ah! Apparently, it was a move only half-federated at that time, and when the follow request arrived, my instance could not yet see even a filled-out profile.
(People, if you move, perhaps post first on both the old and new profile that you’re doing it; after the move, you cannot post on the old one any more, and absence of such makes it seem illegitimate way too easily.)
@_daisy please send another follow request, now that I know, I can accept it
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@jerry I realize this wouldn't work for everybody, but the number of bots trying to sign up to CoSocial.ca is zero, because we require that members pay $50 a year to run the service.
@timbray (and, or that matter, 50$/year is decidedly less than even the external costs of running one’s own instance unless you already have some infrastructure you can add it to) (this in case anyone reads this and wonders)
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@mek2600 @catsalad@infosec.exchange @jerry Domestic housewives imply the existence of feral housewives
@catsalad@sigmoid.social @mek2600 @catsalad@infosec.exchange @jerry Being married to a feral house might not be half bad.
Seriously, though, the increase in scammers is also pretty awful.
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
@jerry beep boop
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
@jerry
Every time one of my post does numbers, I get some really weird follows, some of which I even have to block. But mostly I haven't experienced this bullcrap. I credit my wonderful admin. This server is awesome if anybody needs a new one! -
@jerry
Every time one of my post does numbers, I get some really weird follows, some of which I even have to block. But mostly I haven't experienced this bullcrap. I credit my wonderful admin. This server is awesome if anybody needs a new one!@MaryAustinBooks I can confirm, your admin is great as is the instance you are on.
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
Time to bring out the air defense missile batteries and albino-cyber-bunnies with laser eyes!
Thanks for keeping us safe @jerry
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
@jerry REMEMBER WHY WE'RE HERE!
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
@jerry Do you have any examples that you can share? How can regular users spot them? I'm guessing that they're not particularly sophisticated, but are there "signs?"
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@jerry Do you have any examples that you can share? How can regular users spot them? I'm guessing that they're not particularly sophisticated, but are there "signs?"
@muddle the easiest way to spot them is stolen profile pics, usually of someone notable but not super famous, sort of unremarkable bio on their profile, and they post almost exclusively about a topic that somewhat polarizing. The big ones at the moment are accounts posting articles that are negative about Ukraine and its president and their performance in the war. But I also see the same from the Ukraine side. Accounts have signed up with .gov.il email addresses to post things favorable to Israel. Behind the scenes, they normally use tor to connect, use email accounts on disposable email domains, and don’t make a lot of sense when explaining why they want to join.
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@muddle the easiest way to spot them is stolen profile pics, usually of someone notable but not super famous, sort of unremarkable bio on their profile, and they post almost exclusively about a topic that somewhat polarizing. The big ones at the moment are accounts posting articles that are negative about Ukraine and its president and their performance in the war. But I also see the same from the Ukraine side. Accounts have signed up with .gov.il email addresses to post things favorable to Israel. Behind the scenes, they normally use tor to connect, use email accounts on disposable email domains, and don’t make a lot of sense when explaining why they want to join.
@muddle we try to stamp them out as we see them or as they are reported, plus we are rejecting about 20-30 new accounts each day that are clearly this sort of account. Harder to keep them out when they join other instances though
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@muddle the easiest way to spot them is stolen profile pics, usually of someone notable but not super famous, sort of unremarkable bio on their profile, and they post almost exclusively about a topic that somewhat polarizing. The big ones at the moment are accounts posting articles that are negative about Ukraine and its president and their performance in the war. But I also see the same from the Ukraine side. Accounts have signed up with .gov.il email addresses to post things favorable to Israel. Behind the scenes, they normally use tor to connect, use email accounts on disposable email domains, and don’t make a lot of sense when explaining why they want to join.
@jerry really useful and informative. Thanks!
I sometimes have a problem with deciding whether some accounts have some sort of agenda or whether it's someone I just disagree with. I suppose everyone has the same problem, though
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@muddle the easiest way to spot them is stolen profile pics, usually of someone notable but not super famous, sort of unremarkable bio on their profile, and they post almost exclusively about a topic that somewhat polarizing. The big ones at the moment are accounts posting articles that are negative about Ukraine and its president and their performance in the war. But I also see the same from the Ukraine side. Accounts have signed up with .gov.il email addresses to post things favorable to Israel. Behind the scenes, they normally use tor to connect, use email accounts on disposable email domains, and don’t make a lot of sense when explaining why they want to join.
@jerry Maybe fedi sites should have like a #CombatArena area/hashtag. A proving ground, so to speak, for new accounts? Kind of like an adversarial open mic night?
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
@jerry I’ve been noticing that the firehose feeds have been feeling increasingly botty. Feed/Follow curation is more important than ever.
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
I remember when AOL did its "Eternal September" to the internet back in the 1990's. It is absolutely intentional to destroy existing communities and replace that structure with one they have brutal control.
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
@jerry There could be ten thousands of propaganda bots blasting away at their cold hearts content and most streams wouldn’t blip. Just your poor servers would have to toil.
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The amount of propaganda bots trying to sign up lately is bonkers. The fediverse feels like it’s becoming a battleground for information warfare. Be safe out there
@jerry It's nice that we can just ban em across many instances, and the instances that don't get their whole instance blocked. It seems the system is working well so far...I hope this comment doesn't age like milk one day though.
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@idlebrain one of the biggest challenges I’ve run into is defining where the line is between propaganda, and someone’s heartfelt genuine belief. Particularly if you consider that generally people who have a particular view will consider opposing views this propaganda.
@jerry @idlebrain propaganda comes two ways
one, directly from the source
two, from people who amplify
Fedi (the corners I'm in) has so far had very little of the latter because there's been so little of the former.
But bot accounts are sharply on the rise; now I get more bots than humans trying to follow me, when previously it was the reverse.
The landscape is changing and we'll have to adapt - I hope we beat the bad actor's pace with social-technical tools and improvements that let us collaboratively approach the problem literally more efficiently than they can pollute.
For example, this is what captchas used to do: they raised the cost and effort beyond the expected return, so doing more things that involved breaking captchas just lost money faster.
