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dansup

Spammers are targeting large fediverse instances with SEO spam yet it's the smaller instances that are most affected.

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9 comments
dansup

When a spam account is deleted from a large instance like mastodon.social, they federate the account deletion to every known instance. This means your server has to check if that account exists and delete it if so. Account deletion is an expensive process but one that is required. The issue with this is how small servers are subjected to these constant activities from larger servers that are likely more able to deal with this.
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  dansup

Ideally small and large servers wouldn’t be impacted by spammers from remote instances. The onus should really be on each instance to prevent spam registration (and account deletes), that’s easier said than done. Pixelfed is the only fediverse project with an automated spam detection system, and while it prevents about 80% of spam content, it’s not perfect.
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  dansup

I can’t prevent spam on remote instances, but I can improve Pixelfed’s automated spam detection for both small and large instances with an optional anti-spam service I’ve been working on! I look forward to sharing more details soon!
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  Chris [list of seasonal emoji]

@dansup

I'm dubious about the cost factor because:

1. The whole thing is automated. The real cost of an instance is admin time and this uses none of that.

2. This turns into something on the order of one transaction per instance per deleted account. That's a drop in the bucket. And if this *is* a huge resource hit for individual instances, this is an implementation issue or a protocol issue, *not* a social issue.

  Emacsen

@dansup

I'm writing a generic ActivityPub anti-spam system for all ActivityPub servers and should have a prototype to show in hopefully 2 weeks!

I'd be interested in collaborating if you want!

  Tim Chambers

@dansup Look forward to seeing Pixelfed's auto-spam detection migrate to other Fediverse platforms

  Tim Chambers

@dansup Thanks, Dan -- a good summary and we are definitely doing this daily at our instance.

#Indiewebsocial #admin

betothebop

@dansup I don't fully understand why account deletion is federated. Is account creation also federated. I'm new to Mastodon.

Luc

@dansup What is 'SEO spam'? Good to know that it's being taken care of

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