Honestly, I've been using an alternate account on Mastodon, and until recently, I wasn't aware that this was such a significant issue on other Lemmy instances until you started to clearly communicate it to me. I've temporarily taken a few additional steps to reduce the spam intensity. By the end of September, kbin.social will receive an update that should address the federation issues.
i could write a lengthy comment here but to be brief: this is a great example of how a lack of good mod tools can basically ruin everyone’s experience in a federated system. both kbin and lemmy lack them so both become vectors of abuse and sincere users suffer because of it. everyone is worse for the lack of tooling here and it all but necessitates walled gardens or huge numbers of mods.
Appreciate the level-headed reply in this thread. There's a lot of fingerpointing and hostility going on and I'd appreciate it if people would make less assumptions / jumps to attack people. I'm not sure if you or anyone else can confirm, but I agree with ernest that federation of mod actions was working once before. Without knowing exactly why it stopped, it's hard to say what is going on.
For instance, I just coordinated with the admins of startrek.website as their latest maintenance started blocking user agents with curl in it, which is what kbin sends, meaning all kbin instances stopped being able to get images from their instance. It seems like this is true for multiple other lemmy instances. I didn't follow up with any other admins at the moment, but I think from that, and the fact that back when I originally signed up people would constantly complain kbin federation was broken when it was lemmy.ml that was blocking kbin, it's not a good idea to jump to assumptions on why something isn't working.
Interesting, I’m on kbin and beehaw and have not had the same issue while browsing either. And I’m on them pretty frequently. I’ll see a few here and there but not like you’re describing. Is it mostly when browsing new? At any rate, just wanted to put it out there that I don’t think defederation is necessary, as it is not a problem for everyone. Though I’m struggling to come up with a solution as your point is valid to not want to see that stuff. Here’s hoping someone smarter than me can come up with something!
Yep. My comment was showing “if you want to read/see that there’s a spam problem despite what one would see as a user on kbin, the mod log on beehaw will show you the removal of spam that made its way to beehaw.”
I typically make a post that say “Please stop spamming”, then I block the user. Worked for me, but maybe your communities of interest have more issues. I have noticed this issue on kbin communities but not on the Behaw communities.
It definitely appears to be exclusive to kbin, yes. I usually make a comment calling it out for the benefit of unsuspecting users, and then I report it.
i can’t keep up with the blocking and reporting. the same spam keeps showing up. i suppose i could just fuck off of gaming@kbin and get my gaming news and complain about unity elsewhere.
I tend to browse all: new because I like to see fresh content. I’ve always been this way, even in my reddit era. I tend to block the communities I don’t want to see, such as the porn ones. I generally don’t complain because it’s my choice to access the content this way.
These spam accounts do concern me though because they’re clearly trying to scam vulnerable people. I’ve reported so much, but it’s like chopping off the heads of a hydra. From what I’m hearing, our reports do help though, so that’s good.
i do that too! well i used to. admittedly i don’t browse all/new very much anymore because some people really do try to make it difficult for people to browse and find new content.
for me, it’s not so much about the scamming aspect of it, it’s more that the spam drives people away and dilutes the feed. people put in effort to post relevant articles that won’t get seen/discovered because of all the spam. it sucks.
Yeah, if gaming@kbin is going to become a spam-filled cess-pit it’s going to quickly become undesireable (even if dedicated kbin accounts don’t see the spam).
If kbin being unmoderated on Federated servers is by design, is there a chance that it just gets defederated, same as lemmy.world?
Thanks for your reports on it. We try to action it as quickly as we can, and your reporting it helps us. We are attempting a few other Beehaw-only Lemmy changes to mitigate this sort of spam; short of de-federation. One of the major issues is that Kbin does not federate moderator actions. So they could have already dealt with the spammer and removed the posts, from Kbin. Those actions don’t get to us on Beehaw and the spammer posts still lives.
It’s a major hole with regards to spam, but in a hypothetical whistleblower scenario it makes it hard for a single entity to silence and remove all evidence.
There are simply trade offs, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.
Given the nature of the internet, I feel that spam is a much bigger problem than a potential whistleblower being silenced, and wouldn’t that kind of action show up in the logs anyways?
We'll see. Can't say I've been keeping up too closely on the specifics. But I have been a happy kbin user. Guess I'll have to catch up a little more thoroughly.
Can’t say we’re 100% responsible for the reduced spam lately; but wanted to get your thoughts. Has there been less Kbin spam lately? Do you feel our countermeasures are working well since a few weeks ago?
I remember a website that used a gamified interface that would pic a random picture uploaded by users and ask you to classify it. It was completely optional, accessible through a link and a great way to kill time.
Maybe a similar interface could be put in place, with proper warnings about the possible sensitivity of the posts you’ll see. The user sees the post and says if it’s spam or not spam. The randomness makes it somewhat tamper resistant.
I would gladly do it sometimes, instead of doom scrolling.
I’m asking strictly from the point of view of Beehaw, considering this is Beehaw Support and all. Please accept that your voice is not needed or welcome in this post, and move on. I’m trying to be polite.
To be fair to them, I also have a Beehaw account, but saw this post from my Lemmy.ca account, I’m not going through the extra effort to change accounts just to make it known that I’m in the hive. I understand your point, but lets take a breather here pal ❤️
If moderation isn’t federating from kbin, then reporting them does nothing to help non-kbin users. If the spam gets out of control and there’s no other option, defederation is the only solution.
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