Fediverse @kbin.social genoxidedev1 @kbin.social 2y ago

Lemmy apparently hit with another bot wave tonight (+ 623686 overall users)

I looked at the lemmy stats again today like the last few days (since the 1st of July), apparently tonight there has been another wave of bot signups.:

Lemmy: 1,555,395 overall users (+ 2363)
Kbin: 55,201 overall users (+ 433)

Active last 30 days:
Lemmy: 56,859 users (+ 1142)
Kbin: 55,099 users (+ 331)

^ 2023-07-02 20:15:00 CEST

Lemmy: 2,179,081 overall users (+ 623686, bots)
Kbin: 55,863 (+ 764)

Active last 30 days:
Lemmy: 59,438 (+ 2579)
Kbin: 55,532 (+ 433)

^ 2023-07-03 13:30:00 CEST

Of course "tonight" refers to tonight in central european summer time so it probably was more middle-of-the-day for you.

If you go to the site I linked at the beginning and sort by "Total users" you can see instances with 80000 users and 1 active user for example.

Open signups should be prohibited and affected instances should do something against the botted accounts or defederate. New instances should at the very least start using captchas and email verification.

20 comments

How have they not even enabled Captcha at this point? There's been warnings and charts pasted all over the place?
- Development issues
  
  They enabled it, it was broken and the implementation sucked, so they removed it again. But hey if you are pissed about it, feel free to help - you can fork the GitHub project and then fix it yourself :)
  
  Also remember everyone working on it is volunteering. Cut them some slack, all of them have normal jobs as well.
  
  You'd think this would be one of the first things they get working...
They're starting in on Kbin too. Saw an influx of spam marketing reports pop up this morning like this one from emergenresearch.com from what looks like bot accounts.
- That account is just outrageously blatant, I would have given them the benefit of the doubt if it was just one article, although I still would have been very cautious of my doubt, but they posted 6 of these type posts
inb4 Reddit hiring to disrupt competitors
How is it known that these are bot accounts? I'm not doubting you, just curious how you discerned that.
- Because they are not active. Some people could make an account and not bother using it, but not that many, that quickly.
  
  Perhaps, but how do we separate inactive bot accounts from inactive accounts by people who are checking out what all the commotion is after the Reddit fiasco and just lurking in the new spaces? I feel like that's a really inconclusive data point right now.
The average rate is 3 days to create 40k accounts
Very odd.
It might be more bots but could also be redditors jumping ship now that 3rd party apps are actually dying.

20 comments