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2y ago

[Vote] Use the Fediverse Overseer to pre-emptively defederate from suspected botted instances

See the tool here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/95652

And some discussion of the issue here: https://lemm.ee/post/177673

This tool produces a list of instances which have a very high number of users compared to the number of comments and posts. These instances are assumed to have high number of bot accounts on them.

Some other instances have started blocking them, should sh.itjust.works follow suit?

Of course, this need not be permanent, and will be reversed when those instances resolve the issue.

For reference, this is a list of instances suspected of being botted by the tool's default settings: https://overseer.dbzer0.com/api/v1/instances?activity_suspicion=20&domains=true

Ayes and nays please!

65 comments

@imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
Hey! It's the hypothetical software we were just talking about!
This sounds really useful. Having to have each admin independently de-federate from spam instances is a huge overhead that a tool like this would help with.
- Wow, this platform is growing up before our eyes.
  Thanks https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/db0.
  It's my understanding that db0 was a mod over at r/piracy and was able to get a big chunk of subscribers to come over to Lemmy. Good on him for being one of the only reddit mods to take a stand.

Nay.
I don't like bots much, but this is still an assumption. I don't want to get into preventative de-federation, if it is at all possible to avoid it.
The Meta/Facebook instance(s) should be though.

Aye.
It's pretty obvious which ones are botted instances. 30,000 users and 20 total posts on the instance? That's a bot.
- Not necessarily, my account is on SDF because of their solid uptime, lack of defederated instances, relatively low user count compared to the more bloated instances, and a general appreciation for SDF's ethos. I generally don't post in many local communities.
  However there will be some where it's obvious for sure. I just worry about people on lesser know instances that might not allow free creation of communities, but have policies they agree with.

Aye
I trust that @TheDude has some method of contact available so the offending instance operators can hash out refederation in the future.
- the script in theory removes instances that have handled their spam issue which should also in theory remove from the defederation recommendations, and if there's regular updates to the federation list, we would refederate without them having to communicate
  
  removes instances that have handled their spam issue
  Ah now that you mention it, that makes perfect sense. Their user count to activity count ratio will improve once they remove the bot accounts.
- matrix

Aye.
I haven't looked into how it works, but I feel like we should be open to reviewing it's findings if an instance wants to dispute our defederation. Maybe it's got a surefire method of determining bot-heavy lemmys (bottys?), but I'm worried about false positives.

Aye
This is definitely gonna turn into a mess for servers that don't take care of this pre-emptively
- Not just that. They can spin a server up in seconds and create bots

Aye, as long as there's an easy way to unblock.

Aye but we need to figure out how the process of unblocking them will work.

Aye
But I think Dude should have the right to say no if he doesn't trust it.

Aye.
I agree with others in the thread that we should be open to communicating with admins for false positives though.

Aye!
We'll use the bots to destroy the bots!

Aye
I think this tool is a really great call out, I'm here because I wanted to make a discussion post about this as well.
I like the idea of using the tool for reference although I'm not sure it should be an automatic block. It does seem like its a better idea than doing nothing at all about these bot instances though.
Question Is there a difference between blocking and defederating?
- I don't think so; I used "block" as a shorthand for defederate.
  Agreed on doing it manually though, there only seems to be a handful of instances that are problematic, so we probably don't need to use the python script.
  
  They aren't the same but for the context of this conversation I do not believe it matters much.

Aye. It's clear those are bot accounts, I see no reason not to. Servers can be unblocked in the future if things change.

Nay.
I do support blocking spam servers and bot farms, but what's our criteria?
We need more information. How sure are we that they're bot farms?

Aye, this could be a future headache if we just let it be.

Aye. I’m concerned about bot presence on Lemmy because recent estimates place bot accounts as the vast majority of accounts on the networks. I worry that if we don’t take actions against bots now, we’ll come to regret it in the future.

Nay! We should alert them of their mistake and help them fix it. We should only defederate from instances that are only host bots.

Aye!

65 comments