Adam Robertson shared a comment of this post/conversation

Bugger All, Australia (Map), Wed, 17 May 2023 14:07:10 -0700

Told you so, years and years ago. Repeated it over and over. "Mastodon is building a spam gateway so big you can drive a fleet of starships through it. Eventually the spammers will discover this. This is not a matter of 'if', only 'when'. "

Tried to enshrine comment permissions in OStatus and ActivityPub before either were widely deployed. People laughed. Evan muzzled me and prevented me from speaking out. Cwebber ridiculed me publicly. Gargron ignored me completely.

So here we are.

Folks it has only just begun. Streams and Hubzilla will survive. Don't know about anybody else. Stop building fucking spam gateways.

Renaud Chaput wrote the following post Tue, 16 May 2023 23:53:23 -0700

Hugops to every other #mastoadmin having to deal with this spam wave. We have been fighting is on mastodon.social for days, and were forced to close registrations yesterday until we could emergency-deploy countermeasures.
Unfortunately, this made them realise they are other servers in the Fediverse to target.
If any admin needs help fighting this, please ping me either on the server admin discord, or directly here, and I will gladly help.

Shimriez

Wed, 17 May 2023 15:23:46 -0700

Sounds like their situation is pretty terrible.

Marshall Sutherland

Wed, 17 May 2023 15:31:53 -0700

Which, to point back to a different conversation, is why so many of us default to not letting anyone reply to our posts.

Giac El Vecio

Wed, 17 May 2023 16:54:10 -0700

lotfi

Wed, 17 May 2023 17:42:45 -0700

The first time I checked out Mastodon was about 4 or 5 years ago. I already had the impression of seeing a spam feed, long before the current wave.

Adam Robertson

Wed, 17 May 2023 18:00:28 -0700

Honestly, I do not even know what people are talking about. What sort of spam are folks getting? I am guessing it only affects Masto accounts?

chavasaurus

Wed, 17 May 2023 19:45:42 -0700

@Adam Robertson The latest one is some cryptocurrency spam bot registering multiple accounts on open mastodon instances, then tagging multiple random fediverse accounts and sending out the spamload via DM. I was a recipient of one of these lovely messages some days ago.

The lesson (among many other lessons, I'm sure) is that if you already have spam protection measures in your fediverse server, maybe consider using them.

Cryptocurrency shilling coming from a mastodon.social account with a lot (and I mean a lot) of numbers in the username.

Tanja

Thu, 18 May 2023 01:11:08 -0700

Folks it has only just begun. Streams and Hubzilla will survive.

All I care about. Selfish me

.

Thanks!

Shimriez

Thu, 18 May 2023 01:55:25 -0700 last edited: Thu, 18 May 2023 01:56:10 -0700

I've seen some attempts on Hubzilla public timelines (I was seaching for alternative hubs to host a clone). They usually involved either crypto investments, betting or young ladies with very little clothes. Or all three. But they're not really succeeding.

chavasaurus

Thu, 18 May 2023 08:40:39 -0700

Haven't peeked inside a 'zilla directory in a while. I also seem to remember many essay writing services.

_jayrope

Mon, 22 May 2023 11:41:59 -0700

I had one attempt of crypto spam messaging on Hubzilla. I leave the door open. The particular user came from mastodon.social (sure, the biggest possible target in AP) and to be fair: It was blocked/hidden already, when i went there to look who that was.