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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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. 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.
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.
Aye but allow for some process for these instances to get themselves back in good graces. One mistake on the admins end and he wakes up with 30k bots. Might not be totally on purpose.