/kbin meta @kbin.social 0x1C3B00DA @kbin.social 9 mo. ago

Can registrations on kbin.social be disabled to stop spammers

kbin.social is being overrun with spammers. Can we disable registrations on this instance so they can't keep creating new accounts? Every day I log on, I have to spend the first 20-30 minutes, reporting and blocking a bunch of new accounts.

Here are some that were just created today:
https://kbin.social/u/dfgdfgfdfgfdh
https://kbin.social/u/nyfejevy
https://kbin.social/u/vepotal774
https://kbin.social/u/ayman01
https://kbin.social/u/MariaesNichols
https://kbin.social/u/nidhiroute
https://kbin.social/u/dcesdff
https://kbin.social/u/mauntehilss
https://kbin.social/u/nidhirout
https://kbin.social/u/noraharris0

38 comments

Hear hear!
Are you guys browsing by new? Do you moderate active communities? I'm just curious to understand why we seem to have such different experiences since I only encounter spam once or twice per week, but I definitely spend way too many hours scrolling.
- Yes, I quite often browse by new
yeah, I spend more time downvoting a blocking spammers than anything else
- I spend a lot of time downvoting and reporting and I've volunteered to co-mod the worst offending subs that I'm subnscribed to. It's not clear that any of this has any effect.
  
  At this point, it feels like a bit of a lost cause.
  
  What we really need is more people stepping up to moderate.
This might be a good idea, at least until Ernest gets back. To my knowledge, he's the only instance admin, so as long as he's inactive, the spammers won't get dealt with (especially on magazines he moderates, like /m/tech).

Ideally, there could be another admin or two to deal with this stuff when he's not available, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I spend more time blocking spammers than anything else. I’m sure it will improve once this issue gets more attention, but for now I think I’ll take a break from this site.
Metafilter had a charge of a dollar or two to sign up, and no recurring payments. Seems like a good way to prevent spammers.
Not too much of a hurdle to cross, especially if payments are thru Amazon or some other existing service ppl have trust in. Any funds go to server costs.
I agree that this may be the only real solution for the time being. I have personally been trying to submit good content to my favorite magazines to combat some of the spam, but there is a real influx of it and it's making it difficult to use the site.
It's hard to imagine Kbin coming back from being abandoned by it's only developer, admin and moderator. Twice.

Is it time to move on?

Other Kbin instances - https://fedidb.org/software/kbin Mbin instances - https://fedidb.org/software/mbin

Or try https://piefed.social for something completely different.
- Ernest hasn't abandoned kbin this time, he did post an update last week.
  
  Today, I'm going for a minor procedure at the hospital, and I won't be available for the next 2-4 days. When I return, I'll push all the corrections and fixes I've been working on and present plans for the near future.
  
  Him not being back yet probably means the hospital procedure didn't go as smoothly as expected, but he's not gone on purpose.
  
  The CSAM posts from 4 days ago are still on kbin.social. They have been reported, but no action taken.
- So you went and thought: "Let's take this chance to make an unverified claim and advertise this other instances in a single post!"
  but it was a shitty move, let me tell you.
  
  No code commits for 2 months https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/commits/branch/develop
you know I think one of the smarter things facebook did was only allowing edu emails initially or google allowing current users to send invites.
- Facebook doing edu (initially only one school) only was to target a specific audience. Google followed the exclusivity model to gain hype and encourage word of mouth.
  
  Neither did it for security reasons and both switched to open sign-ups once they reached a certain level of users.
  
  I did not work at either at levels where I would know their reasons but whatever their reasons it did make growth in the start slow and steady.
- Getting a free .edu account is trivial.
  
  not for spammers. it was a nice first level filter till they had the resources to do more effective spam fighting (which they don't do all that well)

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