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I'm just going to throw this out there: I have been getting a ton of new follows, and a lot of them appear to be bots and fake accounts.

I think we can mostly agree that bots and fake accounts are not a great thing for the majority of people in the Fediverse who aren't looking to artificially inflate follower counts - a process that really isn't beneficial to anyone who wants actual authentic engagement - and I'm concerned that this will eventually lead to the sort of spam plaguing Facebook.
Abandoned America
I probably don't need to explain why fake accounts and bots are bad, but I'm going to anyway: spam and scams are the biggest threat they pose.

They also make it hard to determine accurate metrics and as much as I hate to say it, metrics are important if your account is part of your business.

Thankfully, there's no algorithm here, so a bunch of bot followers aren't going to consign posts to oblivion by not interacting, but they still take the fun out of a platform really fast.
Abandoned America
The magic of the Fediverse - at least, to me - is the Olde Internet feel. It still feels authentic, not entirely polished, held together with duct tape and the combined love of a bunch of nerds who care for, maintain, and interact with it. That's not an insult, it is very much a compliment and what I love about it here. I really hope that a flood of fake accounts aren't getting into position to mess that up. Maybe I'm being alarmist. But I see what I see re: new accounts. It worries me.
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TinDrum
i think this's where instance management/moderation comes in

disallowing/deactivating obvious bot accounts and blocking instances that allow them's probably a workable interim solution
Abandoned America
I am all for that - although blocking instances that allow them begs the question of whether it's fair or wise to nuke entire instances from connectivity over it. I suspect that would have a lot more replies than my desire to debate it, but let's say a lot of them are on mastodon.social, which they are: is the collateral damage worth the cost there?
TinDrum
yeh look that's where culture comes in i think

i realise they're huge but if folks are getting shutout due proliferation of bots on their instance then they will likely move or complain to their mods

i think that's how it's supposed to work and it might take a little time for those dynamics to properly kick in
Abandoned America
I hope so. I'd rather not see whatever problems these accounts are here to create materialize. Not sure what I can do about it aside from fuss, though.
TinDrum
i reckon what you're doing (initiating/engaging in discourse) is the right step to take

i can only say that as inconvenient as moving instances actually is (far more than it's promoted to be) i would certainly move if my admin allowed bots/spam accounts to setup home
Stan Wonn 🏳️‍🌈 🌹
I agree. At its best, the Fediverse reminds me a lot of my early internet days in the 1990s and it’s why I expect to stick around here regardless of what happens with other platforms.
Abandoned America
Thought I should add the criteria I judge by, in case anyone cares to know: the accounts I believe are fake are brand new, have less than five followers (most often zero), nearly zero interactions with anyone, account handles that feel autogenerated, and no profile photos.

There are also other ones that seem really sus, like the obvious thirst trap accounts, but even ignoring those the first category is off the charts.
cpsask
You are the 2nd person I have seen post about bots coming to their attention. I’m disappointed. I also love the simplicity of the fediverse and would hate to see it ruined.
Abandoned America
I just replied with this to someone else but it had limited visibility, and relevant here too, I think. The question is, what's the motive? Gaming the algorithm isn't really a thing, there is no algorithm. People are pretty good at blocking spam accounts overall. Search engines don't seem to care about the Fediverse one way or another so I doubt it has to do with rankings there. So what's the angle? 🤔
Cerulean Code Wyrm
Computer Scientist here. Following accounts on the fediverse federates. Instances network with and register each other based on follows. A bot that follows a lot of accounts is strongly federated which allows for DDoS. They're laying the ground work for DDoS.
Abandoned America
ok, so I can't pretend I understand all of that - I'd like to! but I don't - but DDoS was one of the first things I thought of also.
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Cerulean Code Wyrm
They're creating bots to launch attacks on servers and following accounts creates connections.

I did a write up of this here
Web 3.0’s Data Leaks in the Cybernetic Abyss
https://cerulean-wyrm-lexicon.rf.gd/archives/6463

I'm at the gym right now, so sorry if this is all over the place.

But, the fediverse is as good as it gets. The Atproto is hell.

Btw, I love your photos

#mastodon #bluesky #fediverse
#fediverse #mastodon #bluesky
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Abandoned America
so, reading this, it seems like it's about privacy. Are you saying with your initial reply that the public firehose could be used by tons of bot accounts to coordinate actions that would overwhelm that and fracture communication between instances?
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Jonathan Cremin
bots elsewhere are often created months or years before being used. It makes sense given account age is one of the signals used to detect them.
Abandoned America
makes sense but I hadn't considered that
Brandon Trabon
Yeah I don't want to see the Fediverse become like Twitter.
Jeff C. 🇺🇦
As I understand it, the anti-abuse tools built into Mastodon are fairly spartan and have mostly benefitted from "flying under the radar" of spammers and the like so far.

If we are to get any larger, there should be much more investment put into making abuse response better.

I think that the business model (or lack thereof, to be precise) of the Fediverse has some advantages when it comes to mitigating abuse, but the tooling needs to keep up.
Abandoned America
agreed, it is a costly and difficult problem to manage I imagine
John Carlsen 🇺🇸🇳🇱🇪🇺
Mastodon is crafted by artisans.

Other social sites are made by the factories of partisans.
David S
I reported a few bits that were spamming recently and it looks like you can report to both the local instance mods and the originating instance mods. I think getting into the habit of raising them is the answer so that mods can choose what they want in their instance, and then blocking yourself so you never need to interact with them again
David S
I reported a few bits that were spamming recently and it looks like you can report to both the local instance mods and the originating instance mods. I think getting into the habit of raising them is the answer so that mods can choose what they want in their instance, and then blocking yourself so you never need to interact with them again
Passwordsarehard4
the internet gets like this every September, it’ll quite back down again I’m sure.
Paul Sutton
We can counter the bad accounts by posting good content, interacting and being excellent to each other. Lets keep up our good work.
Cabbidges
For sure. I keep having to explain to people that their feed won't be fed, they have to find who to follow. It''s an alien concept.
Then I have to explain that their reach isn't automated. This is also met with blank stares.
But for me I feel free of second guessing algorithms and just interact.
yianiris
When did the internet in the past restricted text to 500 characters while a/v material has no limits.

At least with commercial social media there was a central guideline of rules and mechanisms for censorship, fediverse "owners" will delete anything and provide no reason for deleting, removing, banning.

@AbandonedAmerica
@Abandoned America
Ari [APz] Sovijärvi
For me, the Mastodon in particular reminds me of the days when Instagram and Twitter were actually good. You could post pictures of a hobby and it'd connect you with like-minded people. The timelines would show actually interesting things and you weren't penalised for using "wrong" type posts.

Now both of those examples have been run to the ground with pointless promoted content that the system shows me because someone paid it to, posts aren't recommended because they might have interesting content, but based on if they were whatever the platform was pushing right now, like pointless videos instead of still pictures or something.
Abandoned America
yeah, I get more "suggestions" than actual posts by people I follow now. Not that I go on either much at this point
Brandon Trabon
I agree it is important to know how many real people are seeing your posts. This is one of the reasons I attempt to engage with people I follow, so they know I see their content and enjoy it.
Dawn Tåke 🌙 :sparkletrans:
Do they seem like the Porn Bots of Tumblr?

Though I will say I met a bestie because of them. I was blocking a bunch and they were a human that liked something and we hit it off.
Abandoned America
They don't seem to be doing anything regarding interacting with my posts, which is odd. But if you go in my follows you can see a TON of new zero-follower, zero interaction accounts that have no pfp and nonsensical handles if you scroll down. An inordinate amount. I'm not entirely sure what their game is with this but I don't like it.
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Dawn Tåke 🌙 :sparkletrans:

Inhaltswarnung: Rambling about the pork bits of yore, but then get the morbs. Also, porn bots, not pork bits.

Abandoned America

Inhaltswarnung: Rambling about the pork bits of yore, but then get the morbs. Also, porn bots, not pork bits.

David Hopeward

Inhaltswarnung: Rambling about the pork bits of yore, but then get the morbs. Also, porn bots, not pork bits.

Abandoned America
that's interesting. If this keeps up I may have to look into that. Thank you. I'd hate to block legit accounts just for being new but if it becomes a problem it's a good tool to have.
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Bee O'Problem :godot:
I'm also seeing accounts from phonies, for lack of a less anachronistic term, more often on my feeds.

That is, folks who don't seem to interact very much, nor have particularly human posting habits. Instead it's this uncanny marketer-speak style of posting about some fairly narrow topic. They're probably humans but they're not exactly acting like genuine people. They post more like brands.
Abandoned America
yeaaaah, that's no fun.
Brandon Trabon
Twitter has the same thing as well. At one point I had well over 200 bot followers. I would rather have less real followers than a number of fake followers.
tuga
The fediadvantsge is that you get to curate your own feed and it's fairly easy to do so.
Ovro
Got a couple of bot followers as well. My solution was to turn follower approving on. Interestingly, I've gotten just one suspected bot after that.
Abandoned America
I could do that but... I just don't have the social media time to vet people 😕
Lasse Gismo - 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇸🇩
50k follower is just a word...
And yes - I can agree.
Abandoned America
I'm honored that people follow me here but yes, it is just a rather arbitrary number
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