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Defederated from Feddit.nl. Update: Refederated! (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lwadmin@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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Lately we have been dealing with a few abusive members from Feddit.nl and we were unable to get in touch with the instance administrator.

Part of the problem is the instance's open registrations which do not require you to enter an e-mail address during signup. This in combination with an inactive admin is a recipe for abuse.

We hope this is only temporary but we have to do this to protect our users.

Edit: we use fediseer, have a look https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.world

Edit 2: We got in touch with the Feddit.nl admin. Email requirements were added to the sign-up process and we're setting up a communication channel. So that means we are federating with Feddit.nl again!

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[-] SpliceVW@lemmy.world 59 points 1 year ago

Let's be real - an email address doesn't really stop much of anything. Anyone can really easily spin up new email addresses freely.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 year ago

Yeah I still don't have an email associated with my reddit account. Which shocks people... although I haven't logged on in months, so maybe it's now required for legacy accounts

[-] MakeItCount@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

it's not required globally but some subs require it to be able to post

So far only /r/formula1 does for me

[-] tpyo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Hah, I replied higher up in the comments that when I signed up for reddit, I also didn't need an email address and I think that particular one never required setting one

Newer accounts definitely did and I used different emails for those accounts

[-] SportsRulesOpinions@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

They somehow managed to force me to add my email. I don't remember how.

[-] CoderKat@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago

Sadly yeah. We absolutely should use email signup because it filters our the absolute lowest effort bots, but it does nothing against higher quality bots or humans. Not only can you easily spin up new emails on the fly, but many emails allow ways to make the email appear unique (eg, Gmail ignores dots and anything after the + sign), there's plenty of temporary email services with a variety of domains, and if you own a domain, you can trivially create unlimited emails until they catch on and ban the entire domain.

Inactive admins are also an issue, but if malicious users are determined enough, it doesn't matter that much how active an admin is. An active admin can mostly help by making IP banning an option (imperfect, but will work on many humans) and can temporarily turn on approvals to make it easier to weed out low hanging fruit. Nothing will work against someone determined enough, but could at least reduce how many instances they can turn to.

[-] itsdavetho@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Personally I don't think anything will stop anyone determined to bring this type of harm to the community, there's an endless list of workarounds. These communities need a larger network of moderators across timezones

[-] sab@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Nope, but it will stop the less determined ones.

With no email verification, you can pretty much create dozens of fake accounts per second - as fast as the API can handle.

[-] antik@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Sure. But we changed our sign-up policy recently. Users are now informed during sign-up that temporary email accounts are banned.

We have another announcement regarding this soon.

[-] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

How do you define a "temporary email account"?

I'm reminded of old games that insisted you couldn't sign up with an email provider and had to use an ISP email ... which kinda screwed over the literally BILLIONS of people whose ISPs don't give email addresses...