As some of you may be aware, over the past few weeks there have been an increasing number of what I suspect are bots which will share one or even a few posts, all relevant to the communities they are shared in, at which point the account self-deletes. I’m torn as the stories are relevant, but they give me the impression of a narrative attack. I’ve seen only one of these accounts actually comment before deletion, otherwise they post and immediately nuke the account.
I have tagged mods and admins but have not heard any recognition on the problem. It’s also notable that by my impression this issue is getting worse. I noticed yesterday that communities I subscribe to which previously have not had this problem are now starting to receive these kinds of posts.
I want the fediverse to be a place to communicate with real people in good faith; this manner of posting runs contrary to that. So that begs the questions, is this actually a problem, and if so, what can be done about it?
From the mod perspective I can certainly tell you it’s an issue, however the risk of making a bad call on a new user exceeds the risk of letting one through, which will self delete anyways. It seems like an admin would need to solve it through any of a bunch of methods such as allowing posts to stay up past an account’s deletion, restricting new users from posting, requiring a certain amount of community engagement first, figuring out their script to autoban, or some better solution I haven’t thought of.
I’ve definitely noticed it, but I don’t understand why.
I know karma farmers on Reddit would sell accounts or just try to create the appearance of legitimacy, but what does it accomplish to delete an account immediately after posting?
I haven’t noticed it at all. What exactly have you noticed?
Yeah, I’ve been banning them for bad faith engagement in my communities with the “Remove Content” toggle, and it’s gotten to the point now where they are still creating accounts but not bothering to post in my communites, so that’s good.
But the pattern of communities they post to with low/no/amenable moderation still lets them flood the channel.
In-person verification with Guy Fawkes masks to preserve anonymity. Meet with a trusted mod/admin, show paper poster with handwritten username on it, mod reads and verify. You’re confirmed human.
I know a lemmy.world mod that claims to live in my city, we can verify each other.
/okay just kidding, I’m too depressed and lazy to do this weird meetup thing.
See you November 5th?
Kill all posts and comments from deleted accounts.
On the one hand I like this reasoning for privacy sake and to prevent this kind of spamming, but on the other hand, it’s a shame to lose all the discussion that a post may bring about just because one user wants to nuke their account. I don’t know what the right solution is
it’s a shame to lose all the discussion
Nothing on Lemmy or Reddit is worth keeping.
I’ll occasionally find an old solution to an esoteric tech issue, but by and large I don’t disagree.
