Jeez I manually deleted my instance’s cache folder and now every image is broken, even for new posts. I ran a ‘tootctl cache clear’ but it hasn’t fixed the issue. Any suggestions?
Hmm I probably have the most ridiculous #robotstxt for a #Misskey instance right now lol. I just want to let #Mojeek and #Marginalia crawl #Makai and make sure to keep out #Google and the AI scrapers... :satrithink:
While my original proposal to hide images in order to highlight the importance of well-written alt text did not gain a whole lot of traction, I'm still glad there was some conversation, and grateful to everyone who is still interested in joining in.
If you do participate, I would love to hear from you!
A thread on the lack of courage of some #fediadmin that I will name because they have step over one of my limits. @thurisaz has enacted a ban of the instance (mastodon.projetretro.io) with the following messages : "Admin is nazi apologist" (see https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain=projetretro.io)
To say that I'm shocked to be so carelessly called a nazi will be an understatement. I tried to reach over to polyglot by mail to understand the reason of the the ban to no answer so far .
1/?
I've received my first "report" on hugs.lgbt and I'm very confused ....
Two posts were reported ... neither were from hugs.lgbt posts ... one was a reply to one of my posts by a mutual, the other was a post by that mutual without any hugs.lgbt involvement ...
Did I receive the report because one of those was a reply to a post of mine?
But why the other one?
Also very confused as to why ... the first was a thank you reply to a post from me.
The other was a meme.
The category was "other" but no notes or any other information that I could discern 🤔 🤷♂️
for a year and a half, images from mstdn.social have been unloadable on my instance
pings and traceroutes to mstdn.social from inside of my network die right at the router:
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
92 bytes from 192.168.0.1: Destination Port Unreachable
Vr HL TOS Len ID Flg off TTL Pro cks Src Dst
4 5 00 5400 178b 0 0000 3f 01 1e6d 192.168.0.200 116.202.14.219
no changes i made on my network fixed it, and i began to suspect my isp had blocked the ip
............
................
............ it turns out, my ipv6 was disabled and mstdn.social needs it for its cdn 😭
as I alluded to yesterday, I actually wrote something about the problem with #fediverse link embeds, how they potentially DDoS servers, and how we can (kinda) fix it.
To all Fedi Admins Currently Being hit with a Spam Wave:
This kind of spam is now over! Unmute all the instances no longer on my list!
I've just released v4.0.0 of The UNmute List! I'd be very happy about a small donation because I have very little time and I cannot really justify working on this list with my current schedule :mycomputer:
There is a new type of spam, the same instances are affected as before. Those responsible in Japan are said to have been arrested.
Simply import this list and you'll mute the 47 worst spam instances currently known to me! I've worked on it for multiple weeks, sometimes ~9 hours at a time verifying all lists sent to me manually.
Limit first, defederate only in worst situations!
Consider re-federating with and un-silencing any of the mentioned instances once the spam is mitigated. The admins of some of these may have just been asleep when this all started.
Ban Spam Accounts via their E-Mail Domain
Block the following E-Mail Domain and whatever temp Mail provider it resolves to: chitthi.in
Just to be safe, block these ones too (same provider)
mailto.plus
fexpost.com
fexbox.org
mailbox.in.ua
any.pink
All our spam accounts came from these E-mails.
Since you probably have some of these accounts sleeping:
https://[your-instance.tld]/admin/accounts?email=%25%40chitthi.in there just select all and press “Ban”.
Find Remaining Spammers
I've seen instances that fixed the spam issue but began being hit later again. The spammers might use new E-Mails, so here is a way to find and block them anyway:
These spammers seem to be using the TOR Network as all of their IPs are TOR Exit Node IPs, hence an idea (with some collateral damage if executed) would be to ban all TOR exit node IPs for sign ups. I am personally against this idea as you'd also prevent users who simply wish to stay anonymous online (political refugees, leakers of important documents, etc.) from using your platform. For now, simply banning every user using a particular Spammer IP will not help and will merely ban users that try to stay anonymous! Not necessarily the spammers.
How To Block All Temp E-Mails in the Future
If you want to prevent this from ever happening again, you should block E-Mails from Temporary Mail providers all together:
In future updates on Mastodon, maybe Admins can simply click a button that says “Ban Temp E-Mail Providers” Automagically from the E-Mail Menu? There could be E-Mail categories that can be banned, such as temporary mails.
Why did this happen?
The real reason hundreds of us spent hours of our days during the spam on mitigating it is the following:
#fediadmin friends: are there any downsides to turning on the "Content cache retention period"? I've noticed that my database's content cache table is very large, and I realized I hadn't set a retention time for it.
:heart_trans: Request for IT assistance :heart_trans:
Hi friends! Our SysAdmins are still blocked by a network issue that prevents our migration to the new servers. We are running out of ideas and would appreciate any possible support. If you have or know someone who has experience with IPv6 networks, then please contact me or another member of our staff. We would earnestly appreciate any help or advice!
The problem, as I understand it, is that traffic fails to pass through our OPNSense firewall. We have a /48 block allocated on the WAN side, and want to expose a public IP from the LAN. See this reply for a longer description and some discussion.
Is there an all in one "So you want to run a fediverse instance" type guidebook in relation to legal, moderation and long term sustainability tasks?
Things like templates for Privacy Policies, Server Rules and About sections, understanding moderation tasks and the importance of having multiple administrators, funding plans.
Is there an all in one "So you want to run a fediverse instance" type guidebook in relation to legal, moderation and long term sustainability tasks?
Things like templates for Privacy Policies, Server Rules and About sections, understanding moderation tasks and the importance of having multiple administrators, funding plans.
IFTAS releases a practical guide for fediverse admins and platform creators (among others) subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act. Which would be…everyone.
Remember, hosting a fediverse instance is a collaborative effort, not just with your co-admins, but your users and admins of other instances. Any knowledge you can share about your experiences serves to strengthen the larger federated community.