It seems this happens occasionally on #fedi where malicious users decide to take advantage of instances with poor moderation to spam widely.
There are many solutions, but let me offer a simple change that stops spam dead in its tracks:
#nodebb has a post queue built in. If you have 0 reputation, you need your post to be manually approved. You can adjust this as needed, but even the default (allow regular posting after 1 upvote) is sufficient. Stops 👏spam 👏 cold 👏.
We also have integrated project honeypot, akismet, and captcha, but those are passive technologies that can be worked around given time.
But simple is best — raise the bar of contribution just a tiny bit, and the effect on spam is huge. To get around a post queue, spammers have to make a quality contribution, and that's hard when spam accounts are automated by script.
I LOVE that you are doing your own thing, and love that you are not only questioning what has been "acceptable" up until now, but also creating an implementation to do exactly that. Keep up the good work! 🙌
The fact of the matter is, a lot of popular #fediverse software is rather new, and that's super exciting, but also means some of the software is rather green and not battle tested.
#nodebb went through its own growing pains, so I feel like there are some lessons that can be learned from outside orgs looking to join #ActivityPub devel.
I'm not saying we're perfect, but if we can help soften some of those growing pains for all of #fedi then 👍
@toddalstrom all of this has been figured out by the forums 10+ years ago. The spam is just getting more sophisticated and larger in volume, but the old solutions still work because they introduce a second DIFFERENT element to the spam equation a human.
You can beat tech with more tech (e.g. CAPTCHA vs CAPTCHA) but you need to leverage social engineering against a human. Not infallible by any means, but a huge sharp turn away from what beats tech.
@devnull Weird thought here, but Misskey and Sharkey have a concept of badges..you earn badges for actions like logging in X times in X days, liking X number of posts, etc.
Wonder if that could be used as a basis for contribution levels prior to allowing federated posting. Make it fun, not a labor.
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