I'm getting a lot of "please use the Mastodon report function to tell us about the Russian disinformation accounts we are hosting".
With all due respect, if you have three or more, I'm not sitting here and clicking through each and every account to create a report, you're going to get a DM or an email.
Today I've spent five hours identifying, tracking, verifying, documenting, and reporting accounts.
Five hours.
If you take five minutes to review new accounts, I don't need to do this.
@iftas@mastodon.iftas.org
I try to keep on top of new accounts, but these accounts sit idle for a month, it seems, and suddenly start posting propaganda. It takes a while before I notice sometimes.
I sincerely appreciate what you do, and a DM or email is absolutely fine for me. Whatever takes the least effort and time for you.
@admin@hear-me.social yep, looks like 5-10 days it's left blank to see if it's removed, then it gets bridged to Bluesky and left alone again, then it gets connected to the spam firehose. If 1 follow (the bridge) and follow/followers is hidden from public, that's a strong signal.
γRe: I'm getting a lot of "please use the Mastodon report function to tell us about the Russian disinformation accounts we are hosting".γ
@iftas@mastodon.iftas.org @admin@hear-me.social we get that crap a lot too, but we have a post queue that catches the first post for any account. (NodeBB, not Mastodon)
It does unfortunately increase workload, and spammers are starting to use AI to craft innocuous messages to get past manual detection, but it might be the next needed step.
https://activitypub.space/post/753
@julian@activitypub.space since these bots follow a fixed pattern (silence for a few days, temporary IP addresses, email domains, etc.), I tend to suspend them on Mastodon as a precaution. Mastodon's advantage is its appeal mechanism, which works very well.
On Friendica, the situation is less straightforward, because there's no appeal: the suspension can't be revoked, and while it's possible to block an account without suspending it, there's no communication channel between the user and the administrator.
On Lemmy, things are even stranger: lately, we've had several users register but don't post anything. I believe these are manual registrations by actors trying to manage their accounts with the Mastodon APIs... In any case, even though Lemmy lacks a post-ban communication channel, the measures are revocable.
On NodeBB, however, I'm not prepared. Our citiverse.it is still small and in six months we haven't had any moderation problems, but honestly I don't even know if there is a system for appeals and ban revocation.
@admin@hear-me.social @iftas@mastodon.iftas.org
IFTAS
