@haubles @stux

[gsymon@mstdn.social]

3/4

The accounts are mostly identical, with an average of ~4 followers/following. Scroll their feeds and you’ll see middle-east conflict / Ukraine / pro-Russia / anti-EU + some distractions. Often there are quasi-identical posts across multiple accounts.

What should I do here?? Blocking is fine for me.. but it achieves little for the fediverse. The server remains. If the server is totally removed, then they will presumably just make a new one and copy everything across??

[gsymon@mstdn.social]

4/4

Last year it was lightning bolts and Telegram … this year it’s getting more subtle. Still crap though.

Oh! By chance, I read this today. What a lovely person the sweet little #psychopath #Putin is:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vq5g64y98o

#Mastodon #Fediverse #Spam #Propaganda #ActivityPub #Russia #Putin #Ukraine #EU

[crapaud@mstdn.social]

@gsymon
There are a very small number of servers that the bots use to spew their content from. So instead of blocking individual accounts you can block the entire server. @iftas maintains a list of such servers, so you can double check against the list first.

https://about.iftas.org/iftas-abandoned-unmanaged-denylist-output/

I noticed that one of the problematic servers, social.tsst.net, was blocked by our server thanks to @stux.

[gsymon@mstdn.social]

@crapaud @iftas @stux

Thanks for the reply Allan.

I’d never heard of IFTAS and it’s great to see that it exists.

I wonder how closely it’s applied across the fedi, e.g. I have reported accounts on ploud.fr which is on that list, but none of them have been ’suspended’. Is there any mechanism for an elevated level of reporting?

I also wonder if blocking a server, may have a negative effect, in that it might just continue enabling these propaganda accounts if others aren't reporting?

[crapaud@mstdn.social]

@gsymon @iftas @stux
I'm not really qualified to answer but I can give you some thoughts. I'm sure iftas would be pleased if their list would be more widely applied since it's useful against troll bots but ultimately it's just a suggestion. Reporting is the main mechanism for users, but there are 2 lossy levels: our server where the admin may hesitate to drastically defederate/suspend/limit an offending server; and the troll's server, whose admin may be unresponsive/absent/slow.
1/2

[crapaud@mstdn.social]

@gsymon @iftas @stux
I wouldn't block an entire server until after reporting multiple accounts repeatedly and deciding for myself that it's no longer worth my time and mental health to keep them on my timeline. So yes there's a risk that blocking too soon will leave other users open to trolls' abuse. But rest assured that others are still quietly reporting, that you have done your part, and that there are helpers behind the scenes cleaning up.
2/2

[haubles@hachyderm.io]

@gsymon @stux Hi, thanks for reaching out about this. Could you email us at staff@mastodon.social if you'd like to continue the conversation? That's the best way to get in touch with our moderation team

[gsymon@mstdn.social]

@haubles @stux

Thank you for the reply Hannah.

I'm really just wanting to know the best way of dealing with this. As the fedi grows, it becomes more attractive to the baddies and ideally, the sooner we react, the better. I shall contact via email.

[stux@mstdn.social]

@gsymon @haubles The best way is to keep reporting them

These days there are a LOT indeed and they keep coming it seems

We're trying to hammer them as fast as possible

[gsymon@mstdn.social]

@stux @haubles

Thanks Stux. I know I chose a great server back in the day. 😊

What should I do when I come across a server like tsst ? Is there a way to forward/report it? It might save a lot of time, if the offending server was blocked at server level... or ... do you already check them out??