@haubles @stux

[gsymon@mstdn.social]

@haubles @stux

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I’m looking for a little help about dealing with the seemingly mass attack of Russian bots. What's the best way of handling this?

I report this Russian propaganda as 'Something Else' and bookmark a post, so that I can later see if the account is still running, then I block the account. I also leave the checkbox on, for the server itself to receive my report

Many accounts are not suspended

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

[gsymon@mstdn.social]

2/4

I’ve found that if I go to the account’s server and look at its boosts/followers/following, I can find many more, quasi-identical accounts. So they boost/follow each other. For example, I’ve seen that the tsst.net server is essentially a russian bot server, with 88 accounts. If you look at the Profiles Directory and browse only that server, you sink into a toxic hole.

[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.
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[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.
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[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