Lately we have been dealing with a few abusive members from Feddit.nl and we were unable to get in touch with the instance administrator.
Part of the problem is the instance’s open registrations which do not require you to enter an e-mail address during signup. This in combination with an inactive admin is a recipe for abuse.
We hope this is only temporary but we have to do this to protect our users.
Edit: we use fediseer, have a look https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.world
Edit 2: We got in touch with the Feddit.nl admin. Email requirements were added to the sign-up process and we’re setting up a communication channel. So that means we are federating with Feddit.nl again!
Part of the problem is the instance’s open registrations which do not require you to enter an e-mail address during signup.
How is this even a thing? Why would the Lemmy software even allow operation like this?
Cuz we’re on an anonymous forum basically?
Let’s be real - an email address doesn’t really stop much of anything. Anyone can really easily spin up new email addresses freely.
Sadly yeah. We absolutely should use email signup because it filters our the absolute lowest effort bots, but it does nothing against higher quality bots or humans. Not only can you easily spin up new emails on the fly, but many emails allow ways to make the email appear unique (eg, Gmail ignores dots and anything after the + sign), there’s plenty of temporary email services with a variety of domains, and if you own a domain, you can trivially create unlimited emails until they catch on and ban the entire domain.
Inactive admins are also an issue, but if malicious users are determined enough, it doesn’t matter that much how active an admin is. An active admin can mostly help by making IP banning an option (imperfect, but will work on many humans) and can temporarily turn on approvals to make it easier to weed out low hanging fruit. Nothing will work against someone determined enough, but could at least reduce how many instances they can turn to.
Personally I don’t think anything will stop anyone determined to bring this type of harm to the community, there’s an endless list of workarounds. These communities need a larger network of moderators across timezones
Nope, but it will stop the less determined ones.
With no email verification, you can pretty much create dozens of fake accounts per second - as fast as the API can handle.
Sure. But we changed our sign-up policy recently. Users are now informed during sign-up that temporary email accounts are banned.
We have another announcement regarding this soon.
How do you define a “temporary email account”?
I’m reminded of old games that insisted you couldn’t sign up with an email provider and had to use an ISP email … which kinda screwed over the literally BILLIONS of people whose ISPs don’t give email addresses…
Yeah I still don’t have an email associated with my reddit account. Which shocks people… although I haven’t logged on in months, so maybe it’s now required for legacy accounts
it’s not required globally but some subs require it to be able to post
So far only /r/formula1 does for me
Lemmy is open source. Everyone can modify it to fit their needs.
Because anyone running it can decide to do it this way. That’s how code works; you can edit it. Even if the option wasn’t there, if any instance admin wants that to happen it’s easy to do.
Last I checked, even Reddit allows signups without an email address…
Stuff like this is going to kill the momentum of the fediverse. I’m a reddit refugee, my main account started on vlemmy.net (because it had a policy to not defederate from anything), and when that went poof, I moved to feddit.nl (because it has a policy to not defederate from anything). I believe it is MY prerogative, and no one else’s, to decide what I am or am not allowed to see. I curate my own feed by blocking or subscribing to instances I don’t or do want to see, respectively.
Regardless of any of this, however, I am now unable to view any content on .world without this account, due to actions entirely outside of my control. Since hosting my own instance is out of the question for me, my options are: find a third instance with a no-defederation policy that hasn’t been defederated itself from major instances, have multiple accounts and browse each instance individually, stop browsing altogether, or go back to reddit. As distasteful as the last option is, it’s tempting. I know the impulse will be to tell me “good riddance”, but I am posting this because I know there are others like me that are tired of instance hopping and trying to find somewhere that doesn’t try to police our browsing and also isn’t defederated from major instances.
For the record, I don’t want a no-defederation instance because I want to browse Nazi or pedo instances. I want a no-defederation instance because I have a principled objection to others telling me what I can or cannot view.
Sucks to see my home countries instance isn’t being moderated properly
Can’t wait for GEKOLONISEERD
GEKOLONISEERD.world
Please use “I N G E P O L D E R D” as its not quite as racist as “GEKOLONISEERD”.
For the people not in the know, the Dutch like to meme about the warcrimes in Indonesia and Africa and when they speak dutch in a comment section they make joking gestures to the time of colonization, like its a good thing, or something to take lightly. Quite frankly colonizing isnt funny in any shape or form and I, another dutch person feel ashamed and sorry for whoever took offense to the comment above. Not of all of us are like this.
Our history books mostly skip over the warcrimes done in indonesia and how bad the slave trade is, but its luckily improving.
For the guy above me;
Warcrimes of the Dutch in Indonesia:
https://youtu.be/8T3JZljI7A4?si=XvLOhL-m2VHkxByN
How the dutch turned south africa into a racist country:
https://youtu.be/Mi93LjuQbMM?si=1La19-xJ-JsBXLpZ
Over half a million people got ripped away from their families and traded by the Dutch in the 1800s;
https://www.statista.com/chart/22057/countries-most-active-trans-atlantic-slave-trade/
This is why I think it shouldnt be taken lightly. Its like a german joking about the time their ancestors murdered millions of jews and bringing it up whenever they see another German in a comment thread.
