this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Yeah, it was sad. One dude shouting to the void, basically. If that's all it takes to get an instance defederated, then the Fediverse is doomed to be small oases in an ocean of fear and hatred.
Tell me about it.
I don't think many people realize how little effort it would take me, to go and create a bot that just creates accounts on their instance, and then posts pro-trump things on other instances.
Let that run for, oh. a day or two, and I imagine that would be the end of federation for everyone.
I heard there is the option to enable captcha in the new 0.18 version, so there should be some protection soon.
edit: I had it the wrong way around and the removed captcha in 0.18 to reimplement it in a future version
100% NOT a bot here...
All captchas are easy to crack because there are services that employ workers to solve captchas. You can buy packages of solves and they guarantee a specific accuracy rate and solve time. You submit via an API and get a result back in a few seconds. The result may be a string or it may include a mapping of how the user interacted with the app (which your client then emulates to fool the captcha app that it is receiving human input).
It's just another electronic service provided by workers in low wage countries.
Captchas mitigate the issue slightly but they're not a magic solution to bots. They can be the difference between the instance gaining 1,000 bot accounts in a day instead of 10,000,000 however.
There was captchas in 0.17 too.
The problem is, captchas are not effective against bots. Its trivial to solve captchas with a bot... much quicker then we can solve them as humans.
I specifically choose instances based on their instance block list. If they block a lot of instances, I don't consider them. My ideal ones are the ones that are a bit free and yet are well connected, but sometimes well connected means "allied to the mass defederators" because people in general become super compliant in the face of isolation.
Sh.itjust.works may start banning communities to regain federation to Beehaw, and then Beehaw will ask that sh.itjust.works defederate a "wrong" instance or two, and by the time we know it, we'll all be banning the same instances, and we'll be a cute little echo chamber of "tolerance".
By that same measure, I usually avoid any instance of community that claims to be a "safe place". They're the likeliest to always be attacking others because that's how you stay safe, through unending violence.