Gotta do what you need to.
Hopefully kbin development can fix their moderation tools and eventually be reconnected!
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Yep, this feels like a temporary change until things get fixed.
Hi - mod of a small kbin.social mag here - @13thFloor - and a lemmy.world user. Is there anything we can do on our end to help mitigate the problem, or make it easier to flag spam that makes its way to Lemmy? I'd be more than willing to include a note to the lemmy.world admins if a spam post is deleted off of a mag I mod here- just need to know who to contact.
Side notes - Ernest (kbin.social admin) just responded on the spam issue here. The community has been actively working over here to flag and remove spam accounts (I've personally flagged close to 100). According to the most recent news from @ernest earlier last week, we've got a software update incoming, and a magazine cleanup in the works that will hopefully make an impact.
Heya! Not really. It's just a few communities that are being spammed really hard, so only those are removed. I think the work you're doing by flagging these spam accounts is already very helpful to Ernest and his team. He himself was kind enough to join us in this thread and give us some more information. For now all we can do is wait..
Thank you for your patience and understanding :)
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How is it so easy to create spam accounts with Kbin? What kind of account validation is implemented? Email? Enforced 2FA? Just a curious dev who hasn't started their own lemmy or Kbin instance yet.
There's just email verification at the moment. 2FA is on the roadmap, but I'm not sure if it will be in the next release. Here's the kbin codeberg site for more detail.
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When I signed up it was email + captcha. I cannot find even an option for voluntary 2FA.
I don't know the details but people who wanted to work on Kbin and looked into it say that it is a much less developed platform overall (i.e. not fully a beta and more like still in alpha, e.g. lacking a true API), but it does offer benefits socially (to further disconnect from the originators of the Lemmy software) and to have another codebase that offers federation.
Lemmy is also more of alpha-quality software. The admin tools are pretty much non-existent. On my own instance, I've had to go into the database to fix issues a lot using straight SQL, and I have like ten users on the platform. One of those issues caused my admin account to no longer being able to log in, another caused the whole instance to be down.
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Devs learning in real time why social media (especially decentralized) should be designed moderation first in design.
Seems like a very reasonable compromise to deal with the situation.
Thanks again for the transparency and keeping everyone in the loop.
Hopefully this is resolved quickly. We are stronger together.
Quick reminder that kbin was still fairly early in development when the reddit exodus began and sped things up much sooner than anticipated. A few teething issues are to be expected and Ernest, the dev, has been open and communicating about what's going on.
Quick reminder that kbin was still fairly early in development when the reddit exodus began and sped things up much sooner than anticipated. A few teething issues are to be expected and Ernest, the dev, has been open and communicating about whatβs going on.
Given that kbin is written in PHP, I honestly don't see much of a bright future for it. It's not like hobbyist developers line up to write PHP.
For me the tell was the lack of an API.
Modern PHP is pretty pleasant once you learn the syntax IMO. Itβs not 2005 any more
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The system is based on the bleeding edge of the PHP stack, using PHP 8.3x and Symfony 6 as the framework. There's plenty of devs out there, especially symfony ones. The main issues I've found is pulling in people who are interested in the ActivityPub side of the project.
I think a few more months and most of the user-facing UI/UX issues will be improved. The moderation side, along with quality of life admin tools are definitely lacking though.
Spam has consistently been the death of the open internet, even the big tech silos struggle with spam (Instagram for example -- despite having incredibly invasive techniques for identifying "genuine" users -- is STILL inundated with spam commenters). I think instances on the fediverse should reconsider their open registration policy, either totally close registrations when you reach an agreed upon critical mass of users, or adopt some form of invitation or application system for new users. I believe Mastodon supports both in the software.
I agree. A hard limit would be a good idea, it'd nip a lot of problems in the bud.
I'm as idealist as the next guy, but I was also a hellacious misfit once, so I know what it feels like to be a hate-fueled asshole. I really hope these Fediverse idealists have started to understand that assholes do exist, and they must take measures to defend themselves.
Combat is a part of life. Violence is an aspect of competitive biology. You're gonna have to deal with attacks here. Forever. Just get the fuck used to it, you're at war and will be until you die or leave this place. Largely due to politics and the way open communication has not just empowered good people to create good things, but has also empowered extremists and criminals too. And they exist and have goals too, in case any of you people fucking forgot.
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I also noticed there was a lot of spam from kbin regarding the online sales of pharmacy drugs that require prescriptions.
i mean theres so many kbin communities, which one???
Good transparency. Thank you for your work!
Thanks for not cutting us off. I sub and post to a lot of lemmy.world communities, some of them small, and wouldnβt want to have to stop contributing or make a new Lemmy account.
Understandable, have a nice day.
So that's why the modlogs were going ballistic. Oh, well, I hope things are fixed soon.
Thanks for not defederating us! -Kbin users
Ernest is working on a major update for Kbin but it might be still a couple weeks out.
We are well aware of what's going on with kbin and the development team. That's why we don't defederate because we have hope that they will fix things soon.
I apologize for causing you trouble. I'm trying to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, but apart from the usual spammers, there have also been organized campaigns where, for an hour on Sunday mornings, our instance was flooded with spam from hundreds of accounts. This, of course, is causing federation issues. I've changed my priorities regarding the roadmap, and additional tools will be released soon. I will also ensure additional moderation. I will also get in touch with admins from other instances - my absence was due to personal issues I mentioned recently. Thanks for your understanding, and best regards.
Hey Ernest,
Having dealt with spam waves ourselves we are certainly understanding of the situation! I read your status updates and what has been going on. That is also why we choose to close the problematic communities/magazines instead of defederating.
We really hope that you find the time and peace to resolve these things. There is no bad will here, we know that these things need time. If there is anything we can do to help feel free to reach out.
There's been a heap of development going on with kbin recently, with a release upcoming. Overall the development process has been a bit slow with Ernest (the guy who owns the project) having personal issues to resolve.
Definitely the moderation process needs to be improved so that we have better ways of addressing spam so it doesn't bother other instances.
Personally I'm of the opinion that we should be using a metric based system where we weigh in the users date or creation, overall interactivity, upvote / downvote ratio and other data to potentially flag spam users. But honestly fighting spam is really hard and all of that would have to be built (plus it's a public repo so bad actors could look for how this is pieced together and find new ways to get past)
Pretty unfortunate, but definitely better than defederating. I'm glad there can still be a link to some degree. Hopefully the moderation tools on both platforms improve soon. I appreciate the transparency and willingness to take on more work in order to maintain some link. I think it is important for the integrity of the fediverse. But also important to remember you all are doing this in your spare time.
Manager of Managers (MoM) will be required long-term it sounds like.. thanks for the good work all.
That makes sense, to be honest: add a layer of complexity in the software (such as federated instances), add a layer of management.
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I'm worried kbin development is stalling.
Keep fighting the good fight boys. It's only a matter of time until either of these websites surpass all the others. Is there a way I can donate?
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