kbin.social is being overrun with spammers. Can we disable registrations on this instance so they can’t keep creating new accounts? Every day I log on, I have to spend the first 20-30 minutes, reporting and blocking a bunch of new accounts.
Here are some that were just created today:
https://kbin.social/u/dfgdfgfdfgfdh
https://kbin.social/u/nyfejevy
https://kbin.social/u/vepotal774
https://kbin.social/u/ayman01
https://kbin.social/u/MariaesNichols
https://kbin.social/u/nidhiroute
https://kbin.social/u/dcesdff
https://kbin.social/u/mauntehilss
https://kbin.social/u/nidhirout
https://kbin.social/u/noraharris0
you know I think one of the smarter things facebook did was only allowing edu emails initially or google allowing current users to send invites.
Getting a free .edu account is trivial.
not for spammers. it was a nice first level filter till they had the resources to do more effective spam fighting (which they don’t do all that well)
No, it’s incredibly easy to get a .edu account.
Why don’t automated spam systems use them then? Its easy for an individual but its not super automately like google. At least at my alma matter its not.
I think you’re thinking 4 year college, not 2 years. It takes a lot of effort and money to apply to a 4 year school. It takes like 5 minutes to apply at your local community college online and get a .edu email address, and it’s free.
Using .edu as some sort of validation is a terrible idea because it’s something anyone can get with just a few minutes of work.
yeah thats for an an individual though. A robotic spam account that needs to make a thousand accounts automatically is not going to make one so easily. spam from individuals is much easier to deal with than machine spam.
It is stupid easy to get a free .edu account. It will not hamper spammers in the slightest. Even if they don’t want to make a few .edu accounts a day to do their spamming, they can just buy .edu accounts in bulk for about 10 cents per. No one is making thousands of kbin accounts to spam from, they make a handful a day, and use them till they get banned. Then they make a few more.
.edu accounts are a terrible way to try and prevent spam on kbin. There is literally an industry around generating fake .edu accounts. You can buy them in bulk. Some colleges receive 10’s of thousands of fake applications a month trying to get free .edu emails.
Facebook doing edu (initially only one school) only was to target a specific audience. Google followed the exclusivity model to gain hype and encourage word of mouth.
Neither did it for security reasons and both switched to open sign-ups once they reached a certain level of users.
I did not work at either at levels where I would know their reasons but whatever their reasons it did make growth in the start slow and steady.
Are you guys browsing by new? Do you moderate active communities? I’m just curious to understand why we seem to have such different experiences since I only encounter spam once or twice per week, but I definitely spend way too many hours scrolling.
yeah, I spend more time downvoting a blocking spammers than anything else
I spend a lot of time downvoting and reporting and I’ve volunteered to co-mod the worst offending subs that I’m subnscribed to. It’s not clear that any of this has any effect.
At this point, it feels like a bit of a lost cause.
What we really need is more people stepping up to moderate.
Are there some key magazines that need it? I will step up, if only to play whack a mole as I understand it.
https://kbin.social/m/opensource is plastered with spam, that would be a good one to moderate.
I spend more time blocking spammers than anything else. I’m sure it will improve once this issue gets more attention, but for now I think I’ll take a break from this site.
