Update: Pushing back against the wave of bot accounts on Lemmy ( sh.itjust.works )

This is an update to my previous post about suspicious inactive accounts on a handful of instances: (https://sh.itjust.works/post/998307).

I ended up messaging the admins at the 16 instances show in the attached image. I pointed out their wild user numbers, and referenced the lemmy.ninja post detailing how that instance scrubbed suspicious accounts from their user database.

6 admins responded. They had all noticed the odd accounts and either thought the numbers were wrong, or weren't sure how to purge the suspicious accounts without nuking their databases. In the end they managed to delete a combined total of about 338k dormant accounts from their instances. (One of the instances seems to have gone down since then.)

I never received a reply from the other 10 instance admins, though 8 of those 10 instances appear to be down (as of 27 July 2023). 2 instances are still up and unchanged.

Between the actively removed accounts and the downed instances, this represents a loss of 930,004 inactive Lemmy accounts!

You can see the drop in the graphs on The Federation. The total number of Lemmy accounts has been cut in half over the past 3 weeks, from a peak of 2.18M to today's 1.09M. The change is mostly from these 16 instances.

I have to admit, I did not expect such a large change when I started this! Hopefully this bodes well for Lemmy's future as a place where actual humans interact, rather than a cesspool of automated comments and upvote/downvote brigading.

That's all I have for now. Keep your stick on the ice; we're all in this together.

Napain ,

wow the text in the user graph is crazy

Varyk ,

Dang, good on you for following through and messaging the admins, and good on the admins who took action.

Thorny_Thicket ,

Wow lol that's a huge number of bots. Two questions come into mind though:

  1. What about bot accounts that are not inactive but instead are spamming for example?
  2. What about real people that just lurk?
kersploosh OP ,
@kersploosh@sh.itjust.works avatar

Per my original post from three weeks ago, I'm using a coarse method to identify (and try to draw the admins' attention to) a particular pool of accounts that were created in a specific week on a handful of instances. Actively spamming bot accounts, and bot accounts on other instances, won't be caught with my method. I'm not being thorough, just looking for low-hanging fruit.

It is possible that some legitimate users' lurking accounts got swept up and deleted, but I think that's very unlikely. If an instance suddenly goes from 3 users to 60,000 users in a week, then the growth abruptly stops and none of those new users show activity, that's suspicious. If there are real people in that wave of accounts then at least a few of them should be posting or commenting, and more people should continue opening accounts over time.

fist_of_fartitude ,
@fist_of_fartitude@sh.itjust.works avatar

If those accounts aren't doing anything detectable (spamming, etc), what's the problem with their existence?

kersploosh OP ,
@kersploosh@sh.itjust.works avatar

There's no problem with them at the moment. The concern is that they may be bot accounts that will be activated at some point in the future for malicious use: spamming, spewing politically charged garbage, mass upvoting/downvoting of certain content, etc.

Waluigi ,
@Waluigi@sh.itjust.works avatar

Oh damn, I normally lurk w this account because I have some issues with some posts and comments not showing when they're from different instances (yes I've set my language to undetermined too). I have my main on feddit.de but I only see a fraction of the comments when I look at the same post on that account. Mainly the comments from the users of other instances than feddit.de are hidden. Doesn't seem to be a federation issue (I think?) because I can find the communities and they should be federated. Maybe it's a Jerboa issue idk.

KyRoLen ,

My man is the bot wrangler. Wrangler of bots. One who gets bots wrangled.

miked ,

Keep your stick on the ice

You sound Canadian.

kersploosh OP ,
@kersploosh@sh.itjust.works avatar

American, but it's a line from a Canadian TV show that leaked across the border.

Hextic ,

And remember: if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

FracturedEel ,

My buddy got to meet them once with some crazy shit he made out of duct tape. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was though

girlfreddy ,
@girlfreddy@sh.itjust.works avatar

Red Green forevah!!!

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I've simultaneously watched too much and not enough Red Green. I grew up near the Canadian border and had neighbors like Red Green.

KyRoLen ,

The best nationality on the north west hemisphere fr

figaro ,

This dude is personally going on a robot extermination rampage. Thanks yo!

Eezyville ,
@Eezyville@sh.itjust.works avatar

My man saw Terminator

TheTaj ,

Does this mean if I spend 6 months as a lemmy lurker you will nuke my account?

kersploosh OP ,
@kersploosh@sh.itjust.works avatar

If you created your account on these specific instances during a particular week in June 2023, and the instance admin decides your account looks suspicious, then you might get nuked. Otherwise, no worries. I'm not campaigning to remove all lurkers, or even trying to be thorough about removing possible bot accounts. I'm going after low-hanging fruit: a particular pool of suspicious-looking accounts on a handful of instances.

figaro ,

Don't listen to him, he's just going around blasting anything that breathes too slow 😂

Veteraharv ,

"Pew, pew, pew!" lol

can ,

That's awesome. Keep up the good work!

Vertelleus ,
@Vertelleus@sh.itjust.works avatar

Keep it up! You guys don't get enough credit. Thanks for the update.

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