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Fedi admins, please switch off instant signups! 🙏

You can do this at Preferences > Administration > Server Settings > Registrations > Who Can Sign Up, change to "approval required for signup", tick box marked "require a reason", save changes.

If you allow instant signups, you are opening your server to spammers, causing headaches for hundreds of other servers who all have to block your spammers. The latest wave of spam is *all* on servers that have instant signups!

#FediAdmin #MastoAdmin

#mastoadmin #fediadmin
This entry was edited (4 hours ago)

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in reply to Grow Your Own Services 🌱

Grow Your Own Services 🌱
Grow Your Own Services 🌱
• •

p.s. If you don't do this, people may end up blocking your server entirely just to stop the spam.

It's really not much work to approve signups. It's a lot less work than dealing with spammers on your server and the staining of your server's reputation.

in reply to Grow Your Own Services 🌱

D3
D3
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if you imply people should block open registration servers, I'd say this is bordering on fud. Closed registration is a significant hurdle for some folks and a lot of serverteams are doing gods work to monitor signups closely to be able to keep their registration open. Please don't imply otherwise.
in reply to D3

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •
I mean they're clearly not - I've submitted reports of 11 spammer accounts across eight instances in the past few hours this morning, each one of those accounts has spammed *at least* 20 users (20 is the maximum number of posts we can check to report as 'evidence') - if a user on your instance is able to get THAT far with spamming, it's already too far and you are not able to effectively moderate open signups.
This entry was edited (3 hours ago)
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •

@dnddeutsch Meanwhile, moderators on other instances are getting bombarded with reports of the source instance's spam problem and we're having to deal with it to protect OUR community from spam because THOSE instances are not doing a good enough job.

All our mods - most mods of instances across the fediverse - are unpaid and voluntary. It's Saturday morning, I'm not getting paid to sit in front of the report queue sniping spammers for the past four hours because another instance -

@D3
in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
• •

@dnddeutsch - cares more about increasing their number count than providing a safe space for not just *their* community, but all the other communities connected to them.

The server teams 'doing gods work' are the ones who've responsibly turned off open sign ups and are still having to moderate spam from other instances who haven't.

@D3
in reply to D3

Grow Your Own Services 🌱
Grow Your Own Services 🌱
• •

@dnddeutsch

I'm not saying they should, I'm saying they will.

If someone's server is overrun by hundreds of spams from an ever-changing set of spam accounts on a remote server, and the remote server isn't doing anything about it, what other options are left other than blocking the remote server?

@D3
in reply to Grow Your Own Services 🌱

D3
D3
• •
after the fact? Sure, I'm with you and do that myself (and always temporarily close our registration as soon as we're aware of a significant wave). The point is I see a disturbing lack of nuance, when it comes to asking to get rid of the option or even preventive blocking of servers that offer it. They're not all abandoned hellholes. On the contrary.
in reply to D3

El Duvelle
El Duvelle
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@dnddeutsch
Saying "people may end up blocking your server" (if you don't take care of spam) seems nuanced enough!
@D3
in reply to Tealk

Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator
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@Tealk That's one thing you're doing right, then - closing registrations when something happens, while other instances just blaze through with their fingers in their ears going 'lalalala can't hear all these reports we're getting lalalala'
@Tealk
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