So, lemmy seems to be flooded with spam bot accounts at the moment. Look through the table of servers on fedidb (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy) and notice how there are these huge instances without any active users (MAU).

Also notice how startrek.website has 9000 users for 276 active users this month.

From memory, when I signed up, there was no email requirement or captcha or anything.

Admins … maybe you want to tighten things up?

  • @StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
    10•2 years ago

    Just a member here, but given the recent rapid growth in the past 10 days as folks migrate over from a 600k subreddit (myself included), and the normal 90% lurker rule-of-thumb, this is actually a fairly reasonable monthly active user ratio.

    I genuinely understand the concern to avoid bots and trolls, but have admins in other instances actually documented a significant number of bots originating through this instance?

    • Value SubtractedM
      10•2 years ago

      There is some Verified Suspicious ActivityTM. We’re hoping to get it sorted out soon.

      • @StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
        8•2 years ago

        Thank you for your care of this place, and due diligence.

        With the instance growing so quickly, aggregate stats can flag but are vulnerable to aliasing.

        I very much appreciate the path to lemmy membership that you offered to us in the final hours before many of the subreddits went dark.

        The there is a ratcheting chain of new members to this and other Lemmy instances is still happening. I have the sense that there’s still a lot of private chat on Reddit as folks looking for a new place to be are enquiring of those who’ve already migrated.

        All to say, when it is sorted, it would be great to have an updated sticky with the details so those of us here can support the less tech adept among us make the transition.

    • @maegul@startrek.websiteOP
      3•2 years ago

      You have a point, especially as lemmy defines “active” as a user that has at least posted once within the relevant time period. So yes, lurkers definitely wouldn’t count toward the active user count (mastodon and the like use different metrics AFAIU).

      • @StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
        3•2 years ago

        ‘Posted’ is even a higher bar than ‘commented’, a 10th of a 10th.

        Not to say that there isn’t a need to filter out sockpuppets and bots at signup, but rather that the inference being made from the stats was not obvious.