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This spammer created multiple accounts on various Lemmy instances to post self advertisements. How do we combat this?
(media.kbin.social)
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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We have a bigger problem and it's popularity. Some instances will want to become as big as possible, for resell value.
So they will be encouraged to let the maximum of people registering a new account, including bots and spammers. Because they make the numbers and they start the snowball effect.
Didn't you all looked a the most populated instances/magazine when you registered magz, and you didn't care about the mags with zero activity? Well, you are encouraging the process in a way.
People will be reluctant to defederate or to ban popular magazines from other subs. So the float of spammers is unlikely to stop, because the person who makes the decision, the admin of the instance, will welcome them. And you won't ban the instance or the mag.
We have to become more like a club.
What’s the resell value of an instance?
About tree fiddy
I think the person you replied to is still stuck in the mindset of a siloed product, like reddit. Federation across instances means that there's little commercial value in any specific instance, in my view. If any specific instance was sold, and an attempt to monetize arose, I suspect people would simply abandon it for a new instance.
As an aside, lemmy/kbin need to implement a way to export/import follow lists.
And notably after moving instance they would still have the same access to all the same posts, comments and content.
On the export comment I agree too. Mastodon even lets you port your whole profile.
Other people's posts / content. What about the user's own content? Sure plenty of people don't care, but there is a working set of people who do produce content online, who care about the visibility and longevity of their output.
On Mastodon your followers stay with you if you move instances. I expect in time this will also be true here.
The value of an instance is a function of the number of his registered users.
Facebook bought Instagram for the price of ~$30 per user.
Yeah, sure for ad revenue.
Fediverse hasn't been monetized though, so there's no expected ad revenue. Patreons and other donations are not revenue.
You are basically just buying a bunch of hosting costs
Facebook bought the adoption, they bought the users.
You miss-represent the fediverse. Users aren't locked in. If someone buys one instance and you don't like it, you move. You still have all the same access, all the same content. An instance is only an access point, in many ways it is like an ISP, and people jump service providers all the time.
I can reply from here too, I don't need to use kbin.
Maybe you will but people in their majority won't do that. It's too much operations. Also they might not even be aware of the transfer. Plus if an instance offers good services there might be a technological price to pay for leaving, like leaving instagram. All instances are not equal, specially if there are more interfaces in preparation.
What services can they offer that aren't elsewhere? If it's unique, it won't actually be that effective. It can only be scoped to the instance.
Instagram isn't a comparison because it works entirely differently. By even saying "like Instagram" belies a lack of understanding of the topic.
It's true all instances are not equal. But your extension theory is not very strong. Nor is your instance-for-sale concept. They gain nothing from buying an instance. Users don't matter. They're just as reachable as another federated instance.
ok, cool.
remember how the lemmy.ml admin asked that people join other instances.
People want to be with people, if you don't get that then you don't get social networks.
The admin was trying to get people to understand how federation works though. Most of my interactions are on other instances. That you're even discussing another instance is the admin's whole point of how your perspective is outdated. You don't need to join populated instances. You could literally setup your own and still access other people. You can actually reach more people from an unknown instance than very large ones. Many instances ban large ones due to large ones having less moderation. If you wanted to be real insidious, a corp could create its own instance and just spread posts/upvotes/etc elsewhere on other instances. As long as they don't push too hard, it would go unnoticed.
You're entirely misunderstanding the lemmy.ml admin. Sure people might flock to large instances out of instinct, but it's misguided. The admin was trying to show that user count isn't the metric you want to look at for an instance.
So none of that applies to fedi then. Can’t buy up users because we’re federated and can’t buy up competition, because we’re a just fart in Sahara in comparison, both in numbers of people and in revenue dollars
And since there’s no privacy here he can datamine the shit out of content already
We have a login, that's all the requirement. We have adopted the platform and we are attracting more users by our numbers. It's all about adoption.
So was Instagram when it began.
If Ernest sold the platform tomorrow you wouldn't even notice it.
I’d just move to fedia.io and keep posting. My login isn’t worth very much
Buying one instance doesn't change anything though. Instagram was the whole kit and caboodle. It made a difference. Buying one instance, even a large won't doesn't give the same leverage. Plus, it doesn't destroy competition or anything. It's not equivalent.
Wait for more tools and instances, and the leaders will emerge.
And thinking any single instance can sway the entire fediverse, whether they're "leaders" or not is naive. You'd need to buy the top 100 instances at once to force any actual change in the fediverse and those top 100 were more than likely formed to avoid consolidation like that. You're worried about something that is so insanely difficult to happen and would have such a low ROI compared to Instagram and acquisitions like it. It's literally being shown that it's cheaper for a corporation to create its own. That's what Threads is.
Do you understand what siphoning business means? What business do you think Facebook is in? It wasn't users. It was ads.
There is only one metric for a social network, the number of users.
Youtube channel? subscribers
Twitch channel? subscribers
Twitter? Followers
That's about who gathers the most people, end of the line. If an instance managed to become a pole of gravity then it will be worth money.
And before you tell me that you can subscribe to a different instance, well, you can also subscribe to a different social network.
but fine, we disagree.
An instance isn't the social network though. The fediverse is. You're missing the whole point.
Well I can see one thing that kinda belies your point of view at present. Stability. Some people have presciently worried that their instance can implode, taking all content a user has made with it. Larger instances that are more stable, that have more backup infrastructure and ongoing commitment to operations, could out-compete smaller instances. Why this might arise, could be a historical accident of successful crowdfunding campaigns or something. I'm not sure how someone might do a better job of securing more server resources than others. Obviously a deep pocketed corporation who wants to influence the Fediverse, could do that.
But those are unrelated. We're talking about admins not acting in the best interest of the users so they can pump up numbers and sell their instances. You're talking about related concepts, but different motivations and intentions.
Whatever someone wants to pay for the kind of exposure this gives them.
It doesn't provide them any exposure though.
On the surface, you are correct. Think a little more insidiously and you'll start to see where the value comes in.
Let's say a person with ties to the Coca Cola corporation buys a popular instance. They are in control of that instance including where instance wide rules get enforced or not. It would be unwise to openly spout pro-Coca Cola messages and ban dissenters, so they'll be sneakier about it.
They'll create bot instances that create, upvote and boost posts and downvote dissenters, not enough to stick out, but enough to manipulate the feed algorithms early in the posts lifetime. And occasionally upvote and downvote some random posts to add noise to the user history. Otherwise, they let the instance run as it always has.
There will be accusations, but because it won't be provable or actionable outside of defederation or the banning of individual accounts. And other instances will hesitate to do the former because these accusations are not proven and the instance is still putting out content that their users are interacting with.
If the compromised instance admin needs to put out a fig leaf or two, they can ban the bot accounts and silently create more later.
You can do this without owning the instance though?
You can, but owning the instance removes a lot of complications and people who can interfere. Who's gonna remove your bots from the instance once reported? You?
Owning the instance means you set the rules, both written and unwritten, and you're the one who can selectively enforce them.
You may still need to play politics with other instances but that's nothing a policy of plausible deniability wont see you through
If you're doing it enough that others interfere? You're going to lose all value in your instance as users leave and go elsewhere. You just wasted money on something you could have accomplished for a lot less, (and at least when that fails, you can do it again elsewhere).
You're better off just creating your own instance and posting elsewhere and changing your domain when defederated too much. Much cheaper, more effective, and much more reach.
Edit: I'm really disliking that all these conspiracy theories are forcing me to think of much less expensive ways for corporations to exploit the fediverse. That it hasn't happened is likely a sign the fediverse just isn't a big enough target as a whole or simply that they'd have no way to track the effectiveness.
Your closing suggestion doesn't actually affect the process. Admins still run the joint. The admin just needs to care. Admins can even make it invite only if they wanted. Do you have any source for this marketplace of instances?
So what will you do about an instance called "rofl.lol", which is huge, which has a lot of fans locally who want to keep interacting with it and which also allows spammers? Will you keep federating or will you defederate it?
If you don't defederate this will become and endless whack-a-mole of bans with a drop of quality.
I never talked about a marketplace of instances.
I used the term colloquially. I just mean any evidence of instances being sold or even being a driving force in creating one.
I don't understand your rebuttal to the other point though. How does being a "club" not actively have the same decision to make?
Admins can defederate it if they want.
You asking this makes me wonder if I even interpret what you're saying correctly now as your question doesn't fit anymore.
What do you mean by make it more like a club if not just setting up your instance as invite-only?
Defederate it if you want. My instance doesn't appear to federate with it (it doesn't show up in the directory at least).