As someone on kbin.social, I'm not seeing it. I saw a comment in a similar thread saying that moderation done on Kbin doesn't federate to Lemmy instances, and I think that's the culprit here. @ernest (the Kbin dev) is working towards a full release, and I hope that it might fix this issue—or at the very least, that it's dealt with shortly after.
EDIT: Yeah, I looked at @science from lemmy.ml, and my God is it awful. This really needs to get fixed ASAP.
This week, I've been dealing with cleaning up instances from spam. Several hundred accounts were removed, along with several thousand posts - these were massive operations. It's possible that due to the volume of requests, other federated instances hit rate limits. I see that some of them are still in the queue with a "fail" status. I will gradually resend them after some time. Along with the update of kbin.social and the first release of kbin, new modeartion options will be available, including spam blocking (such as global blocking domains), a new reporting panel for moderators, and improved federation between instances. I will also address abandoned instances and ensure that each one has at least a few active moderators. I know how urgent this issue is, and it's my top priority. I just need a bit more time as Piotr and I are preparing for the update.
It looks like all the spam I've seen are from newly registered accounts. Perhaps this is something you've already considered, but would shutting off registration on kbin.social and pointing people to other instances until things are more manageable help?
Can you also add moderators to those magazines? I volunteered for the science mag, but have not gotten a reply. Active mods will help with your workload too.
For all the time you have to type excuses, you could be smashing the ban button, but you don’t. This does not look like a “top priority” from this end. Stop making excuses and just ban the spam accounts. If you have communities without moderation, then close them. You’re managing this very poorly.
Of course, I'm taking action, and on kbin.social, those posts have been removed, which you can verify. However, for some reason, it doesn't always federate with Lemmy. It used to work before, but practically after every Lemmy update, there's something to fix in the code, or it could be related to API limits because some requests receive a "fail" status in the queues. The same applies to spam from Lemmy instances - I had to manually clean up hundreds of posts from other instances because they didn't always send AP requests, which I verified in the logs.
Do you seriously believe that it's a matter of individual accounts, and banning a user solves the problem?
Am I taking crazy pills? Ban the user, or they’ll keep posting spam. Vet your applications like a valid instance instead of letting any spambot create an account.
You are not taking action if all you’re doing is removing posts. You are handling this in an entirely inadequate and incompetent way, and you’ve made kbin a blight on the fediverse. Get your shit together.
Do you seriously believe that it’s a matter of individual accounts, and banning a user solves the problem?
It’s certainly better than allowing these accounts to continue to post harmful spam. Then when people sign up, there should be some red flags in their application that you can watch for. It’s not like these spammers are highly intelligent. They’re pretty blatantly spam accounts, especially when they have literally just a number’s difference in their username.
By the end of September, kbin.social will receive an update that will address some of the issues. For now, I'm banning spam accounts, and registration is disabled. Additionally, external links are marked as "nofollow." I just want to emphasize that this is not solely a kbin issue - I had to manually remove spam posts from Lemmy instances as well because moderation didn't federate, which doesn't happen with, for example, Mastodon.
For now, the admin of your instance can choose to defederate or remove communities, as the admin of lemmy.world did. Once I've dealt with the update, I will reach out to other admins and discuss the possibility of restoring valuable posts.
The problem is that at this scale and with this infrastructure, hotfixes are no longer as straightforward as they used to be - when I could solve these kinds of issues in a matter of hours.
I understand this is a frustrating experience dealing with so much crud in your feed. Admins and mods for many instances of Lemmy and Kbin are trying to work with the tools available to stem this. Attack the problem, not the person. Bee nice.
Please don’t lash out at those trying to help you and the community. We certainly do appreciate your reports as well, hopefully we’ll find a solution that won’t require so much of your report efforts.
I'm glad that you're feeling somewhat better and are on the mend!
Bringing more people on board for moderation is definitely a good idea, as is delegating administration. I think it's clear to everyone who keeps up with all your updates that the coding/development is where your heart lies :) Absolutely prioritise these things; reddit's IPO is in a week and a half, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the fediverse, and /kbin, grow because of that.
I'm happy to put my name forward for helping out with moderation (as I'm sure plenty of other people will, too). You've made something special in /kbin, and helping keep it focused and spam-free through moderation feels like the least we could do to help out!
I have worked with loobkoob as a moderator on Reddit, discord, etc. and I just want to say they have the temperament and reliability anyone would want in a moderator.
I stumbled across this comment while browsing and felt the need to endorse haha
@ThatOneKirbyMain2568
given the sheer size of threads, most fedi platforms still lack well-developed moderation tools > this is a tough nut to crack, thus preemptive defederation is a must when it comes to threads
Kbin is still in pretty early development. I believe it's technically still in alpha. It'll take a while before we get some QoL updates as there's more imperative things that need to be fixed first.
The API should be coming out soon-ish, which will allow app developers to actually start making Kbin-compatible apps, so we should be seeing some more development in that area shortly.
I agree with @Drewski, defederation should be the last choice. Kbin does have an option where you can block whole domains, so if you'd prefer that, go here and click the block button: kbin.social/d/fanaticus.social
Indeed, and then there is a whole raft of searching, sorting and filtering options for Microblog posts (aka Toots) which kbin does, and which Lemmy can't even see.
There are mobile apps in development and the API is coming along.
Kbin is still just a prototype though, but it's moving along nicely.
My other feeling is that kbin is setting up to be like iCloud whereas lemmy is more akin to sftp.
I've no idea what that analogy even is, but I think the differences are mostly technical (PHP vs Rust) and UX.
Both implement AP a bit differently, but at the end of the day, they're still AP aggregators.
And that's ignoring the political issues around lemmy's codebase ofc.
Another option I would like to see is the outright deletion of some of the very specific and abandoned mags.
Looking at abandoned list link supplied by @ernest (cheers for that and for all the work you have put in) there are ~4,000 abandoned mags.
While many are in need of new mods, there are a lot that just need to be deleted. They can be recreated in the future if they need is there but I doubt a lot will be claimed.
Maybe in a couple of months that could be looked into.
If you find an abandoned magazine that you feel needs to be deleted, you have an option to request ownership and subsequently delete it. I requested ownership of one such magazine and I'm considering deleting it, myself. I may also consider doing this for some other magazines eventually as well to contribute how I can.
As a stop gap and when I have a few spare hours. I plan to request ownership for mags that have zero activity, and the current mod has been MIA for a few months.
Thanks for all your hard work, you have created an amazing community and risen to the many challenges that come from the kind of exponential growth this instance has seen.
Take care of yourself!
Thank you!
Building something this large completely as a volunteer service is commendable, honestly. Most people wouldn't think of taking up something like this.
This place is completely usable for me and bugs have become noticably less frequent. Most features I need are on here. You've done a good job, especially for so much of the work being done by a single person. I can only write a simple script of code, lol. In the future, just consider bringing in some people to help out on Kbin (especially with moderation).
If you need to take a break, delay some updates, or just step back, do so. Your personal matters need to be resolved first, and us random internet strangers can come later. You can stick to the deadline if you'd like, but I think it's more stress you don't need at the moment. It won't kill Kbin if some features took longer to come out.
Everything feels very fast! Now, only major issue to me is the broken federation. With some magazines I can see 2-3 posts er 10 (out of let's say 10), in other magazines with similar activity no new posts for the last few days
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