cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/87753
Checked the fediverse observer and I see a lot instances with barely any activity skyrocketing to the top of registered users. I can only surmise they're being flooded with spam accounts and haven't noticed.
Example: https://cubing.social/
How much should we worry about this? Should we be taking pre-emptive steps to defederate them to avoid those spam accounts being utilized against the threadiverse?
The spam problem is already on our doostep and we need to seriously start considering how we're going to handle it ASAP. We need to take knowledge from how email dealt with it and find ways to quickly distribute knowledge about spam instances.
I noticed that a bot had started rapidly creating accounts on my instance. None of them used a real email address though, and email verification is required. I've since started requiring an application though, anyway.
Edited to add: Fediverse observer reports that lem.monster has 306 users, but this is completely wrong. I wonder how they're getting these stats.