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Trackers like Lemmyverse.net and Fediverse Explorer are incentivizing instance owners to inflate numbers with bots (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/358415

The vast majority of the instances in that screenshot have known jumps from 1~50 users to tens of thousands in less than a day. These instances also happen to not require a captcha on sign up.

It may very well be that instance owners are innocent as some have really been victims of bot attacks and simply forgot that you could enable captchas for sign-ups, nevertheless I think instance directories like Lemmyverse.net should start disincentivizing anyone from inflating his own instance with tens of thousands of bots in order to get on top of those "leaderboards".

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What incentive is there to have a ton of users registered to a particular instance?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The larger instances get featured on websites like lemmyverse.net and get more visibility. The owners of those instances can then get free traffic which they can redirect wherever they want.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Redirect to what tho? They gonna redirect me to Amazon? Pornhub? Malware?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Crypto scams, viagra or literally anything they want to advertise. Same reason blog comments spamming is a thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And 99% of those people are just gonna click that X and stop going to the site that redirects them. If it's not a Lemmy instance they are getting to, then what would make them stick around?

The blame should be more on the sites like lemmyverse.net for not vetting the links they are advertising.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

then what would make them stick around?

The goal of spam has never been to have visitors who stick around

The blame should be more on the sites like lemmyverse.net for not vetting the links they are advertising.

Yes, and this is exactly the point of the thread.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Okay sorry, I misunderstood the post then. I thought you were blaming the instances that were inflating their numbers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I own lemmyverse.net and I disagree. More users = more load. Users can pick an instance they are happy with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If someone wants an audience, I imagine spamming activity in your own communities would be more effective. If most people subscribe to the largest community in the topic they are interested in that could give you a lot of new eyes across all the instances.