• 6 Posts
  • 19 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 22nd, 2023
  • bayaz@kbin.socialOPtoFood@kbin.social•Meta post:
    1·
    6 months ago

    @Fiivemacs

    Uh… thanks, I guess. But, that doesn’t really have anything to do with what I posted as far as I can tell. My post was mainly about spam. I love the Fediverse as much as the next person, but spammers gonna spam, and we’ll have to fight them regardless of the platform.

  • bayaz@kbin.socialto/kbin meta@kbin.social•Banning spam accounts
    2·
    7 months ago

    @insomniac_lemon It ended up being super simple – my profile was hiding the 18+ posts by default. All I had to do was uncheck a box, and everything appeared again. Kind of a clever way by the spammers of getting around some moderation if it was intentional. It sounds like the kbin devs might consider changing the defaults on that for moderators to avoid this in the future.

  • bayaz@kbin.socialto/kbin meta@kbin.social•Banning spam accounts
    1·
    7 months ago

    Looking at the modlog, the ones you removed were posts (microblogs). Relevant to the issue?

    Nice catch!

    With your direct links, I was able to see those threads. I attempted to delete two of them, and the modlog shows that I was successful. I’ve left the third for now as evidence for any developers who care to look.

    Regarding “unban”, I’m hoping that’s just a bug in how things are printed. The ban does show up in the moderation log.

  • bayaz@kbin.socialto/kbin meta@kbin.social•Banning spam accounts
    1·
    7 months ago

    Okay, thanks for your patience. I think we’ve hit the limit of what we can do at this point.

    Nothing changed with your downvotes or comments. Going through kbin.social/u/{user}, I was able to view and delete PellyNews’s threads. I am unable to do anything with the other two users. Even though I can see they exist, the relevant threads do not show up for me under their profiles.

    I’ll file the issue and keep just deleting what I can until things are sorted out on the backend. Thanks again for your help on this.

  • bayaz@kbin.socialto/kbin meta@kbin.social•Banning spam accounts
    1·
    7 months ago

    Using those usernames/profiles to look at the posts directly, I don’t suppose there is anything that might detail what is going on?

    Can you get me the full usernames including domains (e.g., PellyNews@blah.blah)? More info couldn’t hurt when compiling the issue report.

    The only thing I can think of is that maybe you are somehow “subscribed” to other domains because you follow some magazine/community there, and I am not, so the posts don’t show up for me. That doesn’t really make sense, but neither does anything else.

    I did do a little searching for terms like “delete”, “cache”, and even “different”, and didn’t see this exact issue anywhere. The closest I found was this: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/875 . It doesn’t seem like a federation issue, though, since we are on the same instance. But, if you wanted to experiment further, you could try either downvoting or commenting on the spam to see whether that makes it visible to me.

  • bayaz@kbin.socialto/kbin meta@kbin.social•Banning spam accounts
    1·
    7 months ago

    Ouch, what a bug. I knew some of the moderation wasn’t being federated, but I can’t imagine how a kbin user isn’t seeing the latest version.

    To be clear, you see the spam when logged in, then don’t see it logged out, then see it again when logged in again?

    I don’t see it regardless of whether I’m logged in or not. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to see it because I don’t see the posts in a quick look through the moderation log.

    Would you mind posting an issue about this? https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues Or, I can do it if you don’t feel like it and don’t mind me using your screenshots. If you do post it, just please emphasize that this makes it impossible for moderation to happen because the moderator literally cannot see the posts.

    Thanks again for trying things out and sharing your info!

  • bayaz@kbin.socialto/kbin meta@kbin.social•Banning spam accounts
    2·
    7 months ago

    EDIT: I should have started with “thanks”, by the way. I appreciate the response.

    This is so weird. I don’t see any of those first four posts. I see the fifth (I’m actually the downvote), and I agree it’s sketchy, but I’m trying to get just the absolute worst out for now.

    Also, I have two posts you don’t have. I’m viewing this directly in Firefox – are you in an app of some kind?

  • bayaz@kbin.socialto/kbin meta@kbin.social•Banning spam accounts
    1·
    7 months ago

    @shazbot @insomniac_lemon To be clear, you’re talking about /m/food on kbin.social? And particularly the threads side?

    I’m the mod for that community, and I’m not seeing any amazon links, gummies, etc. I’m usually pretty good about deleting those within at most 24 hours of them being posted. But, if you’re still seeing them, either there’s a glitch or I’m doing something wrong.

    Right now, I’m seeing 51 threads total, and the newest one is a month old (tagliatelle link). Are you seeing something different?

    I agree with you about the questionable food blogs and probably-ai-generated content. I’ve been on the fence about whether to delete those, but I decided to let it slide and hope that upvotes/downvotes would take care of it. Also, I didn’t get any user reports about them, so that was another metric to consider. For now, I’m just doing the absolute minimum of deleting obvious drug spam and amazon links (or, at least, I thought I was). If you notice anything especially egregious (where on earth do you see this 18+ spam nonsense?!) and could take the time to report it, I would really appreciate it.

  • bayaz@kbin.socialto/kbin meta@kbin.social•Banning spam accounts
    2·
    7 months ago

    FYI, I tried the process you mentioned, I’m not sure it’s as simple as your post implies (if that process could be called “simple” anyway). I’ve tried a few different orders of “report, delete, ban”, and clicked the “ban” button in at least two spots (one that was directly in the feed and another that comes up under Reports in the magazine panel). No matter what I do, it always shows up as “unban” in the mod log. However, there is a list of bans under the magazine panel, and that does show the accounts as banned.

    So, I’m really not sure what is going on here. Maybe it’s just a problem with the log and not with the banning itself?

    Anyway, thanks again for pointing this out. Hopefully someone can figure out what is going on.

  • bayaz@kbin.socialtoFood@kbin.social•what’s up with the users posting Amazon links?
    1·
    1 year ago

    As far as I know, I’m the only mod at the moment. I think the kbin admin would be the only person you could go to if I’m not doing my job, but hopefully that won’t be necessary, because I’m trying to continue deleting the spam.

    Current situation:

    I check at least once a day (and usually more often) for spam, and I permaban the accounts and delete the posts. But, the spammers are just creating new accounts, so there are always posts that are up for a bit before I remove them

    Possible technical issues:

    1. You should not see any of the spam posts at the moment. From what I’m seeing, I’ve deleted them all. Maybe this is an issue with federation. How many spam links are you currently seeing?

    2. I have not seen any reports from any users so far. Again, perhaps a federation thing.

    Future:

    I’m happy to add another mod if someone wants to do it. Removing the posts every day is tedious. If someone knows a sensible way of automating the process so the posts are removed faster, all the better.

    If there are spam issues for users from other instances but not for kbin users, I can try posting on another meta-type magazine/community for advice. I don’t know enough to fix an issue like that at the moment.