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sh.itjust.works announcement regarding the recent spam wave (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by kersploosh@sh.itjust.works to c/main@sh.itjust.works

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Hello everyone. In the interest of transparency, I want to fill you in on some recent admin activity here at sh.itjust.works.

The post shown in the attached image may look familiar. A large number of Misskey and Mastodon accounts started spamming similar posts yesterday. Some have spilled over into Lemmy because the posts mention specific communities by name. The spam wave is ongoing at the time that I am making this post.

sh.itjust.works has temporarily defederated from 34 Misskey and Mastodon instances to slow the flow of posts. However, the accounts are spread across so many instances that a block list can’t stop everything. Fortunately, our automod bot is doing a good job of catching additional posts as they appear. We should be able to refederate with the Misskey and Mastodon instances once the spam wave passes.

If you see a post that slipped by our automod, please report it so we can remove it.

If you are curious about the extent that this spam wave is affecting Lemmy, look at the modlog for the lemmy.world AutoMod bot. That instance is relying more on their automod to mitigate this spam wave than we are, and you can clearly see how much work their bot has been doing. As I type this post it has banned+removed well over 200 Misskey and Mastodon spam accounts in the past day.
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModBan&modId=2349429

I want to end with a shout out to all the users who identified and reported these posts, and all the proactive admins on other Lemmy instances who were quick to jump on this problem. Thank you, everyone, for making Lemmy better for the whole community!

That is all for now. Have a great day!

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[-] FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works 84 points 1 month ago

You guys must be doing a great job because this is the first I have seen of this!

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 month ago

Same; I had no idea and I've been on way too much today!

[-] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 month ago

Yeah, same. Haven't seen anything unusual in the communities I'm subscribed to or moderate. Admins seem to be doing a great job.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

I did notice some choppiness the past few days, so I wonder if this is the cause. I also haven't seen any spam, so good work admins!

[-] Contextual_Idiot@sh.itjust.works 56 points 1 month ago

Thanks for sharing this info with us, I for one appreciate the transparency. And thanks for the work the admins and mods put in to keep the spam at bay!

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

It really is Lemmy wide too

I saw them start up yesterday because I browse by new and all, and it was accounts from all types of random small instances that had been created in the last week. Then all started spamming at the same time.

What I dont understand is why someone would go they all that hassle to make 100s of accounts to all spam the same thing in a language that the vast majority of people who see it can't understand.

My only guess is it's like how people will reply with Chinese language charectors talking about things in China, thinking that the person they replied to is paid by the Chinese government and would get in trouble? It's the only time I see Chinese characters anyways.

Which never really made sense to me to begin with, but maybe someone is super deep into conspiracies and think by doing this all the Chinese actors won't be able to visit Lemmy?

Shits almost weird enough for me to translate it, but it's almost definitely going to be stupid bullshit so I haven't tried.

[-] Bronzie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Make that at least two of us.

This instance has been nothing but great since day one, from stability and transparency to level head mods and admins.
They deserve a bit of praise every once in a while.

Thanks for everything you do!

[-] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 49 points 1 month ago

In order:

Thank you for dealing with this.

Sorry you’re dealing with this.

[-] marduk 29 points 1 month ago

The text, for anyone who was curious like I was:

"Nice to meet you! I'm Suzuki Tetsuya, also known as the criminal Midokuri (Noname)! My hobby is sending nukes to various sites!"

[-] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 month ago

"My hobby is sending nukes to various sites!"

Hey, at least they're upfront about their antics.

[-] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 month ago

Relatedly, the linked GitHub has explicitly stated that they have nothing to do with any of this. Any further information from them would be on their (Japanese) mastodon server.