I see the scammers and bots are here as well.

Just got 'followed' by an account with an x-rated bio.

unfollowed (I think that's the mastodon term) of course.

Ugg....

@unbalancedChaos They are everywhere. If their instance (server) is full of this stuff, you can just block their whole server.

If you see a spammer on here (qoto.org), please report it. We try to get rid of them as soon as we spot them.

@trinsec
thanks, I've just got another one:

@ tiochrisoron@mastodon.top

the first one was from mastadon.top as well. Is this a known problematic instance?

thanks again.

@unbalancedChaos If the spammers are from other servers (so not from here) it's not much we can do about. You can try checking that server's rules and see if this is allowed. If not, you can try reporting them to their admin so they can take action.

If I visit mastodon.top, they seem to be a French instance, and their local timeline seems normal enough. I don't know French, but pulling their server rules through a translator shows me that they don't allow spammers, and bots are allowed max 1 toot per hour. So I guess you could try reporting them to their admin.

At the problematic user's toot or profile page, you can click on the triple dots icon to find the report feature. Be sure to include their admin in the report.

We at qoto.org can't do much about other server's users. Thankfully everybody got blocking/muting tools at their disposal and if a server as a whole is really that troublesome, you can block the whole server. :)

@trinsec

I am trying to find out how to block the domain, but like I noted previously the person running that instance looks to have disabled the entire three dot menu, even on the admin's page itself.

All the documentation states that I need to use the three dot menu on the offending instance in order to access the block domain function. Without that menu being activated, is there another way?

thanks again.

@unbalancedChaos You'd have to visit those offending users' profile pages from within qoto's interface, not on their own website.

So in the search bar above, type the userhandle of one of those offending users and then click on them in the search results to get to their profile page within qoto's interface.

From there on those 3-dot-menus are available and you can take action from within your Qoto environment.

@trinsec

thanks, searching for that handle from here did the trick, the three dot menu was available and I selected to block the entire domain.

I hope that's the last I see of these spam followers. At least from that server.

@unbalancedChaos Excellent. You might want to check @freemo 's first pinned toot for information about the Fediblock and how to apply it if you are wary of dodgy sites and want to pre-emptively take action right away. (Though mastodon.top wasn't one of those.)

@trinsec

if it becomes a regular thing I just might.

odd, just started today. every so many minutes a woman's name from mastadon.top would follow me with a suggestive profile pic, and an obfuscated link in the bio.

I got tired of having to remove them from following me just to have another semi-random account start following again.

@unbalancedChaos Then they might suffer a bit of a spam wave over there. We sometimes have days that a lot of spammers join and it isn't always easy to stay on top of it. Sometimes they're subtle, DMing people with suggestive stuff. Then we really are depending on reports in order to be able to take action.