ActivityPub spam, onboarding
#ActivityPub #spam seems to be spreading nowadays. It isn't new, I moved away from my previous instance because it didn't have active mod volunteers.
#Snikket's idea of invites (#XMPP, not AP) seems like a good way to both control spam and onboard users. Mods can rate-limit account creation by judiciously creating invites. Users can generate 1 invite each, but can expect to also get banned if their invitee is a spammer. User-invited users would have a real account to bootstrap their connections.
ActivityPub spam, onboarding
@tetrislife Bad in practice. It's a sure way to sink a system, or turn it into something only practically available to a very small group of people. Vulnerable people might be particularly impacted, and it's not clear it's that effective against bad actors.
On more mainstream social media, I've even seen situations where a spammer hijacks someone else's account, and uses that to blast out floods of spam.
This also goes down a road I'm not really happy with where someone can be punished for something which someone else has done.
I honestly think any approach which tries to be "perfect" is probably far worse than the problem it is trying to solve.
ActivityPub spam, onboarding
@tetrislife Custom challenges might be a viable option for fighting spam.
There could be an option to create image puzzles with your own images at times when spammers are actively attacking a site. Or ask various questions (bots know the location of Paris though).
