Lemmy has multiplied it’s number of users (maybe more accurately accounts) in just few days. How much do you think is the percentage of bot accounts? Is Lemmy having problem with bot farming?
Lemmy has multiplied it’s number of users (maybe more accurately accounts) in just few days. How much do you think is the percentage of bot accounts? Is Lemmy having problem with bot farming?
good grief i hope not. Email & captcha are reasonable; a short form essay on why you should be graced with the ability to participate is super cringe.
It is too easy to fake e-mails. You can set up a catch-all e-mail domain and spam the registration like that. I am not a fan of giving my e-mail nor collecting other people’s e-mails.
My current message contains the following:
It is not about them writing an essay to be let in. It is a very effective strategy to weed out spam accounts being registered in masse. One step is to make sure that the user made a cohesive sentence that addressees the question, and the other step is to check whether there is a sudden spike of similar new applications. Even ignoring the actual text, it is useful to be able to monitor whether you getting rate-limited bursts of account creations, and having the ability to approve/deny allows you to respond with less effort than if they succeed at creating the accounts.
Sounds like it sorts out the right kind of people? I’m not aware of anyone actually asking you to write an essay, no one would do that. 2 short answer questions does not an essay make.
@funkyb @Very_Bad_Janet @1337tux those who aren’t willing to do so aren’t likely to be good fedizens willing to practice netiquette.
Yeah I was a bit weirded out by that, it’s like what, am I joining a cult? Anyway I actually signed up on a number of instances in search of one I like and only a couple were using an application. The rest were just captcha plus email.
I think they should come up with a better mechanism than an application. I understand the need to verify a signer is actually a human being, but an application is pretty off-putting. Problem is there’s bots that can get around captcha and email authentication, AI keeps getting smarter.