Lemmy.world is temporarily disabling open signups and moving to an application-required signup process, due to ongoing issues with malicious bot accounts.

We know this is a major step to take, but we believe that it’s the right one for both us and our community right now.

We’re working on a better long-term technical solution to these bots, but that will take time to create, test, and verify that it doesn’t cause any problems with federation and how our users use our site, and we’d rather make sure we get it right than have a site that’s broken.

We’re making this change on 28 Aug 2023, and don’t have a specific timeline for how long registrations will require an application, but we will post an update once our new anti-abuse measures are in place and working.

Take care, LW Team

  • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    42·
    10 months ago

    If you could give me the numbers of new accounts monthly I would look into CloudFlare. If I can afford it I will even pay for it.

  • teruma@lemmy.world
    20·
    10 months ago

    Will this make it easier to reopen federation with instances that were concerned about abuse of our open sign up policy? (or was the issue with beehaw resolved while I wasn’t looking?)

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      22·
      10 months ago

      If it’s temporary, likely not. The concern from most of the instances is that open subs mean literally anyone and anything can join, including bots which create account after account, just moving on when the original is banned. “We are closing open signups for now” is non committal, I’m betting the only way things get refederated is if World commits to this change for the long term.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    166·
    10 months ago

    Lemmy.world users were mostly upset 2 months ago about how other Lemmy servers had application based registration and that made it bad for widespread adoption.

    Incidents like this are part of why this is a bad idea. Hopefully mitigations to maliciously posted illegal content can be implemented to help Lemmy server admins big and small.

    • MBM@lemmings.world
      3·
      10 months ago

      People make these applications seem like a much bigger deal than they are. You don’t need to fill out an essay or anything, just a sentence or two to reassure the server owner that you’re a normal person. I just mentioned the old Lemmy account I was moving away from. I get that it’s a barrier for some though.

    • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      Considering the people that run Beehaw and their very fast defederation, I can’t imagine that their statement of wanting to refederate is anything other than a mere pleasantry. I doubt they really want to.

      And its fine, small communities are easier to manage. Its not like we are really missing out on much.

  • ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 months ago

    I guess I’m out of the loop, perhaps because I mostly browse communities I subscribed to, but…

    What happened? Lots of spammy bots signing up and spamming the site? I guess I didn’t notice where I was looking

    Also, what does application based sign up mean?

    Anyhow, Lemmy.World and Lemmy (in general) are growing nicely, so what’s needed to defend them is cool.

    Edit: fixed grammar

  • QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyz
    43·
    10 months ago

    IMO registration applications should have been in use right from the start. Less annoyances for admins and moderators.

    • Durotar@lemmy.ml
      3·
      10 months ago

      I wouldn’t put the manual review of thousands of application into the “less annoyances” box.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
      21·
      10 months ago

      Absolutely agreed. Similar to waiting periods for weapons purchases. It would be an effective filter for most people who get in the mood of making a troll post, they would get tired of it before they are approved, and many users with hateful names would be disallowed before they can start posting their hate.

      Example of hateful user

      @lgbtslayer@lemmy.world being the quintessential example that pushed Beehaw to defederate from LW, after that user posted anti-lgbt and misogynist stuff directly into Beehaw’s lgbtq+ community :::

  • lwadmin@lemmy.worldOPM
    11·
    9 months ago

    Update: we opened registrations again but temporary email addresses will still be banned.

  • Margot Robbie@lemm.ee
    46·
    10 months ago

    I’m actually advocating for something in between: having a open registration weekend on a set time every month, and registration applications the rest of the time.

    It solves both problem of having too many applications to deal with, and makes it a lot harder to create spam accounts since the time surface is reduced significantly.

      • Margot Robbie@lemm.ee
        2·
        10 months ago

        It’s easier to monitor for suspicious bit signup activities when you funnel them into a small time window with full attention during that time frame, instead of having to watch for them 24/7.