this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025

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178

What can we do about the increasing problem of these self-deleting bot accounts? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 hours ago by NOT_RICK@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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As some of you may be aware, over the past few weeks there have been an increasing number of what I suspect are bots which will share one or even a few posts, all relevant to the communities they are shared in, at which point the account self-deletes. I’m torn as the stories are relevant, but they give me the impression of a narrative attack. I’ve seen only one of these accounts actually comment before deletion, otherwise they post and immediately nuke the account.

I have tagged mods and admins but have not heard any recognition on the problem. It’s also notable that by my impression this issue is getting worse. I noticed yesterday that communities I subscribe to which previously have not had this problem are now starting to receive these kinds of posts.

I want the fediverse to be a place to communicate with real people in good faith; this manner of posting runs contrary to that. So that begs the questions, is this actually a problem, and if so, what can be done about it?

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[–] m_f@discuss.online 101 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

Lemmy just released 0.19.14, which addresses this somehow, but the announcement is vague:

https://join-lemmy.org/news/2025-12-08_-_Lemmy_Release_0.19.14

https://discuss.online/post/31855056

Recently some malicious users started to use an exploit where they would post rule violating content and then delete the account. This would prevent admins and mods from viewing the user profile to find other posts, and would also prevent federation of ban actions.

The new release fixes these problems. Thanks to @flamingos-cant for contributing to solve this.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 50 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Good to know.

I think this just fixes the bug where deleted accounts were invisible to admins. It's a start but doesn't fully address the problem. Still, having it federate the content removal is a step in the right direction.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 26 points 9 hours ago

It's a start but doesn't fully address the problem.

Eh, I'd say it addresses everything that matters.

The root of the problem was that deleting the account was an exploit to avoid limit admin research and further actions, and federation of content removal. That's the only reason they were bothering to do it. The fix allows admins to research properly, and for federation of removal actions.

It doesn't solve the root of the issue with bad actors, but that's a much larger issue well beyond the scope of a couple bug fixes.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 18 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

This seems to be dealing with the issue of finding them after the fact, rather than just automatically purging the posts. So it does help, but the best solution here is to just automate it.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

How do you automate removing rule-breaking posts?

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 24 points 8 hours ago

It's on Piefed. Piefed just automatically removes all posts by accounts less than 24 hours old that self-delete.

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 11 points 10 hours ago

That’s encouraging!

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

@flamingos@feddit.uk thank you always for making the fediverse a safer place!