Ask Lemmy

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.

Piefed already automatically has a toggle in its settings that can be activated. On piefed.social any account that self-deletes within 24 hours has all of its posts purged.

This is a lemmy problem.

They've also been throwing out rage bait in the "YSK" community. But yeah, I definitely agree it's a problem. So much so that I've added some built-in filters for that in Tesseract (client-side) to deal with it. I don't want to go into the technical details for fear of that jackass trying to counter them, but suffice it to say they're effective based on their current M.O.. I just need to finish this release and get it pushed out as it's been approaching vaporware status over the last 1-2 months.

I think Piefed is also taking action in either its UI or backend. I don't recall exactly what, but I saw something mentioned a week or two ago on another post complaining about that self-deleting spammer account.

I want the fediverse to be a place to communicate with real people in good faith

It's a popularity problem. Once a 'social network' gets big enough to spread information to a decent user base, it will be astroturfed. Building a better mousetrap and all that jazz, they will still get through, it doesn't matter the mitigation strategy you use. The best defense is to engage with others who are respectful, and not engage with those that are clearly rage baiting, circle jerking, promoting a narrative, etc. You will never not see it, the trick is to realize it doesn't matter at all. Just do you.

From the mod perspective I can certainly tell you it's an issue, however the risk of making a bad call on a new user exceeds the risk of letting one through, which will self delete anyways. It seems like an admin would need to solve it through any of a bunch of methods such as allowing posts to stay up past an account's deletion, restricting new users from posting, requiring a certain amount of community engagement first, figuring out their script to autoban, or some better solution I haven't thought of.

I've definitely noticed it, but I don't understand why.

I know karma farmers on Reddit would sell accounts or just try to create the appearance of legitimacy, but what does it accomplish to delete an account immediately after posting?

Not related to bots but more about account deletion, something I've been wishing for a long time is to make a separation between a user being able to delete their account if they fancy so and their content actually being removed. Content could just be anonymized or, at least, if the content is to actually be removed, a placeholder should be put in its place because when they delete their account not only do they delete their own posts but they also delete all comments made by other participants which is unfair and can also be a real loss as some comments are really interesting.

In-person verification with Guy Fawkes masks to preserve anonymity. Meet with a trusted mod/admin, show paper poster with handwritten username on it, mod reads and verify. You're confirmed human.

I know a lemmy.world mod that claims to live in my city, we can verify each other.

/okay just kidding, I'm too depressed and lazy to do this weird meetup thing.

Yeah, I've been banning them for bad faith engagement in my communities with the "Remove Content" toggle, and it's gotten to the point now where they are still creating accounts but not bothering to post in my communites, so that's good.

But the pattern of communities they post to with low/no/amenable moderation still lets them flood the channel.

Yeah it annoyed me when I noticed a couple of my comments disappeared after posting to those posts. I thought people were reporting and mods taking them down. I'd check the modlog and nothing. But, it is suspicious about this kind of behavior that's been happening and again, it's annoying. Why would anyone do that?

I think the next time we see posts like them, is to take their idea, re-word them and post them. At least that way, they'll remain up for people who want to contribute than wasting so much of everyone's time trying to participate.

I'm unreasonably annoyed by the ones that target the comicstrips community.

I have noticed the bots behaving differently. At first the posted a lot, for shorter amounts of time which got them found out quickly. Now they post once or twice a day for arround a week, then gone.

I' d like to know why the do it. What's the point? But those posts get a lot of engagement so I feel conflicted about it.