"We were unknowingly infected with a follow-bot who caused significant technical and financial problems on our instance. Other instances, while knowing, did not warn us about that, but just silently unfederated from us. And it was even more effort getting federation back than it was to fix the follow-bot problem.
This could happen to everyone! Any instance can be a victim!"
"Now think about how 4channers ... can ... cause [any] instance to be cut off from a significant chunk of fediverse, without its admin noticing? Do we want to help them dismantle the fediverse?
Warn other instances' admins about bad things going on, not just silently unfederate from them!"
(A thread about some problems my instance bumped into - thankfully mostly resolved now, but there are some lessons for all to learn from this: https://embracing.space/@admin/104626032660832446)
Conclusion on our federation problems, lessons for other instances (3/3)
Now think about how 4channers or other bad actors can create a similar bot on any instance with open registrations (or just having an user with a weak password), and in that way cause such an instance to be cut off from a significant chunk of fediverse, without its admin noticing? Do we want to help them dismantle the fediverse?
Warn other instances' admins about bad things going on, not just silently unfederate from them!
Conclusion on our federation problems, lessons for other instances (1/3)
All the previous post-mortem boils down to this: we were unknowingly infected with a follow-bot who caused significant technical and financial problems on our instances. Other instances, while knowing, did not warn us about that, but just silently unfederated from us. And it was even more effort getting federation back than it was to fix the follow-bot problem.
This could happen to everyone! Any instance can be a victim!
@admin @self
Hi! I've noticed that you have unfederated from my instance embracing.space. Unfortunately, I have no idea what went wrong (I never received any related moderation reports), and I think that our values align very much.
Could you please check if it is a mistake? Or if anything indeed went wrong with some users of my instance, I would greatly appreciate some feedback so that I can deal with that.
Thanks!
So toot.cat is nice and all, but I'm currently trying to build another community :)
Off to https://embracing.space/@penartur
And just in case anybody needs to set up their own Mastodon instance for cheap, I've published a detailed step-by-step instruction there: https://github.com/penartur/mastodon-vps-tutorial
3 of 5 stars to The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang https://www.goodreads.com/review/show?id=2500798694
3 of 5 stars to The Black Tides of Heaven by J.Y. Yang https://www.goodreads.com/review/show?id=2198073695
I strongly advise everybody to create their @MastodonProject@twitter.com account (mine is https://toot.cat/@penartur) and to configure crossposting from Twitter on https://moa.party
You don't have to actively use Mastodon, but at least you'll improve on the problem with network effect.
And what remains now is for @TweetItBot@twitter.com to add @MastodonProject@twitter.com support.
BTW, I am @penartur https://toot.cat/@penartur