this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Trackers like Lemmyverse.net and Fediverse Explorer are incentivizing instance owners to inflate numbers with bots (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/358415

The vast majority of the instances in that screenshot have known jumps from 1~50 users to tens of thousands in less than a day. These instances also happen to not require a captcha on sign up.

It may very well be that instance owners are innocent as some have really been victims of bot attacks and simply forgot that you could enable captchas for sign-ups, nevertheless I think instance directories like Lemmyverse.net should start disincentivizing anyone from inflating his own instance with tens of thousands of bots in order to get on top of those "leaderboards".

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[–] Izzy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What incentive is there to have a ton of users registered to a particular instance?

[–] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The larger instances get featured on websites like lemmyverse.net and get more visibility. The owners of those instances can then get free traffic which they can redirect wherever they want.

[–] haxasaur@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Redirect to what tho? They gonna redirect me to Amazon? Pornhub? Malware?

[–] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Crypto scams, viagra or literally anything they want to advertise. Same reason blog comments spamming is a thing.

[–] haxasaur@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And 99% of those people are just gonna click that X and stop going to the site that redirects them. If it's not a Lemmy instance they are getting to, then what would make them stick around?

The blame should be more on the sites like lemmyverse.net for not vetting the links they are advertising.

[–] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

then what would make them stick around?

The goal of spam has never been to have visitors who stick around

The blame should be more on the sites like lemmyverse.net for not vetting the links they are advertising.

Yes, and this is exactly the point of the thread.