🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

In an attempt to reduce spam accounts I just increased our hCaptcha difficult to the max.. it was pretty low. Hopefully #QOTO will see less spam now.

Also witht he release we will be doing in the near future we have some better ideas for solving that.

@freeschool

Also measuring what blocks us in terms of count is **highly** discouraged as a measure. Because instances that dont block others will have high block counts from others as a consequence but since no outgoing blocks occur the ovberall footprint may be quite high.

More importantly though there was a large group of servers that spent some time (still do I think) trying to game the numbers to make certain servers look like they were highly blocked when in fact they were not.

What they did was create a server block count list, and the list was a gated community so just these collective of hostile instances were the ones curating the list, which meant those people creatin the list would leave off their own instances when they were blocked, while at the same time adding block counts to the servers they wanted to defame. To make matters worse though they started an intentional campaign where they split out servers with multiple people into very small one person servers, and then blocked instances they wanted to defame. So they were able to BS the block list because the list only counted the number of instances that blocked you and didnt account for how large those instances is. So one server would show with 300 blocks, all one-user instances, and another server would have just 1 block but form an instance with 10K users. So obviously it sent a very misleading picture.

@khird

@freeschool the spam issue is more recent. We tend to catch it within 12 hours of spam.. but in the past we used to catch it much quicker because @khird used to run certain scripts that I think we stopped doing (he may just not have the time anywmore).. I have been considering locking registration again to fix that.

As for other instances blocking us, some do, but overall our footprint (how many instances we can talk to) is quite high, and higher than most instances (in fact we used to be int he top 20, though i havent checked recently).

I often notice this because we have had a few people with a few hundred followers after a month leave because they noticed some other servers block us. Then i will follow their new account and notice even after a year their follower count isnt even half of what it was after a month at QOTO. Which happens almost all the time. This is a pretty strong indication that while blocking is legitimate, we have far bigger footprint here still than most servers.

@SunnyDays It really is, thanks.

@thor Ha that is the problem :)

One of my employees came to me to tell me how good of a job I have been doing as a boss (only 3 days in)... Feels really good!

@thor If your going to literally make something from scratch then yea, that takes some skill. But if you want to buy something you are just going to adjust (like hem the legs and arms) that takes much less skill.

@thor As a heavier guy I almost need to get something tailored or it wont remotely work.

That said on a budget you can tailor stuff yourself easily enough.

Well just finished up my second day with the new team... Really loving these guys. Its only 2 days in but some of the best people I've managed so far if these two days are any indication :)

@SolSoCoG They are so absurd that they have just become the runnign joke of the fedi at this point. Even moderate servers that do some reasonable level of blocking laugh at them.

@LouisIngenthron Correction, **all** problems eventually go away if you ignore them long enough. The only problem is they almost always will get much much worse before they go away :)

@bibliolater

The quality of any area ont he face of the planet can be measured by the density of books in that area, not just stores but the books themselves. This works both for cities and individual homes :)

@bookstodon

@Nazani

Actually if you use enough antibiotics it is verry effective at killing viruses. Afterall viruses cant propagate if the host is dead :)

@futurebird

@tripu

It would certainly be a loss to the community to lose you. That said, I do understand how daunting social media can be and how inhumane many can be.

@QOTO @fidel

@georgetakei Wanted to wish you a Happy New Years. All the best to you.