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Woha, this is unexpected: in a future update mastodon will automatically turn off open registration if no mod has logged in for a week or longer:

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/29318

This is great news, and should hopefully significantly cut down on abandoned servers being used to send spam!

(And this is in addition to also having open registrations off by default on new servers.)

Great news!

#mastoadmin #spam


:boost_love: Boost if you think groups like @NGIZero and others should band together and fund a hard fork of #Mastodon that prioritizes trust and safety, and the needs of #Fediverse admins to protect their users from abuse.

⭐ Favorite if you would support with a little money, too.

#MastoAdmin #FediAdmin #spam #ForkTogether


Please give us admins an alternative, then. No one likes captchas. Even among sighted people, they can be troublesome. We're fighting a war against spam bots though. #mastoadmin


Re last: Please please please, don't use #HCaptcha! We blind people call it HateCaptcha, and it's for a reason. Their accessibility so-called innovative technology is simply broken and doesn't work reliably. You can't imagine how much time I spent fighting with this so-called accessibility cookie. Please don't use it, for goodness sake. #MastoAdmin


The Mastodon development team currently suggest enabling #hCaptcha in order to combat the current spam wave in the fediverse.

However, hCaptcha discriminates genuine users with disabilities from accessing your instance. So if people and inclusion are important to you, please just don't. Consider closing your public registrations instead, for the time being.

Additional info is on the thread 🧵 #MastoAdmin


im getting really tired... -w-

summary of today:

someone on a Japanese hacker forum decided it was a good idea to spam the entire Fediverse because they wanted to cancel a minor that DDoSed a Discord bot which apparently made them lost millions (what?)

A Discord bot. I can't make this shit up man.

The real culprit seems to be someone who goes by mumei in the ctkpaarr.org forums, whose first post was literally a threat to ap12, that if they don't delete their "Kuroneko Server" Discord bot, they will spam every blog, forum and SNS and cancel him.

This shit is ridiculous.

The ap12 account from mastodon-japan was actually fake, and this dude impersonated a minor to get all of the Fediverse (us) to bully him.

The forum admins didn't even stop this. Why? lulz apparently. #fediblockmeta#fediadmins#fediadmin#mastoadmin#mastoadmins#spam#cybercrime#cybersec#infosec#drama#discord


Due to the numerous mass mention spam messages already this morning, #AllThingsTech has made the decision to domain block the following domains:

birdon.social
social.cutefunny.net
det.social
planetearth.social

Once we have confirmation that the spam problem has been taken care of, we will consider removing the block.

If there are any questions, please reach out to @cliffwade or @beardedtechguy and we'll be happy to answer any questions.

#MastoAdmin #MastoAdmin #FediAdmin#FediBlock


Looks like there is a wave of spam bots coming from friendsyu.me as I've been hit by about 10 different accounts so far.

I've reported them all and blocked them as well. I hope everyone else will do the same.

#MastoAdmin #Admin #MastodonAdmin #MastoAdmins #Spam


Question for Mastodon Admins: are you using the `REDIS_NAMESPACE` configuration variable?
If yes, can you reply and explain why you are using it?

We will need to drop support for it, as Sidekiq no longer supports it, and I want to be certain we understand every usage to prepare a migration guide.

#mastoadmin

  • No (88%, 63 votes)
  • Yes, with multiple Mastodon per Redis server (7%, 5 votes)
  • Yes, but only one Mastodon instance (4%, 3 votes)
71 voters. Poll end: 2 months ago


Oh, look at that.

I don't know who mentioned this the other day, but I'm happy to see this is actually a thing now.

When an admin tries to block another whole instance it gives a summary of how many connections will be severed, which is good because domain blocks are a nuclear option. In this case it was warranted though since that instance openly allowed harassment.

#mastoadmin


I recently discovered a feature for moderators where you can help with accessibility. When moderating a hashtag, you can change its display name to replace lower-case with upper-case letters. This will help both dyslexics and vision impaired people.

If you can afford an extra minute or two to fix these while moderating trends, it will make them easier to read for everybody, especially the really long tags in hashtag games.

#MastoAdmin #MastoMod #Inklusion #BarriereFreiheit #Accessibility #a11y


Mastodon 4.2.1 is here! 🥳 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.2.1

I have two fixes in there, including the #MastoAdmin retention dashboard not working for anyone who lives in the western hemisphere 🌐

I had another one that adds Elasticsearch storage size to the admin dashboard, that didn't make it in here, but it's on main so it'll make its way to you eventually. 🤷


Just a heads up that there will be update is coming to the Mastodon Auto-installer script in just a few days.

It'll be fully interactive, meaning no more code modifications in the script! 🎉 Simply respond to the server prompts during script execution.

And guess what's next? We're considering a GUI installation wizard! 🔮

Check it out here:
https://github.com/Honeytree-Technologies/Mastodon-Auto-Installer

Happy installing

#Mastodon #MastoAdmin #MastoAdmins #MastoDev 🐘✨


Good News #mastoadmins! 📣

Here is an automation script for #Mastodon 🐘 to simplify and facilitate the installation, configuration, & hardening of Mastodon on a new server.

Dive into the script at https://github.com/Honeytree-Technologies/Mastodon-Auto-Installer.

Tailor it to your needs. If you appreciate the effort, give it a star and spread the word!

Feedback and ideas are always welcome, so please reach out.

Wishing you smooth #mastodon deployments! 🛠️

#Mastoadmin #Mastodon #Automation #Orchestration


🚀 The Mastodon Auto-installer script has just been UPDATED! 🚀

Gone are the days of modifying code in the script. It's now fully interactive! 🎊 Just follow the server prompts during script execution, & you're all set.

PLUS, for an even smoother experience, we now have ONE-COMMAND installs! 🎉

But there's more... A GUI installation wizard might be on the horizon! Stay tuned. 🔮

Dive in & give it a try:
https://github.com/Honeytree-Technologies/Mastodon-Auto-Installer

Happy MastoAdmining!

#Mastodon #MastoAdmin #MastoAdmins #MastoDev


Apparently Mastodon is dropping support for StatsD I the process of moving to Rails 7, as seen in this PR on glitch-soc which brings in recent changes from mainline Mastodon. https://github.com/glitch-soc/mastodon/pull/2246

Anyone got infos on what we can use for instrumentation after that?
#MastoAdmin


oh, here's some JUICY rumored details about meta's plans for the fediverse

tl;dr "Meta will only federate with select larger instances from the beginning. There will be contracts which also provide for financial compensation for the instance owners."

can't entirely verify their validity but it's still worth posting just in case

#FediPact #barcelona #project92 #p92 #meta #facebook #fediverse #fediblockmeta #FediAdmin #MastoAdmin #threads


PSA: It looks like mastodon.social has implemented hCAPTCHA on their signups yesterday.

So, if you have limited / suspended mastodon.social because of the spam issue, you may wish to reconsider this.

This will also likely mean that spammers will move to different instances (already seeing them targeting mastodon.world).

You may wish to consider implementing hCAPTCHA yourself to protect your own instance, and here is the relevant PR:

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/25019

The reason I'm suggesting this, is because if you are a small/medium instance with open registrations, and spammers find and abuse your instance, I imagine that other instances will limit/suspend your instance without hesitation, given how willing some were to limit/suspend the much larger mastodon.social.

But do note this comment on the PR:

“To give some context to people seeing this: this is an emergency feature backport from Glitch SOC to help mitigating an ongoing spam wave, this feature may not make it in a next release, or with significative changes.”


#MastoAdmin #FediAdmin #fediblock


I disagree with the current CEO of Mastodon about his stance on mid-sized instances. We don't want to be run in isolation, we are part of the Fediverse. "Normal users just want the default", he can repeat that as many times as he wants, it doesn't make it true because of that.

Diversity is the DNA of the Fediverse and Mastodon is just one part of the whole. Thousands of people spend their time and money to make it successful. Anyone who dismisses that and single-handedly tries to market the Fediverse as a Mastodon brand and use "crowding out" techniques to prevent users from even being encouraged to choose an instance from a diversity will ultimately fail.

I am super disappointed with the direction Mastodon Corporation is taking. If there is not enough headwind here soon, then sooner or later it will lead to a schism.

#Mastodon #MastoAdmin #fediverse


One of the main challenges for new servers on here is discovering content to interact with.

Relays speed up the discovery process, and allow even a single user server to automatically see a large part of the Fediverse.

There's a new relay service by @astro­@c3d2.social called FediBuzz Relay:

➡️ https://relay.fedi.buzz

It allows servers to subscribe to custom relays based on tags or instances. (If you use this, can you let us know your experiences in the replies?)

#FediAdmin #MastoAdmin


We have reached 100 members on https://datasci.social! 🥳

Since opening registrations in Jan with 50 members we have doubled in size, following a nice pace of growth. We are now also steadily posting over 100 new posts/week.

With ample capacity to grow, we encourage everyone interested in #DataScience, #NetworkScience, #ComputationalSocialScience, and related fields to join us, or to spread the word about our place. #MastoAdmin

https://community.datasci.social/blog/2023-02-27/100-members/


Several Mastodon instances (including Newsie) have come under cyber-attack recently by state-level actors.

If you are the admin of a Mastodon Instance that overlaps arts, human rights, civil society, journalism, or democracy and would like FREE cyber security protection from Cloudflare as part of Project Galileo please reach out as Fourth Estate is a long-time Project Galileo partner

See: https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/

#mastoadmin #mastodon


It's trivial to determine the real IP of a Mastodon server behind Cloudflare. All it takes is one well-crafted request:

https://gist.github.com/cutiful/4f36da3ed37b24f9a7106064393f5e7f

I wonder how many instance admins using Cloudflare know about this? My hunch is most do not, because the primary justification I see for using Cloudflare here is DDoS protection.

Cloudflare won't help if the attacker knows your origin IP, and you can't hide that with Cloudflare alone, due to the nature of ActivityPub.

#MastoAdmin #InfoSec


The domain zwezo.o-k-i.net automatically creates mirroring #Mastodon #bot accounts upon any #Twitter handles put into their search field, without authorization by the original Twitter profile owners.

I doubt, this is #legal, under EU law at least & find it highly #disturbing, that anybody can create bot accounts referring to others, who are neither aware of this nor authorized this in person.

BIG FLAW!

Please boost, so mastoadmins can take action.

#mastoadmin #followerpower #boost
@rysiek


#mastoAdmin

https://jortage.com/ takes the "duplicate every image across every fedi server" model and deduplicates as possible at the media storage level

self-hosting an instance and outsourcing media storage has been for me a nice balance

i just upped my contribution a bit

thought you should all know about #jortage


Content warning: CSS Style For Identifying Undescribed Media


I wrote a bot that parses the current #Mastodon instances and assigns them to the respective #ASN (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASN).

Interesting is the concentration on a few top ASN. Here for example the 10 most frequent ASNs as Pie Chart (as of 11/25/2022).

❤️ Thanks to @TheKinrar for the nice API for receiving the current mastodon instances.

#networking #network #mastoadmin #mastoadmins #research #bot #instance


Concerning to see #MastoAdmin comments from instances with many tens of thousands of users admitting they still don't know a lot of very basic concepts around how the software works.

If you're going to let your instance become "too big to fail" (which you shouldn't) at the very least you owe it to the larger network to please get up to speed on all of the aspects of administering & moderating the software.

We are here and in https://matrix.to/#/#mastodon_admin:matrix.org for support.


Here's a #mastoadmin tip: Use your powers of custom CSS to make Mastodon more accessible. The default link highlight colour (both 3.x blue and 4.x purple) contrasts are not WCAG compliant.

Illustrated below – we also highlight mentions and hashtags like links to make them easier to see – I find the default of "usernames are not quite white, but it's hard to see the difference" pretty distracting.


I started a tool for Mastodon users who run their own small instances: https://github.com/Anthchirp/mastodon-defederate allows you to load server blocklists from larger instances so you don't have to do all the moderating yourself.

More features on this coming over the next week or so. My aim is to add importing/syncing with your personal instance, so you can keep your timeline free of nazis without lifting a finger.

#fediblock #mastodon #mastoadmin #mastoadmins


Can you believe it's been over a year since I posted to my blog? Me either!

Please enjoy this post on the recent weirder.earth issues, how we solved them, and how to solve them yourself if you're in a similar situation; I sincerely hope other Mastodon ops folk can get something useful out of it.

And please, if you have suggestions for improving these configs even further, let me know!

https://nora.codes/post/scaling-mastodon-in-the-face-of-an-exodus/

[ #mastoAdmin #fediAdmin #operations #mastoOps #sidekiq #rails #ruby ]


Content warning: FediBlock starter pack


This seems like an issue that should get a lot more reach than it has. #Accessibility #Mastodon #mastoadmin
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/9269
Please help!


#MastoAdmin #FediBlock

The admin of journa.host is publicly using and linking a scraping utility to track what instances have silenced or suspended his own.

This scraping utility is using code created by Kiwi Farms, and is hosted on the same domain as an instance he himself has suspended. So he'll suspend the instance because others have - but he's happy to use something they host.

In my opinion, this information has destroyed any good will he might have had left.


Yes, running single-user instances of Mastodon is resource-intensive.

I don't think hosting costs scale with followers though. My single-person instance with 1500 accounts has tripled its followers in a week and it's comfortably within the resources available to it with 25 €/month of expenses. Load has barely changed.
https://respublicae.eu/@praetor/109295906060181251

Moderation and other #MastoAdmin costs however scale with the number of eyeballs, I suppose.


that's the screen I (and probably every #mastoadmin) was checking regularly in the last few days 😁
Our instance is not that big, but seems to be integrated in the network, we hit 500k 1.5 weeks ago, steering towards 1M events/day.
It's really interesting when you're hosting the hardware yourself (especially as a hobby project) and can't easily scale up CPUs, but switching to nvme really payed off. We currently run 2 sidekiq processes at 10 treads each, with basically zero queue backlog.


It's fun to spin up a $5/mo cloud node and try to roll your own, but https://masto.host/ offers plans at the $6/mo price range that will let you focus on using your instance rather than setting it up :) #MastoAdmin