Whenever I see a run of spam posts on the fediverse, I’ve taken to looking at the usernames behind them. Nine times out of ten, they turn out to be from kbin instances. Here’s a recent example:
As I write this, that account shows 8 identical scam posts made within 7 minutes of each other, and nothing else. (I imagine they might be removed by the time you read this.) This is pretty common in my experience. These particular posts are all to kbin magazines, not lemmy communities, but I don’t remember whether that’s always the case.
Since the main kbin instance is not the only one broadcasting this stuff, I wonder if there’s something about the kbin software that makes it attractive to spammers. Does anyone know?
Edit: Some examples that are still cached on my instance:
https://lemmy.ca/u/[email protected]
https://lemmy.ca/u/[email protected]
https://lemmy.ca/u/[email protected]
https://lemmy.ca/u/[email protected]
https://lemmy.ca/u/[email protected]
https://lemmy.ca/u/[email protected]
https://lemmy.ca/u/[email protected]
that’s not entirely accurate.
the main problem for non-kbin users, as @[email protected] is using lemmy, is that kbin moderation actions, such as a moderator or admin removing spam will not federate to lemmy, as this is not implemented yet.
for a lemmy user, it appears that kbin doesn’t have any moderation at all, while spam is being removed for kbin(.social) users at least.
for this reason, several lemmy instances have already either defederated from kbin or removed kbin communities from their instance.