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]
Yes, there’s clearly a moderation problem, but it’s not just kbin.social.
To rephrase the question: why is it that practically all the insufficiently moderated sites are kbin instances?
An overwhelmed admin could partially explain why a lot of spam comes from a particular instance. But it wouldn’t explain why most of the small instances generating spam have chosen kbin instead of lemmy.