Hardening DLN Matrix against spammers

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Welcoming thoughts on ways to harden DLN Matrix against spammers. Things aren’t terrible at the moment but I want DLN ahead of the curve or by the least ready to harden on a moment’s notice.

Please post any suggestions, #4 onwards were gratefully provide from DLN Matrix. I’m able to automate/complete all of these except the room shuffling portion of 1 and 2 which require additional time from staff. Their time is uber precious so bonus points for any suggestions that take zero of their time.

  1. Hard moat: DLN Matrix becomes invite only and new members need to join a “moat” room in order to complete a challenge to get an invite from a bot.

  2. Soft moat: Same as hard moat but DLN Matrix is unlisted instead of invite only.

  3. Differential mods: All regulars become moderators over new joinees and can ban/delete posts via a chat command.

  4. Challenge to “unsilence”: New joinees must complete a basic timed challenge and their posts are auto-deleted until the challenge is completed.

  5. Vote System: Some kind of weighted vote system for banning a user and deleting their recent posts.

  6. Forced wait: New joinees are told they can’t message for X amount of time, messages are auto-deleted until the time is up.

  7. Keyword Filtering: Ban/delete/kick on certain keywords, perhaps in association with other metrics such as time of joining, number of posts over X days, ect.

Potential bots:
T2bot (Bridges the telegram and Discord rooms)
Rose bot (Telegram)

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I lean towards 6. The bots I’ve seen just join-post-drop faster than anyone can report them. Forced wait might work for those.

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Yeah agreed and if there’s a technical question and urgent we should recommend discord forum or the forum here for more technical help not that Matrix isn’t good for that but sometimes walls of text it’s daunting to read on a phone lol

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I like 4. It’s probably rare that most people want to join and say something other than ‘hey everyone!’ quickly. If a real person needs something, they can complete the challenge, but spammers would likely just not be able to.

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5

I’d go with 4 too. My 2 cents.

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6

OK so option 1 and 6 will probably be the most effective. The rest seem fraught with potential problems, especially if you are not a user of DLN matrix every day (I know I am not).

As a mod of Reddit, spambots and scammers are rife and there are ways we deal with them. Yes, new accounts have to earn a little trust can karma before they can post stuff by both age of account (so less than x days) and karma level (< x karma). This is a first line of defence usually against automated accounts.

The second is a keyword filtering system. So a ban on the use of shortlinks is an easy win. Also there are list of crypto scam sites and the like which you can use. Sling in terms for:

"Syscoin", "Vechain", "Gladius", "Corion", "SunContract", "Bitquence", "ChexToken", "AirSwap", "NexusSocial", "Sphere Social", "LiveEdu", "Matryx", "MatryxAI", "Everex", "Agrello", "Hypernet", "Bancor", "thecryptoupdates", "Algorand", "BitFlyer", "bitpay", "sylo", "currency.com", "fortunejack", "Exmo", "lympo", "ultranet", "NewGenesis"

Keep the list updated and that will eliminate the majority of spam.

The third thing would be to employ a bot to help out. Something like Bucktrix, which is an extensible Matrix compatible bot can be configured to accept keyword inputs like other bots do. So if a user uses the command

/report @reallystupidusername it can flag that to a database and keep thresholds of how many reports are made and by which users (this prevents users from spamming the report function, which itself should be a kickable offence ) Then the action you use when a threshold is reached is up to you. Either mute them for further review or kick them for a period of time.

I am not really looking to take on any more full time mod duties myself, but I am happy to help out if you want some advice. I have been moderating stuff since Usenet was the way most people shared their ideas back in the day.

Good luck

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7

Really like this, will add.

Good option for deploying #5

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To clarify, I meant to say allow all messages by default and flag them silently if needed. Well, unless it’s super clear they’re gross violations of anything reasonable, then just remove/ban/burn everything.

PS. would be nice if I could edit my messages while they await approval.

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Well, as a genuine new member I think I have a few thoughts.

I’m an introvert. Social interaction is not something that comes super naturally to me and I’m typically a lurker. It took some convincing before I finally signed up. And then… I could only express myself as long as “Teh DLN Overlordz™” approved my messages. That was less than encouraging to say the least. As a result I’ve been not here for a week or two, maybe three.

If you want to combat spam, which is something I think you should do, you’re probably best off implementing some combination of options 5 (vote system) and 7 (keyword filtering).

  • For new users with a low number of posts you can (silently) flag their posts and review them: if unacceptable, remove the messages and have a chat with the persion, or simply just ban if it’s actual spam.
  • Flag certain keywords, maybe even with varying degrees of severity, and put them up for review.
  • For all other posts, we as a community can vote on posts we don’t want to see. Put them up for review, and give them the treatment they deserve.
    This could work for the forum, I don’t know Matrix well enough, but given the original post it shouldn’t be impossible.
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It was set up that way during a sustained troll campaign, it won’t affect you now as you have 3 approved posts. This is a problem though, thank you for bringing it up.

- Self-identifying DLN Overlord

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Follow up: DLN forum approved post count has been set to 0, it’ll be used adaptively when needed (meaning new users don’t need approval to post now).

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I didn’t mean to start calling people names. I hope you didn’t take it too personally. I’m sorry :slight_smile:

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lol, no i’m just playing around :stuck_out_tongue:

What you said is accurate, really good to get a true perspective or things can’t improve.

I really identify as a roomba.

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You do seem to spend a lot of your time cleaning up the crap left by other people, If it sounds like a Roomba and moves like a Roomba, and if you plug yourself in after a hard day of modding then I would say you are a Roomba

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I wanted to let this marinate a while…

I think there’s an intangible quality to someone being excited by the show, looking for the famed community and getting the best possible first impression.

By the time they’re on the forum or Matrix they’ve already jumped through a few hoops and adding another is just shaving off parts of that.

I’m a little worried about 6 because it’s makes the user get stuck in a way they can’t doing anything about. The timer would need to be VERY short. Like 10 seconds short.

4 is similar to 6 but gives them a quick way out of it (ex: What is 1 + 2 = ?). It also has the advantage of removing bots that join with the intention of spamming later.

Keyword filters couldn’t hurt although a lot of the bots i’ve seen actively avoid them and it’s behind the link they post. There’s also been some NSFW bots that just post images.

Vote systems take time and force multiple-users to participate. I’d probably lean toward differential mods so only 1 regular is needed to ban/unban a new user.

Thoughts:

Differential mods solve this with zero barriers to new users and they can also tackle trolls which none of these methods can.

A simple timed challenge (like: just say the word “DLN” ) with auto-deletion of posts would be a good 2nd line of defense plus it covers bots that join to post much later.

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