According to Lemmy's documentation, "An active user is someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame."

Sources:

EDIT: check out this link for a list of lemmy apps: https://lemmy.world/post/465785

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[–] MicroWave 65 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Bots have inflated the total users count (around 2.4 million), but they aren't active (yet). So for now active users is a recommended way to measure the fediverse. But once bots start posting, we'll have to find another way to track real user activity.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is just really disappointing and gross. Is there any way to not have bots absolutely everywhere?

[–] MicroWave 33 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Yeah, it's absolutely disappointing and gross. Bots have been actively probing for obscure instances without registration validation and flocking to them. Good thing the top real lemmy instances (like lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.ca) have been much more vigilant about that.

[+] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] MicroWave 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What's your take on it?

[–] Candelestine 5 points 2 years ago

My (different person here) take is it's probing behavior. Who benefits? Anti-reddit-protest trolls want to see this fail, and some could have the resources. Savvy criminal organizations see potential profit. Major tech companies see at least a research opportunity at minimal expense. White hats want to find and raise awareness of vulnerabilities.

Only governments would really have no major motive beyond the usual surveillance of a social space. So I think the question should really be, who's not doing it? Because if people aren't wholesale fucking around yet, they'll start very soon. It's only the savvy or lucky that are aware of us still, but that will not be true for long. Snowball is rolling now, that's pretty plain to see.

I mean, we're just a big and growing pile of consumers. What else do you do with those?

[–] necrxfagivs 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Are those instances defederating from the bot-filled ones?

[–] MicroWave 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, those instances are defederating from the bot-filled ones, but new ones are still popping up (although seems to be slowing down a little for now).

[–] necrxfagivs 3 points 2 years ago

I hope there's some way to block that, bots are useful or funny sometimes (like the ones to download videos, reminders, etc). But I asume most of them have the sole purpose of advertising or brigading.

I can't wrap my head about Lemmy 0.18 dropping capchas.

[–] AbouBenAdhem 6 points 2 years ago

Which is a shame, because in theory it seems like creating a self-hosted instance for your personal account has a lot of advantages (not worrying about the host doing something screwy or abandoning the instance, having full control over who you federate with, being able to customize the interface, etc.)

But that may end up going the way of self-hosted email servers, where differentiating yourself from a spam server becomes impossible and everyone ends up on the equivalent of gmail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

If we have the ability to identify them or where they're coming from, could our various platforms just defederate or block the ones who aren't dealing with the bot problem down the line?

[+] [email protected] -18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I don't see how that could be done, the bot owners can always just spin up their own new instance where they control sign up requirements.

Other instances can then defederate from the spam instance but they can quickly spin up a new one.

Gonna be interesting to see how it's solved.

[–] Omgarm 1 points 2 years ago

This is going to be the real skynet fight.

[–] Drunemeton 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Require that membership in the Fediverse be approved?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

wait how did we conclude that the bots aren't active yet?

[–] MicroWave 10 points 2 years ago

Because people have been monitoring bot infected instances and have not seen them post or comment (yet).