Banning spam accounts on kbin.social is a cumbersome affair.

E.g., today @bayaz tried to ban several spam accounts. But that just did not quite work:

Instead of straight forward banning the accounts responsible for spam, those accs got unbanned.

How come?

If magazine owners ban a spam acc which prior went unreported, the ban button triggers an unban command.

To effectively ban accounts, they must be reported first. Approving the report will trigger a ban. I.e. magazine owners must report the account identified as spam to themselves to enforce a ban.

Therefore, pre-emptive banning of spam accounts does not work on kbin.social.

This is a serious problem which needs to be addressed asap.

  • insomniac_lemon@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    To be clear, you’re talking about /m/food on kbin.social? And particularly the threads side?
    I’m the mod for that community, and I’m not seeing any amazon links, gummies, etc

    Amazon links no, that was Books and the other user misspoke in one of their comments.

    The other stuff, you deleted some of it after I commented, some is still there. Screenshot attached, the last one is about food but is that user’s only post and looks awfully like a thinly-veiled advertisement.

    • bayaz@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      EDIT: I should have started with “thanks”, by the way. I appreciate the response.

      This is so weird. I don’t see any of those first four posts. I see the fifth (I’m actually the downvote), and I agree it’s sketchy, but I’m trying to get just the absolute worst out for now.

      Also, I have two posts you don’t have. I’m viewing this directly in Firefox – are you in an app of some kind?

      • insomniac_lemon@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        Also, I have two posts you don’t have. I’m viewing this directly in Firefox – are you in an app of some kind?

        That is weird, and nope also Firefox. I see what you do if I log out though. I checked, I don’t seem to have that user blocked, and the spam still there then gone on logout/private-window is something else entirely.

        EDIT: I don’t see those 2 posts because they are categorized as Macedonian. I have it set to English only. Though the posts look like they are in English.

        • shazbot@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          @bayaz @insomniac_lemon

          Yep, I meant to say /books when I was talking about Amazon links. Sorry.

          As for the posts on /food, I have totally vanilla settings (no language filtering or anything) and I saw all of the posts you both mentioned.

          Well, with the exception of the garbage posts, because in answer to lemon’s earlier question, those have long since been scrubbed on the filter side. But they did exist before I started filtering.

          All of that low hanging fruit kind of stuff has been banished, and I am mainly working on edge cases at this point.

        • bayaz@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          Ouch, what a bug. I knew some of the moderation wasn’t being federated, but I can’t imagine how a kbin user isn’t seeing the latest version.

          To be clear, you see the spam when logged in, then don’t see it logged out, then see it again when logged in again?

          I don’t see it regardless of whether I’m logged in or not. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to see it because I don’t see the posts in a quick look through the moderation log.

          Would you mind posting an issue about this? https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues Or, I can do it if you don’t feel like it and don’t mind me using your screenshots. If you do post it, just please emphasize that this makes it impossible for moderation to happen because the moderator literally cannot see the posts.

          Thanks again for trying things out and sharing your info!

          • insomniac_lemon@kbin.social
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            7 months ago

            @bayaz

            To be clear, you see the spam when logged in, then don’t see it logged out, then see it again when logged in again?

            Correct.

            Or, I can do it if you don’t feel like it and don’t mind me using your screenshots

            I haven’t used codeberg yet, so I’ll just say sure you can use my screenshots/words. It also directly affects you as a mod more as you’ve said, anyway.

            Using those usernames/profiles to look at the posts directly, I don’t suppose there is anything that might detail what is going on? There are ~500 open issues, maybe this is some existing database/caching issue possibly related to post/community IDs? Though I am still not sure why viewing would differ by user.

            • bayaz@kbin.social
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              7 months ago

              Using those usernames/profiles to look at the posts directly, I don’t suppose there is anything that might detail what is going on?

              Can you get me the full usernames including domains (e.g., PellyNews@blah.blah)? More info couldn’t hurt when compiling the issue report.

              The only thing I can think of is that maybe you are somehow “subscribed” to other domains because you follow some magazine/community there, and I am not, so the posts don’t show up for me. That doesn’t really make sense, but neither does anything else.

              I did do a little searching for terms like “delete”, “cache”, and even “different”, and didn’t see this exact issue anywhere. The closest I found was this: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/875 . It doesn’t seem like a federation issue, though, since we are on the same instance. But, if you wanted to experiment further, you could try either downvoting or commenting on the spam to see whether that makes it visible to me.

              • insomniac_lemon@kbin.social
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                7 months ago

                Can you get me the full usernames including domains

                They are kbin accounts, so typing them out should work as expected.

                you could try either downvoting or commenting on the spam to see whether that makes it visible to me.

                One of them had 2 downvotes already, but done and done

                • bayaz@kbin.social
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                  7 months ago

                  Okay, thanks for your patience. I think we’ve hit the limit of what we can do at this point.

                  Nothing changed with your downvotes or comments. Going through kbin.social/u/{user}, I was able to view and delete PellyNews’s threads. I am unable to do anything with the other two users. Even though I can see they exist, the relevant threads do not show up for me under their profiles.

                  I’ll file the issue and keep just deleting what I can until things are sorted out on the backend. Thanks again for your help on this.

                  • insomniac_lemon@kbin.social
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                    7 months ago

                    I was able to view and delete PellyNews’s threads
                    I’ll file the issue and keep just deleting what I can until things are sorted out on the backend

                    I still see them, eg https://kbin.social/m/food/t/982256 or https://kbin.social/m/food/t/982254
                    Also, here’s another thread from a different user: https://kbin.social/m/food/t/982032
                    EDIT: Though perhaps it makes more sense to not remove all of the ghostly posts, to make sure the root cause can hopefully be fixed

                    Looking at the modlog, the ones you removed were posts (microblogs). Relevant to the issue?

                    I also see the modlog showing the unban command, much like mentioned in the thread description here.