2026-09-23 22:21 UTC
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
Don't allow registrations or restrict it to after invites from existing users only.
The scrapers are quite annoying, what kinda helps (in general, not sure about mastodon specifically) is putting dummy links there that the CSS hides and that scrapers will hit. Then once they connect to that endpoint block them as early in nftables as possible. I've a rule that when you connect to specific ports (or violate other conditions) just blackholes the traffic. And excessive caching.
Replies (1)
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@divVerent@social.vivaldi.net 2026-09-24 03:12
@agowa338@chaos.social @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social So how is a new user gonna get an invite if they are not already on another instance? That is the thing. If we close down all our instances so nobody new can join, Big Tech has won. So that has to be an ultima ratio, the most extreme measure that we hold in the back pocket but try to avoid. In fact, I would even put "must make a cryptocurrency payment to register" before that. Despite all the planet burning issues that has as well.