Post #4818383 · Elektrine

2026-09-23 12:25 UTC

We are aware of an ongoing wave of subscription spam throughout the fediverse. We are investigating avenues to mitigate this, but they will likely involve deep changes in the sign-up flow that may break sign-up from existing applications. In the meantime, you can find helpful resources at https://about.iftas.org/2026/09/11/boom-protocol-spam/ #MastoAdmin

Replies (4)

@samir@m.fedica.com 2026-09-23 14:37

@MastodonEngineering@mastodon.social Here are some ideas: 1. Account creation should only be done by the instance not apps 2. Accounts cannot be created without confirming email first 3. Emails that are not on popular services (e.g. gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc) should prompt a difficult captcha to solve even before verification is sent

Open ##4819631
@m@lgbtqia.space 2026-09-23 12:36

@MastodonEngineering@mastodon.social Please for the love of God put the captcha before the first email is send. And please also make it configurable to put a manual approval before the fist email is send, since captchas are circumvented today for fractions of a cent. It would be great if the signup process generated a random verification code that users must write on paper and photograph. This would allow us to verify that accounts are not created by AIs, residential proxies, or malicious bots in general.

Open ##4819705
@jackemled@furry.engineer 2026-09-23 14:04

@MastodonEngineering@mastodon.social What is their goal anyway? What's the point of the spam?

Open ##4820948
@FinchHaven@hachyderm.io 2026-09-23 13:31

@MastodonEngineering@mastodon.social How about a mandatory default to "No Open Enrollments"? Like, you know, @Mastodon@mastodon.social dot Social Oh... Last Checked: 2026-09-23 06:01 Signups Open: Yes I see... Here: https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/mastodon.social #Mastodon #BPSpam #OpenEnrollment

Open ##4822292