this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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Please. Captcha by default. Email domain filters. Auto-block federation from servers that don't respect. By default. Urgent.

meme not so funny

And yes, to refute some comments, this publication is being upvoted by bots. A single computer was needed, not "thousands of dollars" spent.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You're right that captchas can be bypassed, but I disagree that they're useless.

Do you lock your house? Are you aware that most locks can be picked and windows can be smashed?

captchas can be defeated, but that doesn't mean they're useless - they increase the level of friction required to automate malicious activity. Maybe not a lot, but along with other measures, it may make it tricky enough to circumvent that it discourages a good percentage of bot spammers. It's the "Swiss cheese" model of security.

Registration applications stop bots, but it also stops legitimate users. I almost didn't get onto the fediverse because of registration applications. I filled out applications at lemmy.ml and beehaw.org, and then forgot about it. Two days later, I got reminded of the fediverse, and luckily I found this instance that didn't require some sort of application to join.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Don't read the first sentence, and then glaze over the rest.

I am not saying captchas are completely useless, they do block the lowest hanging fruit currently. That- being most of the script kiddies.