I’ve been noticing recently that a lot of posts in large communities are from [deleted] users (see the image at the bottom of this post for an example). I assume this is a means of pre-emptive ban-evasion and block-evasion by a user who is either running their own instance or just signing up a lot of accounts.

I quite like piefed’s warning labels that appear on posts by users with low karma, and I also quite like being able to block users who spam my feed, and I feel like this post-then-delete-account tactic is an exploit to bypass any kind of accountability on the poster’s part.

Here are some suggestions for how this problem could be mitigated:

  • When a user deletes their account, their posts will no longer display in the Subscribed/Local/All feeds. Perhaps only showing if you visit the community page directly, or
  • A post by a deleted user is down-ranked in the Top/Hot/Popular ranking system so that it appears much further down the page, or
  • De-federate from the instance(s) that are allowing these post-then-delete-account tactics without intervention. Particularly if they are personal instances run by the individual who is doing this.

I haven’t managed to catch a before/after of one of these posts to see what the username/domain looks like, but I imagine instance admins should be able to see the history of the post?

Example (and yes these were 7 consecutive posts in my feed all with the same issue):

EhlJXgEB48dNPbD.png

  • wjs018@piefed.socialEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    As skavau mentioned, this is something we have already been talking about how to handle better in a future version. You aren’t the only one that has found them annoying. 🙂

    • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      just gotta say you guys are awesome. I have seen these but it has not trickled through my noggin yet what is up with those, but now that its laid out it makes sense. Anyway its nice to be on something where you guys are so pro active your already looking at a fix.

      • wjs018@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, it has been a recurring topic of discussion among the threadiverse instance admins, and the frequency of this happening has been increasing. General consensus is that this is primarily being done by one user as a form of ban evasion (possibly). Basically, make an account, create a bunch of posts, then delete the account.

        I think part of the motivation for the account deletion is that in lemmy, it is a lot more work on an admin’s part to remove content after the creator’s account has been deleted. I don’t know the specifics because I have never tried it, but I have seen a number of lemmy admins complaining about it.