Spammers have been programmatically creating accounts on Mastodon instances for years. Sometimes they post once and never again, sometimes they post on a schedule. Sometimes they never post, like a waiting botnet.
As Mastodon's anti-spam solutions are effectively nonexistent, most instances in our network require manual approval of new accounts. Up until recently, it was easy to spot a spammer; their join reasons were generic.
ChatGPT spammers have now arrived.
Lyskar
in reply to ✨Soff✨ Mawr • • •I wonder what would happen if you put a hidden form that is hidden from humans (as in, markup-wise, no human using a browser can see it) but the robot can see it.
Long ago when I ran a forum, doing this would result in the robot filling in the form that is invisible to normal people, and that would let me figure it out no matter what they did, so, even with hyper-advanced future technology, if they made that mistake today it'd ruin their attempt even today.
Eugen Rochko
in reply to Lyskar • • •