PSA: It looks like mastodon.social has implemented hCAPTCHA on their signups yesterday.

So, if you have limited / suspended mastodon.social because of the spam issue, you may wish to reconsider this.

This will also likely mean that spammers will move to different instances (already seeing them targeting mastodon.world).

You may wish to consider implementing hCAPTCHA yourself to protect your own instance, and here is the relevant PR:

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/p…

The reason I'm suggesting this, is because if you are a small/medium instance with open registrations, and spammers find and abuse your instance, I imagine that other instances will limit/suspend your instance without hesitation, given how willing some were to limit/suspend the much larger mastodon.social.

But do note this comment on the PR:

“To give some context to people seeing this: this is an emergency feature backport from Glitch SOC to help mitigating an ongoing spam wave, this feature may not make it in a next release, or with significative changes.”

#MastoAdmin #FediAdmin #fediblock

Edited to add: multiple people have rightly commented on the accessibility concerns with hCaptcha: hCaptcha is really really really bad for blind and visually impaired people.

Please have a look at this excellent reply for more details:

dragonscave.space/@Mayana/1103…

#fediblock Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko, (Russian: Людми́ла Миха́йловна Павличе́нко; Ukrainian: Людмила Михайлівна Павличенко (romanized: Lyudmyla Mykhailivna Pavlychenko), née Belova; 12 July [O.S. 30 May] 1916 – 10 October 1974) was a Soviet sniper in the Red Army during World War II.

She claimed to have killed 309 soldiers.[a][5][6] However, many feats attributed to her have been called into question by various historians analyzing her contradictory claims and timeline of events.[7] She served in the Red Army during the siege of Odessa and the siege of Sevastopol, during the early stages of the fighting on the Eastern Front.

After she was injured in battle by a mortar shell, she was evacuated to Moscow.[8] After she recovered from her injuries, she trained other Red Army snipers and was a public spokeswoman for the Red Army. In 1942, she toured the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. After the war ended in 1945, she was reassigned as a senior researcher for the Soviet Navy. She died of a stroke at the age of 58.[5]

[9]Early life and education Lyudmila Belova was born in Bila Tserkva, Kiev Governorate, in the Russian Empire (now in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine) on 12 July [O.S. 30 May] 1916, to Mikhail Belov, a locksmith from Petrograd, and his wife Elena Trofimovna Belova (1897–1972).[10] The family moved to Kyiv when Lyudmila was aged 14.[11] As a child, Lyudmila was a self-described tomboy, who was fiercely competitive at athletic activities. In Kyiv, she joined an OSOAVIAKhIM shooting club, developed into an amateur sharpshooter and earned her Voroshilov Sharpshooter badge and a marksman certificate.

In 1932, she married Alexei Pavlichenko, and gave birth to a son, Rostislav (1932–2007). However, the marriage was soon dissolved, and Lyudmila returned to live with her parents. She attended night school as well as performing household chores.[8] During the day, she worked as a grinder at the Kyiv Arsenal factory.[8]

[12]She enrolled at Kyiv University in 1937, where she studied history and intended to be a scholar and teacher. There, she competed on the university’s track team as a sprinter and pole vaulter.[11][8] She was also enrolled in a military-style sniping school for six months by the Red Army.

[8]World War II

Pavlichenko in a trench (1942). In June 1941, Pavlichenko was aged 25 in her fourth year studying history at Kyiv University when Nazi Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union.[12] Pavlichenko was among the first round of volunteers at the Odesa recruiting office, where she requested to join the infantry. The registrar pushed Pavlichenko to be a nurse, but she refused. After seeing that she had completed multiple training courses, she was finally accepted into the army as a sniper and assigned to the Red Army’s 25th Rifle Division.[12] There, she became one of 2,000 female snipers in the Red Army,[8] of whom about 500 survived the war.[11][8] Although she was assigned a combat role, she was issued with just a fragmentation grenade because of weapons shortages. On 8 August 1941, a fallen comrade handed her his Mosin–Nagant model 1891 bolt-action rifle. Pavlichenko then shot her first two enemies and proved herself to her comrades. She described the event as her “baptism of fire” because that was when she officially became a sniper.

[8]Pavlichenko fought for about 2+1⁄2 months during the siege of Odesa and is credited with killing 187 soldiers.[13] She was promoted to senior sergeant in August 1941, when she added 100 more kills to her official tally. At 25, she married a fellow sniper, Alexei Kitsenko.[8] Soon after the marriage, Kitsenko was mortally wounded by a mortar shell and died from his injuries a few days later in the hospital.

[11]When the Nazis and their Romanian allies overran Odesa on 15 October 1941, her unit was withdrawn by sea to Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula,[13] to fight in the siege of Sevastopol.[12][9] There, she trained other snipers, who were credited with killing over 100 Axis soldiers during the battle.[9] In May 1942, newly promoted Lieutenant Pavlichenko was cited by the Southern Army Council for killing 257 Axis soldiers. The number of soldiers Pavlichenko is credited with killing during World War II was 309,[14][12] including 36 Axis snipers.

In June 1942, Pavlichenko was hit in the face with shrapnel from a mortar shell. When she was injured, the Soviet High Command ordered for her to be evacuated from Sevastopol via submarine.

[15]She spent around a month in the hospital.[11] Once she had recovered from her injuries, instead of being sent back to the front, she became a propagandist for the Red Army,[8] where she was nicknamed “Lady Death.”[16][8][5] She also trained snipers for combat duty until the end of the war in 1945.

[5]Visits to Allied countries

Pavlichenko (center) with Justice Robert Jackson (left) and US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington DC in September 1942. In 1942, Pavlichenko was sent to Canada and the United States for a publicity visit as part of the Soviet Union’s attempts to convince the other Allies of World War II to open a second front against Nazi Germany.[9] When she visited the United States, she became the first Soviet citizen to be received by a US president, as Franklin D. Roosevelt welcomed her to the White House.[11] Pavlichenko was later invited by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to tour the US, relating her experiences as a female soldier on the front lines.[11] During the publicity tour, Pavlichenko was not taken seriously by the press and was referred to as the “Girl Sniper.”[8] When meeting with reporters in Washington, DC, she was dumbfounded by the kind of questions put to her. “One reporter even criticized the length of the skirt of my uniform, saying that in America women wear shorter skirts and besides my uniform made me look fat.”[17][18] They also asked if she used makeup on the front line.[11] She was described by the reporters as very blunt and unemotional in her responses.

[11]Pavlichenko appeared before the International Student Assembly being held in Washington, DC, attended the meetings of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and made appearances and speeches in New York City and Chicago. In New York City, she was given a raccoon fur coat by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia.[11] In Chicago, she stood before large crowds, chiding the men to support a second front. “Gentlemen,” she said, “I am 26 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?” Her words settled on the crowd, then caused a surging roar of support.[11] The United States government presented her with a Colt semi-automatic pistol. In Toronto, Ontario, she was presented a Winchester Model 70 rifle equipped with a Weaver telescopic sight, now on display at the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow.[19] While visiting Canada, along with fellow sniper Vladimir Pchelintsev and Moscow fuel commissioner Nikolai Kravchenko, she was greeted by thousands of people at Toronto’s Union Station.

[11]On Friday 21 November 1942, Pavlichenko visited Coventry, England, accepting donations of £4,516 from local workers to pay for three X-ray units for the Red Army. She also visited the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, then the Alfred Herbert works and Standard Motor Factory, from where most funds had been raised. She had inspected a factory in Birmingham earlier in the day.

[20]Having been made an officer, Pavlichenko never returned to combat, instead becoming an instructor and training snipers until the war’s end.[12] In 1943, she was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union,[21] as well as the Order of Lenin twice.

[11]Later life When the war ended, Pavlichenko finished her education at Kyiv University and began a career as a historian.[8][11] From 1945 to 1953, she was a research assistant at Soviet Navy headquarters. She was later active in the Soviet Committee of the Veterans of War.[12] In 1957, Eleanor Roosevelt visited Pavlichenko in Moscow during a visit to the Soviet Union.[11] Pavlichenko struggled constantly with depression because of the loss of her husband in the war.[9] She also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism, factors that are believed to have contributed to her early death.

[9]Death and legacy She died from a stroke on 10 October 1974 at 58 and was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Her son, Rostislav, is buried next to her.[citation needed]

A second Soviet commemorative stamp featuring her portrait was issued in 1976.

[11]In popular culture

Second Soviet Union-issued postage stamp dedicated to Pavlichenko The American folk singer Woody Guthrie composed a song (“Miss Pavlichenko”) as a tribute to her war record and to memorialize her visits to the United States and Canada.[22] It was released as part of The Asch Recordings.[23]

[24]Pavlichenko was a subject of the 2015 film, Battle for Sevastopol (original Russian title, “Битва за Севастополь”). A joint Russian-Ukrainian production, it was released in both countries on 2 April 2015.[25] Its international premiere took place two weeks later at the Beijing International Film Festival. It is a heavily romanticized version of her life, with several fictitious characters and many departures from the events related in her memoirs.

The first English language edition of her memoirs, Lady Death, was published by Greenhill Books in February 2018.[16] It has a foreword by Martin Pegler and is part of the Lionel Leventhal’s Greenhill Sniper Library series.

[26]Pavlichenko’s story was featured in the fourth season of Drunk History, where she was played by Mae Whitman.[27]

[28]In Call of Duty: Vanguard, protagonist Lt. Polina Petrova (voiced by Laura Bailey) was inspired by Pavlichenko.

[29]In the 1995 alternate history novel Worldwar: Tilting the Balance by Harry Turtledove, Pavlichenko seems to have been the inspiration for the minor character Tatiana in Pskov.

In the 1944 film comedy, The Doughgirls, Eve Arden played Sgt. Natalia Moskoroff, a highly-decorated Soviet sniper visiting the capital on a good-will tour.

Kate Quinn’s 2022 novel The Diamond Eye is a fictionalized account of Pavlichenko’s life.

#FediBlock infosec.exchange

TLDR: I’m limiting (followers-only) infosec.exchange for now. In the coming weeks, I and several admins plan to escalate this to a full suspension. Consider migrating if you find the suspensions, and our reasons for them, concerning.

r000t (@ligma.pro, @infosec.exchange, @fedi.site) has been working on a full-text search engine for Fedi for a while:

• Claims to rotate addresses and avoid announcing its presence while claiming that this is protecting user safety somehow.
• Claims that the hourly VPS providers are the top 3 ones used by Mastodon instances, preventing rangebans.
• Teasing a search engine in November with the intention to “specifically bypass all attempts to block it” while branding this as something good for user safety.
• Makes fun of people concerned about such a scraper by comparing them to a Kiwi Farms victim.

And now:

r000t released as:Public, a full-text non-consensual block-evading search engine for Fedi, after threatening mass violence just days earlier. Previous hint. Went on a bender of threats, slurs, threatening animal cruelty, and eventually posting unmarked gore in an attempt to gain mod attention. See the archived profile for r000t @ ligma.pro when federated to bae.st (CW: NSFL gore). This all happened shortly after admitting to stealing cryptocurrency.

All that infosec.exchange did was limit r000t’s account with a possibility of un-limiting it soon. A mod admitted to receiving several reports against r000t but dismissed them as “fediblock nonsense” while voicing support for this non-consensual engine.

If we assume honesty, then what r000t said about concealing the collector in November would still check out judging by this post made during its release. Also note that the engine does not depend on federation. It uses the streaming API of servers you federate with: as long as you federate with at least one server that the collector is fetching from that has the streaming API enabled, your instance’s posts that federate there can be indexed.

The opt-out mechanism might change; r000t has teased making the opt-out mechanism dependent on federating with ligma.pro.

Unrelated to this fiasco, some more gems I stumbled upon:

• Brags about bypassing authorized fetch.
• Comparing excluding gender non-conforming members of PolyMC to moderating nazis.
• threatening legal action against blocklists.
• bragging about getting away with death threats.

Given the lack of action taken by infosec.exchange, despite reports: I no longer trust its staff to lead a safe community. I’ve set infosec.exchange to followers-only for now. In a few weeks, I and several other admins plan to escalate this to suspension. If you’re on infosec.exchange, and find this concerning: consider whether this warrants finding a new instance.

Got a bunch of #FediBlock entries.

social.susmaninsurance.com: You’ve seen casino spam, you’ve seen adtech spam. But this is something else: literally just marketing spam for an insurance company. I shit you not. At least they set up their own instance. Check the account “Agent”. Seriously, who do they think is reading this in their chronological timelines?

nekocave.xyz: unmoderated Friendica instance. User “nokitakaze” posts unmarked loli and shota content. Firefox exposes an “image” permission: go to about:config and toggle permissions.default.image if you really must check.

social.daspr.io: Block the root domain since they also have subdomains like “watch” and “tube” which may refer to a PeerTube or OwnCast instance in the past or future.

• I wonder if this admin is anti-vax.
• Admin bio says “Political refugee that escaped Commiechusetts living in the great state of TX”.
• More anti-vax bullshit from the admin.
• Another user “geoff” posts some anti-leftist suicide memes complete with “clown world” dogwhistles.
• geoff posts “anti-woke” bullshit.
• Oh look, the admin cries about getting censored for COVID denial. Go ahead. Cry some more.

freedomstrike.net: freeze peach COVID denial.

• Sidebar self-identifies the instance as a freeze peach instance.
• Admin “karmaplant” posts COVID denial.
• more COVID denial.
• even more COVID denial.

videos.freedomstrike.org: affiliated with freedomstrike.net.

nalocal519.social: more COVIDspiracy

• Admin “pjd3” follows lots of No Agenda, PodcastIndex, berserker.town.
• Admin posts anti-vax “#plandemic” conspiracies.
• more admin COVID denial.

unperson.us: “if you are easily triggered, this is not for you!” in the sidebar.

• Admin approves of this combo-breaker of a bigotry-laden post.
• boosts COVID denial.
• against abortion rights.

social.epenguin.com: far-right single-user soapbox instance, federates with yikes. The admin “goodtiding5” posts your run-off-the-mill right-wing nonsense:

• posts transphobia.
• COVIDspiracy nonsense.
• “great reset” conspiracy theories from a website known for COVIDspiracy nonsense.

bitcointv.com: PeerTube instance that’s slightly worse than the domain name alone implies.

• platforming COVID denial.
• climate denial.
• more climate denial.

f.ckpg.space: Relatively new single-user instance.

• Admin “prim” follows No Agenda, seal.cafe, poa.st.
• transmisiac memes.
• Really weird COVIDspiracy take.

theapex.social: if you block noagendasocial.com you should block this instance too.

• Admin “BenHinc” has a bio which says “a Baronet of No Agenda”.
• Admin mostly follows users on No Agenda.

A few inactive but very yikes small instances:

dissident.business: white supremacy.

• Main page says “Fediverse for White businesses”.
• Admin “mord” has the display name “anti-semitist”.
• Admin profile banner is a confederate flag.

dixies.land: more racism.

• Favicon is a slaver flag (a Confederate States battle flag).
• Locked down front-end but the admin “milk” mains on poa.st.

shadowsocial.org

• Admin “dave” posts Babylon Bee.
• Admin shares anti-vax articles.
• Admin boosts the No Agenda stream.
• Instance also hosts user “irenau” who repeatedly posts pro-life content.
• irenau shills pro-life orgs.
• irenau posts islamophobic content, multiple times.

Just the root domains, for easy copy-pasting:

susmaninsurance.com
<a href="http://daspr.io" rel="ugc">daspr.io</a>
<a href="http://freedomstrike.net" rel="ugc">freedomstrike.net</a>
<a href="http://freedomstrike.org" rel="ugc">freedomstrike.org</a>
<a href="http://nalocal519.social" rel="ugc">nalocal519.social</a>
<a href="http://unperson.us" rel="ugc">unperson.us</a>
<a href="http://epenguin.com" rel="ugc">epenguin.com</a>
<a href="http://bitcointv.com" rel="ugc">bitcointv.com</a>
<a href="http://ckpg.space" rel="ugc">ckpg.space</a>
<a href="http://theapex.social" rel="ugc">theapex.social</a>
<a href="http://dissident.business" rel="ugc">dissident.business</a>
<a href="http://dixies.land" rel="ugc">dixies.land</a>
<a href="http://shadowsocial.org" rel="ugc">shadowsocial.org</a>

Given ubiqueros.com/notes/98t4vk2u1q regarding anti-Blackness from Kolektiva, the Weirder Earth mods would like to summarize for #fediblock our recent DMs with Kolektiva's mods on an unrelated issue.

On December 2nd, we warned them about two instances with a history of anti-Black harassment, akko.disqordia.space and social.xenofem.me. They asked for more information, and we shared five threads on Eris's campaign against ubuntu.buzz, a Black-centric instance that got harassed off fedi three months ago:

1. rage.love/@puf/108806514088155…
2. weirder.earth/@packbat/1088159…
3. rage.love/@puf/108829477530153… (cw: suicide mention)
4. weirder.earth/@packbat/1089927…
5. weirder.earth/@packbat/1094307…

and linked to the followees list of vrtra, a xenofem mod - social.xenofem.me/vrtra?tab=fo… - showing accounts from kiwifarms[.]cc, bae[.]st, iddqd[.]social, and freespeechextremist[.]com. (Attached is a screenshot from the 3rd.)

On the 10th, subMedia informed us, on behalf of Kolektiva, that they would take no action.