this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
15 points (94.1% liked)

Lemmy

12524 readers
19 users here now

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

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

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This morning I was forced to ban about 18 users for being obvious spambots. That deleted their content on my instance. Are they now banned on other instances, too? I'm just trying to figure out what the best process is for eliminating these spambots for good before they flood all of our feeds.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Glad we got to the bottom of this! And yeah, just to confirm, I see no changes on my side.

However, I'm surprised to still see my posts there. I would have thought you deleting them on your instance would propagate out to my instance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

However, I’m surprised to still see my posts there. I would have thought you deleting them on your instance would propagate out to my instance.

Well, I purged them from the database. Maybe if I had removed the post instead of purging, that would have propagated. Right now the posts don't exist in our database at all.

But I bet the more likely scenario is that once a post gets propagated, it persists forever on the instance it gets propagated to unless someone purges it there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ahh, I'm actually guessing it's because you purged it. I think purges are local, but deleting it is considered a moderation action and is therefore propagated out. I just checked the modlog and clicked on a random post that was removed on a different instance. When I went to the post, I could still see it, but there was a notification at the top that said "Removed by Moderator".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Excellent! This is good to know! I bet other users who aren't admins/mods can't see the post at all when it's removed. I'll avoid purging from now on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I bet other users who aren't admins/mods can't see the post at all when it's removed.

Yup, I'm pretty sure that's how this works. I opened the post in an incognito window, but still on my instance, and got an error message instead of the post.