The Fediverse seems to be suffering a particularly disruptive spam attack presently. Much of it is Japanese or Korean language advertisements for one or more Discord channels, with much of the spam featuring its payload as an image of a Spam can itself (the luncheon meat, not the message scourge), with the server identity as part of that image.
In considering the possible downsides of federated systems, spam does seem one especially prevalent failure mode, having pervasively and often fatally affected Usenet, email, SMS, PSTN telephony, online forums, and increasingly much of the Web itself (accelerated by AI-generated grey goo).
It seems as if open-registration instances, often small and single-user ones, with little administrative oversight, may be to blame, though any initial assessments including my own are obviously suspect.
One assessment of the current spam wave is in this set of posts by Cappy Ishihara (linked in TFA):
Whilst it's quite likely that the present spam wave is from a small set of bad actors (as is most often the case in other media), it's also true that the Fediverse is exceptionally vulnerable to such behaviour, and that the lack of defences in other instances helped contribute to the decline in use and reliability of other communications channels (again: Usenet, email, telephony, SMS, etc.).
On which note, give thanks to HN's moderators and moderation.
In considering the possible downsides of federated systems, spam does seem one especially prevalent failure mode, having pervasively and often fatally affected Usenet, email, SMS, PSTN telephony, online forums, and increasingly much of the Web itself (accelerated by AI-generated grey goo).
It seems as if open-registration instances, often small and single-user ones, with little administrative oversight, may be to blame, though any initial assessments including my own are obviously suspect.
One assessment of the current spam wave is in this set of posts by Cappy Ishihara (linked in TFA):
Part 1: <https://fedi.fyralabs.com/notes/9psdqurvye>
Part 2: <https://fedi.fyralabs.com/notes/9psnooe6p1>
Part 3: <https://fedi.fyralabs.com/notes/9pth6oh3xr>
Whilst it's quite likely that the present spam wave is from a small set of bad actors (as is most often the case in other media), it's also true that the Fediverse is exceptionally vulnerable to such behaviour, and that the lack of defences in other instances helped contribute to the decline in use and reliability of other communications channels (again: Usenet, email, telephony, SMS, etc.).
On which note, give thanks to HN's moderators and moderation.