| 23 May 2025 |
 BeatLink | Right now, anyone in a room can invite anyone | 07:21:41 |
 emily | that's not our issue at all | 07:25:10 |
| emily | we have not had a single instance of anyone inviting a spammer with the rooms being invite-only | 07:25:27 |
| BeatLink | oh | 07:25:37 |
| BeatLink | im curious then, what is the main problem? | 07:25:50 |
 @raboof:matrix.org | spammers inviting users to rooms with names containing slurs (and hinting that the room will contain illegal/offensive material like CSAM, though I haven't joined obv) | 07:27:13 |
| BeatLink | ohhhhhhhhhh | 07:27:57 |
| BeatLink | oh no... | 07:28:03 |
| BeatLink | thats...bad | 07:28:18 |
| @raboof:matrix.org | right, and because the moderation tools are at the 'room level', but the invite is to a room controlled by the spammer, those moderation tools aren't effective against this. | 07:29:12 |
| BeatLink | makes sense | 07:29:30 |
 uep | in addition to spamming the rooms with that horror, of course. | 07:37:07 |
| uep | but yes, they're using invitations as the spam as well | 07:37:24 |
| @raboof:matrix.org | luckily I haven't seen the spam in the rooms, it sounded bad indeed... for that the current moderation tools are 'ok I suppose' though? and that policy server idea sounds like an improvement there. | 07:41:14 |
| BeatLink | i think policy servers could be a good thing. Kinda like bluesky's blocklists and similar to block lists used by ad blockers | 07:47:44 |
| BeatLink | having a centralized database of bad stuff would offload some of the burdens of each server's moderators | 07:48:12 |
| BeatLink | the main problem i think would be who will be ponying up the time and manpower to populate said policy servers? | 07:48:41 |
| BeatLink | ive heard horror stories of facebook moderators seeing all kinds of horrible crap | 07:48:57 |
| uep | there are already reasonable mechanisms for publishing and sharing blocklists | 07:53:36 |
| uep | and out bot shares (both inbound and outbound) with others | 07:54:21 |
| uep | but it doesn't apply to invites, and there's no real way for clients to use them, and the format is a bit limited so you can't use things like patterns for usernames | 07:55:40 |
| uep | and all the other things, like deleting images, are reactive and subject to lag and the vagaries of matrix being inconsistent | 07:56:32 |
| uep | so, for example, someone has been creating thousands of <hex-hash-guid>:home.server usernames, and sending spam, and they get added to the shared blocklist, so the bots dutifully add them to the block lists of all the channels they're protecting | 07:58:45 |
| uep | and i'm sure at some point this is going to be a new attack against matrix servers when those are too long | 07:59:13 |
 Cat | In reply to @uep:matrix.org
but it doesn't apply to invites, and there's no real way for clients to use them, and the format is a bit limited so you can't use things like patterns for usernames There’s tech that’s rapidly maturing into stable releases that deals with this tho. | 08:00:08 |
| Cat | It’s tho a ask your homeserver admin | 08:00:19 |
 Zhaofeng Li | Has there been any discussion about moving to... libera.chat? I know we will essentially be moving "back" but still | 08:00:36 |
| Cat | Draupnir has in beta the capability to pre emptively with HS support block known bad invites and clean them up also | 08:01:06 |
| Cat | And there has already been work started on implementing the policy server backend in meowlnir and I wouldn’t be shocked if it lands in Draupnir eventually too | 08:02:28 |
| uep | meowlnir.. lol | 08:03:23 |
