rumschlumpel

Yesterday, there was a bot that made a ton of posts in different communities. The mods of ttrrpg.network banned that user, and about 20 other people were also banned from several communities each on ttrpg.network (including me) with the reason given "Account used to boost spambot account" (for me it was all the communities on that server that I was subscribed to, but I wasn't actually banned from the instance):

The mods also made a pinned post in that sub (it's unpinned now) where they explain their reasoning some more:

Just got done investigating a spambot we had earlier, and it looks like they used a lot of compromised accounts on other instances to give their post an initial upvote boost. If you don’t already, please remember to use a good strong password.

I do remember interacting with at least one post from that bot, to me it looked fairly innocuous until I looked at the sheer volume of posts they made since the account was created. I assume that I'd notice if my account was hijacked, especially while I was still actively browsing lemmy, and my password is certainly not easily to bruteforce or guess. I also took a look at the profiles of the other users who were banned, there were quite a few who were still posting or commenting after they were banned from rpgmemes - none of those profiles looked suspicious to me, and many of the ones who didn't post or comment anything since then just weren't that active in the first place.

Frankly, I don't believe that any of those banned accounts were actually hacked. It looks to me like the mods just banned everyone who interacted with that bot. I understand that spambots are a big issue that is difficult to solve, but fediverse mods and admins need to be a lot more precise with dealing with that than this - the cure can't be worse than the poison.

I did message one community mod of rpgmemes and one of the server admins about this, but neither got back to me.

geteilt von: https://slrpnk.net/post/22590468

The European Union’s landmark anti-deforestation law could fail to deliver on its environmental promises if enforcement authorities disproportionately focus on small importers while missing less obvious violations from major commodity firms, according to a new analysis by U.K.-based investigative nonprofit, Earthsight.

The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which comes into force Dec. 30, 2025, aims to prevent new tropical deforestation from Europe’s supply chains for soy, beef, palm oil and other commodities. To do so, it will require geolocalized data from indirect and direct suppliers that prove their products didn’t contribute to deforestation since December 2020.

The largest importers “will submit due diligence statements accurately and on time. They will have due diligence systems in place. They will have correctly identified risks. They will have traceability systems of some kind in operation,” the report’s authors write.

“The problems with these importers will lie deeper. Their mitigation measures will be weak. Their traceability systems will have fundamental flaws, but these will be well hidden,” they added.

In February, Cargill, one of the largest exporters of soy from Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest and Cerrado savanna, took advantage of the EUDR to weaken already existing anti-deforestation agreements. The agribusiness pushed up its deforestation cutoff date from 2008, the year established by the soy moratorium, to 2020, the cutoff date set by the EUDR. That would allow the company 14 more years of deforestation without consequence.

“There is good reason to be mistrustful of such firms,” Earthsight’s analysis writes. “Unfortunately, there are reasons to fear they will nevertheless get an easy ride when EU Member States start enforcing the new law.”

In the Ivory Coast, Earthsight’s data show, the top 10 importers buy up 83% of the local cocoa. In Brazil, the largest 10 multinational import companies ship out 64% of the nation’s soy exports.

Small companies will have an additional six months to comply with the law after it comes into effect, but producing accurate paperwork may be more challenging. They often lack the financial and technical resources necessary to quickly set up comprehensive due diligence systems with all the data points required by the law, experts say.

According to a report by Profundo, the relative cost for EUDR compliance is three times higher for small and medium-sized importers than large importers.

Europe’s enforcers will need to focus more on the quality of the largest importers’ reports, Earthsight said, rather than simply check bureaucratic boxes. “Going after such small firms will be much easier … and [authorities] will be tempted to focus most of their energy on this,” the group writes. “For the law to achieve its aims, it is essential that [they] avoid falling into this trap.”

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