As a result, our instance https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ got 625 new user registrations (of which 536 where accepted) in the past 24 hours! And the registrations are not abating even now. We still get like 10 new ones per hour!
I suspect this is probably the largest advertisement, for lemmy specifically, since the main reddit blackouts 1.5 years ago.
Have your own instances also seen an influx of new users?
No. I see several genuine looking users that registered and did nothing (fine I guess). But there’s a lot with very similar <somethingnnn>@gmail.com. Some don’t do anything and so far I’ve left them. Some are clearly posting advert crap and they get deleted as soon as I see it. Every now and then I just go through purge the rest that are clearly bot accounts.
If I was actually getting genuine active users I might look into making a form or otherwise making it difficult (not sure if mbin has that ability mind you). But seems I don’t really get real users. Just me, posting and commenting all day.
What? You delete the advertising bots??? Rude. What if I’m the type of person who’s up at 3am watching infomercials about the cleaning products? And now I come to Lemmy to find the advertisements telling me how to find the hot lonely singles in my area? I want the hot lonely singles! That’s a thing, right? For hot people to be single long enough to get lonely? And then they’re like “I’d date ANYONE at this point!” and that’s when I swoop in, like “You’re all out of options now! I’m in!”
And you’re just going to take that away from us? Tsk tsk tsk.
Well. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone advertising hot local singles using my instance. I’ve mostly seen medical adverts and random websites (for products not services). So, you’re not missing anything I think.