IFTAS Blog

2025-10-05 19:48:43

Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services

Since 15 September, IFTAS has been tracking a coordinated network of accounts operating across Mastodon. These accounts are engaged in a high-volume propaganda campaign, promoting pro-Russian narratives and linking to Telegram channels associated with known state-aligned disinformation operations.

We became aware of a related investigation by the Antibot4Navalny research team that observed these accounts bridging to Bluesky, and we have since collaborated to enhance our investigations and share our findings. Their public post provides further context.

Antibot4Navalny’s observations identified additional impacted services we were unaware of, and highlighted that accounts were still being created. Furthermore, thanks to their specific expertise in this area, this helped clarify and confirm that what we were seeing was indeed the work of a coordinated campaign with an increased likelihood of it being a state-sponsored or state-approved campaign.

We have been contacting affected Mastodon administrators, and are now moving to a public advisory to inform the broader network.

The network includes accounts impersonating reputable news outlets such as BBC News, Euronews, and Meduza, designed to give credibility to Telegram propaganda links. We believe it may be connected to the “Pravda/Portal Kombat” pro-Russia propaganda network.

Accounts are hosted across numerous Mastodon instances and bridged into Bluesky, creating the appearance of independent sources. Activity on Bluesky helped reveal aggregate patterns, identical usernames, posting schedules, and content themes more clearly than across decentralised Mastodon services.

This campaign appears to mimic tactics observed in earlier influence operations, blending low-cost automation with impersonation and volume-based amplification.

We are sharing data with participants of the Social Web ISAC, and we issued a public advisory along with a list of observed usernames.

We are aware of accounts hosted on abandoned or unmanaged services, we may issue a Limit recommendation for those domains at a later date.

If you provide or can link to tools that may benefit administrators in identifying and/or managing these accounts, please let us know.

Further Reading:

• PORTAL KOMBAT A structured and coordinated pro-Russian propaganda network
• PORTAL KOMBAT A structured and coordinated pro-Russian propaganda network (Part 2)
• “Pravda” Network: Worldwide Expansion and LLM, Wikipedia Pollution
• Russian propaganda may be flooding AI models

NEW REPORT: Russian propaganda may be flooding AI models

Click here to read the report. Click here to read the press release. Click here to access the database.

^{JP (The American Sunlight Project)}

IFTAS Blog

2025-09-29 13:36:09

Sunsetting IFTAS Connect

In May 2024, we launched IFTAS Connect as a community platform to support volunteer moderators, administrators, and safety advocates across the decentralised web. Our vision was to provide a central space for collaboration, resource sharing, and mutual support, especially for those working in independent and often under-resourced environments.

Despite several hundred moderators signing up and expressing early interest, sustained engagement across the Connect portal and its associated Matrix Space (a collection of chat rooms) has remained limited. As we evaluate our role in this evolving ecosystem, we believe it is time to step back from hosting a dedicated community platform and refocus our resources where they are most impactful.

As a non-profit organisation, IFTAS relies on community support to operate. Our financial and staffing capacity is not unlimited, and hosting platforms such as Connect comes with direct costs, both technical and human. In the current environment, where funding has diminished, we must prioritise sustainability and impact.

After 18 months of operating Connect, it is clear that this particular space has not provided the kind of active collaboration we had hoped for. We believe that this may be a reflection of the need for smaller, more targeted, and organically driven networks of support. This is not a failure of the community, but rather an opportunity to rethink how collaboration can best be facilitated across diverse, decentralised projects.

We remain deeply grateful to those who participated, contributed resources, and helped build a shared understanding of moderation and safety in federated systems. The need for community remains, even if the model needs to evolve.

We extend our sincere thanks to everyone who joined IFTAS Connect, contributed their time, knowledge, and questions, shared resources, supported others, or otherwise helped build the space. Your efforts helped shape the Community Library and informed our broader work in ways that continue to matter. We are especially thankful to the moderators and safety contributors who helped keep the space respectful, accessible, and safe throughout its operation.

What’s Next

IFTAS Connect and the Matrix Space will remain available for existing accounts until 30 October 2025. After that date, both will be permanently shut down. New accounts can no longer be created.

1. Preserving the Community Library

The Connect Community Library will be preserved in static form on the IFTAS web site. Unless otherwise marked, all content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 licence, feel free to preserve copies of anything you deem valuable. The full archive will also be made available to any project, server, or individual who wishes to mirror or reuse the material.

2. Ongoing News and Updates

The aggregated news feed from Connect will transition to a Channel.org feed. This will offer continued updates on trust and safety, regulation, and federated technology developments in a lower-overhead format. When this is ready, we’ll announce it on our main Fediverse account.

3. Stay Connected

IFTAS will not be hosting a new community forum ourselves. However, we will point to third-party community spaces that align with our values. In particular, we encourage moderators to review the discussion forum hosted at @[url=https://activitypub.space/category/13/moderation-server-administration]moderation@activitypub.space[/url]. This community is available to any moderator on the Fediverse, and participation does not require a separate account. Simply mention @[url=https://activitypub.space/category/13]moderation@activitypub.space[/url] from your existing account to post or engage in the conversation.

4. Private Signal Groups

For those seeking a more private communication channel, we will be operating a Signal group chat for verified community moderators. Participation will be by request, and membership will require demonstrated moderator responsibilities on a Fediverse server that hosts community accounts. This space will serve as a light-touch backchannel for peer support, coordination, and urgent queries. We will also offer a Signal group for the SW-ISAC, geared toward both admins and moderators to share information about network abuse, spam, illegal content and other threats. Send a direct mention to @[url=https://mastodon.iftas.org/users/iftas]iftas@mastodon.iftas.org[/url] for access to these groups.

5. Data Privacy and Account Deletion

No member data or content from IFTAS Connect or the Matrix Space will be shared, transferred, or retained after closure. All account information and related backups will be permanently destroyed following the shutdown.

Our Continued Commitment

IFTAS was created to support decentralised online communities in building safer, fairer, and more resilient digital spaces. That mission remains unchanged.

• We will continue advocating for shared resources, moderation tooling, and transparent practices. Our annual survey and other activities will continue.
• We will maintain our role in threat intelligence sharing, with a focus on coordinated abuse, network harms, and platform-level safety.
• We will continue working in support of marginalised communities, prioritising human rights, privacy, and safety online and offline.
• Jaz will continue to attend relevant conferences, maintaining relationships with internet safety regulators and ensuring the perspectives of decentralised communities are represented in wider policy and safety conversations.

Looking Ahead

The closure of IFTAS Connect is not the end of community collaboration. It is a recalibration. We remain committed to supporting moderators and trust and safety teams with open resources, shared intelligence, and public-interest advocacy. We invite those who share these values to stay connected through our web site, our Mastodon account, the news channel, and future initiatives that reflect the needs of decentralised communities.

Mark W.rites

2025-07-20 07:06:39

Being a Mastodon Moderator

People ask me what it’s like to be a moderator. Our discussions reveal that a lot of what we do is a mystery. So, I’m gonna lay it out for you. Specifically about the unique fediverse moderation model, mutual aid, and mental health.

What Fediverse Moderation Looks Like

Centralized networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter create rules that please executives and shareholders. Those decision makers don’t have to be ethical—and they rarely are.

They obey money. Big money. And big money is never on the side of the people. Big money gets rid of fact checkers, amplifies malicious bigotry, and platforms nazis.

The fediverse is decentralized. That means there isn’t one server for all accounts and it’s not run by one company. It’s a network of servers (or instances), each self-owned/operated. Sometimes that’s one person, but most often is a small team. And each team makes its own rules for moderation. They all communicate symbiotically to create the single social network.

There’s a common theme to the rules. While not universal, the majority of instances focus on ethics and inclusivity. Those who don’t get blocked through a process called “defederation.” This is a global block between instances. It means no one on the blocked server can interact with anyone from the server who moderated it.

This makes the entire fediverse community stronger. At a local level, on our server, we have a process that seems to serve us well.

What Mas.to Moderation Looks Like

There are three moderators on our team and about 185,000 accounts. About 12,000 of those are active monthly. But they’re able to interact with an estimated 12 million total fediverse accounts. So…we have our hands full. But it’s manageable. Our queue is never very long.

The baseline process works like this:

1. Someone reports a post or an account
2. The report shows up in our queue
3. One of us reviews the report and either resolves (dismisses) or moderates
4. If we moderate, the account receives an email notification with an appeal option
5. If they appeal, we see that in our queue with their plea
6. One of us reviews the appeal and either accepts or rejects

We also have a house rule that no one can act on an appeal for their own moderation. It’s a good way to keep each other in check. Especially because sometimes we don’t agree. This is okay. We just talk it out together and try to make the best call.

There’s an array of moderation options we use:

• Delete one or more posts
• Limit the account (only their followers will see their account)
• Suspend the account
• Send a warning
• Freeze the account (lock them out)
• Force posts to be flagged as sensitive (blurred)

There are five key things to know about the process…

It’s Hard

No decision is easy, and many decisions aren’t binary. There’s lots of gray area, even with explicit rules. We often receive reports that don’t violate those rules. It’s simply someone saying they don’t like what another person said. We aren’t argument referees, but people expect us to be. If that argument becomes harassment or discrimination, it’s time for intervention. But even that isn’t always straightforward.

We Get Some Things Wrong

We’ll sometimes debate for days on a single report. We always do our best to make the right call. Even so, we sometimes make mistakes. We’re willing to accept appeals when that happens.

We Get Most Things Right

We get a lot of things right. You can’t even imagine some of the traumatic things we see. Things we can’t ever unsee.

We’re Targets of Both Love and Hate

We get lots of love, but we get spit on a lot. Some people lose their minds when they’re moderated. They’ll publicly shame us or call for uprisings against us. Quite literally. I’ve even been known to vent about it because it gets exhausting.

Moderation Doesn’t End in the Queue

Some moderation is urgent or the severity requires additional action. We report all CSAM content to legal agencies in relevant countries. And with posts containing violent threats. We do our best to track the location of the offender. Then we report IPs/emails to domain registrars and web hosts.

It’s also important to note that we don’t moderate reports of ourselves, which actually happens. As of this writing, I’ve been reported five times. All were (objectively) resolved without moderation.

One challenging topic is mutual aid (community economic support).

Mutual Aid

First off, I believe in mutual aid. I don’t trust wealthy people or government systems to inherently take care of people. We need to take care of each other. Good, healthy mutual aid is a beautiful thing. This is the way.

But moderating mutual aid is a conundrum. The posts are from either people in need or scammers, and it’s not always easy to tell which one it is. We want to protect our Mastodon community from the latter. So we have to make judgment calls.

Sometimes it’s obvious, but most of the time we have to do some sleuthing. We analyze the account and related IP addresses. We conduct reverse image searches and research online profiles. It’s detective work.

I’d like to say we always get this right. We don’t. And it breaks our hearts if we make a mistake on this one. But we try to get it right. We really do.

Because we care, all of this has an impact on our mental health. Some negative, some positive.

Negative Impact on Mental Health

Content warning: I don’t details about traumatic content. But I do mention some topics that may be triggering.

Much of what we do is routine. But things can get bad, mentally. We take breaks when needed, knowing the others have our back. I’m grateful for this. Because I have definitely needed it.

There are two usual suspects that push the envelope:

1. Traumatic content
2. Being personally-targeted by people we’ve moderated

Traumatic Content

This section is difficult to discuss. I’ve tried to represent moderators as a whole in the rest of this article. But I’m going to personalize this section. Even though other moderators have shared similar sentiments, I don’t want to speak for anyone else on this.

I’ve seen some things. Really, really, really unimaginable things. Things I never wanted to see in my life that are now in my brain. And I’ve brought almost all of them to therapy.

People get reported for obvious things: slurs, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. It’s painful to repeatedly see those words. Even when they’re not directed at me, I hate seeing them. It reminds me of the hate that exists in the world. It muddies the waters while trying to find strength to have even a sliver of optimism about the state of the world. I find myself saying “fuck you, asshole” while moderating these posts.

But there are other reports that stand out. You know these people exist in the world, but when you see them first hand it’s horrifying. CSAM in particular. But also violent threats, especially when used with discrimination.

The words and sentiments alone are hard to moderate. But often there are images. And try as I might, I am unable to shake them.

Targeted Attacks on Moderators

We’re volunteers trying to keep everyone safe, not monsters. And, yet, we get targeted. Sometimes personally. That’s not okay.

I’m certain every moderator has a story. Mine is that some people targeted my family. I discovered that some nazis found a photo of my kids from one of my lectures. They posted it to some repugnant forum, engaging in a racist, homophobic, bigoted hate fest.

They got my kids involved. My kids! Why? Because I dared delete a post filled with the same types of attacks against someone of color on Mastodon.

Positive Impact on Mental Health

The upside is that moderation gives me some control.

Watching a fascist autocracy unfold before your eyes is terrifying. Everything is collapsing on a massive scale in myriad ways. It’s enough to make a person feel helpless.

While it’s not monumental, I do get to curb some of that fascism through moderation. I get to push buttons with labels that read “delete post” and “suspend.” When some ignorant sociopath is harassing people, I get to wave a magic wand and make them disappear. At least from our corner of Mastodon.

That’s empowering. And meaningful. It does make a difference because I get to silence them. I can’t begin to describe how good that feels. Just a little tiny bit of justice.

We also once helped someone who posted a cry for help. He was talking about ending his life. Someone reported his post to see if we could help, and we did. Every once in a while I check on his account. He’s still there, posting cool stuff. I like to think we played a role in that.

Conclusion

So that’s a firehose of information, but it’s only part of the story. If you read this far, you deserve a cookie. If I could invite you over for one straight out of the oven (I make a mean vegan cookie) I would. For now, keep reporting the bad people and we’ll do the rest.

Thanks for taking the time to go on this journey with me.

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Resources

If you’re new to Mastodon and the fediverse, free yourself from invasive tech and big social. Here are some resources to help you:

• Join me on Mas.to. It’s way better than Twitter, I promise. Create an account, flesh out your profile, write an introduction, then say hello to me. I’ll be happy to share your introduction and help you get acclimated.
• Learn everything you wanted to know (and more) about the fediverse from Fedi.tips.
• Mastodon search is pretty powerful. I wrote a guide for getting the most out of it.
• The fediverse has maybe the most powerful hashtags in social networking. But they should be accessible. I wrote a guide for that, too.

There’s a massive list of fediverse platforms, which can be overwhelming. Other than Mastodon, here are the ones that will look most familiar to you:

• PeerTube (like YouTube)
• Pixelfed (like Instagram)
• Friendica (like Facebook)
• Lemmy (like Reddit)

Like this? Find out when I publish new work.

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I’m Mark Wyner, an activist, dad, husband, Designer, writer, public speaker, and Mastodon moderator. If you want me to write for you or speak at your event please say hello.

Like this? Find out when I publish new work.

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I’m Mark Wyner, an activist, dad, husband, Designer, writer, public speaker, and Mastodon moderator. If you want me to write for you or speak at your event please say hello.

Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime.

^{David Ingram (NBC News)}