CAPTCHAs and sign‑up quizzes annoy real people and barely slow down determined bots. As the fediverse grows, we need smarter, more humane defences, ones that don’t push away genuine newcomers. What creative, non‑intrusive ideas do you have? Trust‑based vouching, proof‑of‑humanity protocols, behavioural signals… what feels both effective and aligned with the open social web? I’m building a social media platform and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
I created a honeypot that creates a link only bots would think is a link. Then it gives them random words with another link. If they click the link 3 times they get ip banned by fail2ban. Works wonders! I can see my logs and the difference it made.
I also have bots.txt that only the big players care about like google.