Request to Restrict Spam bots on Discord

Operations Center
1

Currently there’s a problem with spambots joining our discord and pinging people across multiple channels. This is not a problem that is unique to us, and it is usually quickly dealt with, but there are very easy steps that can and should be taken to mitigate this.

Currently on the discord, all members should for the most part, although I do recognize for whatever reason not everyone does, have either the Member or Dignitary role. Would it be possible to lock unnecessary things behind these two roles?

The channels the bots post in are ones that new joins have immediate access to:

  • getting-help, lampshade-bar, international-airport, card-trading, and coconut-grove
    I’m unsure if they’ve posted in The Patio VC chat, but new joins also have access to that.

Regarding the channels besides getting-help and lampshade-bar, I don’t see any reason why posting in them couldn’t be locked behind Member & Dignitary.

With roles pingable by everyone, I tried my best to assemble a list, although I might have missed some:

List of Pings

Roleplay pings:

  • Roleplay: A1-0
  • Roleplay: Aurora
  • Roleplay: Pacifica
  • Senior Roleplayer

Institutions and Individuals:

  • Global Moderator
  • RMB Moderator
  • Roleplay Moderator
  • Council on Regional Security
  • Coral Guard
  • Citizenship Committee
  • Chair of the Assembly
  • Deputy Chair of the Assembly
  • Chief Justice
  • Delegate
  • SPSF: Officers
  • Cabinet Ministers
  • Prime Minister
  • Minister of Culture
  • Minister of Defense
  • Minister of Engagement
  • Minister of Foreign Affairs
  • Minister of Integration
  • Deputy MoC
  • Minister of Media, Subversion, Sandwiches & Shitfuckery
  • Deputy Minister of Media, Subversion, Sandwiches & Shitfuckery
  • SWAN Programmer
  • Health Emergency Response Organization

SPSF pings:

  • SPSF: Cadet
  • SPSF: Ensign
  • SPSF: Lieutenant
  • SPSF: Captain
  • SPSF: Admiral
  • SPSF: Lieutenant-In-Training
  • SPSF: Captain-In-Training
  • SPSF: Tidal Force
  • SPSF: Tidal Force Coordinator

Misc:

  • Voice Chat

Currently the bots seem to ping Roleplay: Pacifica as it has the most members, but I’m sure they just ping whichever role has the most members. Could we restrict non-institutional and non-individual pings in the channels the bots have immediate access to? My opinion is that the pings I listed above as “Roleplay” should not be pingable by everyone in the Lampshade District category channels and getting-help. I don’t think there’s any need for them to be pingable by everyone in those channels.

For the SPSF roles, I only just learned that anyone can ping these. Beyond being a potential problem for OOC spam message purposes, they are an IC security concern with anyone being able to ping our military. I will be addressing these in another Ops category post as a member of the admiralty.

This post is a general complaint about how our server deals with spambots. It’s not the worst, but it could be better with some simple changes. Obviously, I am not a mod, I am just stating my ideas and concerns as a member of TSP. I would like to see some action to put some basic restrictions on what spambots can do, but I do recognize this is a decision for the mod and admin team.

3 Likes
2

Full support from me.
I’d also like to add that all of this would be mitigated if we’d just add a verification system to our Discord server.

3

I agree. I feel we need a stricter system to stop these bots. Today was the fifth time for the massive pings. I had to turn off my at me notifications so I don’t keep getting pinged like crazy.

4

Some miscellaneous things:

I can confirm that I’ve gotten bot pings in the patio VC chat a few times before, including from today’s bot.

While this role does seem to exist on the server, it doesn’t seem to be in use at present; at least, nobody who had the role on the prior TSPRP Discord has it on the current one as far as I can tell. It should probably be either removed or actually implemented.

I don’t remember the exact reasons or where to find the original conversation now, but I remember it being said sometime around when the TSPRP Discord was inactivated (~late 2023) that some server feature or other required that the Discord have at least 5 channels useable by anybody regardless of role; I believe that it was brought up when the matter of whether to make #roleplay_lounge publicly visible was being discussed.

5

Yes, restricting channels to members and dignitaries only would preclude the possibility of a switch to Community Onboarding in the future.

I did not know Discord supported this level of granular mention permissions. Which setting are you referring to?

We have verification enabled. Is there another system you’re referring to?

6

I mean some system in which we can verify a person is a human and/or an NS player (through masking, just in a different channel to the public chat ones, likely available to the mods and the new people only)

7

In that case, how impactful would it be to preclude community onboarding? It doesn’t appear to have been implemented in the around two and a half years since the current public channel setup was made with it in mind.

8

I think I was a bit mistaken there over what you could do with role pings. I assumed that the setting to let anyone ping the role was channel specific, it is not.

9

I think perhaps until the time at which we decide to implement onboarding we should disregard this. We can always change it back if we implement onboarding.

Additionally could moderation consider implementing a policy of banning accounts that look like these kinds of spambots when they join the server if they give no indication otherwise? If moderation is diligent about watching over new joins and banning spambots within an appropriate timeframe it would mitigate the problem significantly.