> I'm not aware of any open source bot prevention system that works against determined attackers.
It works just fine if you're willing to move to an invite only system and ban not just the bot, but the person that invited them. Possibly even another level up.
The problem with this system is that it leads to much less inflated numbers about active users, etc. So very few companies do it.
Such a system is still vulnerable (I'd daresay even more so) to account takeovers. And it might even have cascading effects depending on how your ban one level up goes. For a first approximation, even if one user can only invite 2 users, exponential growth will mean that bots may still pose a problem.
> vulnerable (I'd daresay even more so) to account takeovers.
Not more so. Vulnerability is a function of defensive capacity. There is no reduced defensive capacity. If anything, knowing who invited whom can allow one to allow web-of-trust based checks on suspicious login, allowing for more stringent guards.
> For a first approximation, even if one user can only invite 2 users, exponential growth will mean that bots may still pose a problem.
In these types of systems users earn invites over time and as a function of positive engagement with other trusted members. Exponential growth is neutered in such systems because the lag for bad actors and the natural pruning of the tree for bots and other abusive accounts, leads to a large majority of high quality trusted accounts. This means that content flagging is much more reliable.
So, yes, bots are still a (minor) problem, but the system as a whole is much more robust and unless there is severe economic incentive to do so, most bot operators understand that the lower hanging fruit is elsewhere.
You misunderstand some of the vulnerabilities then. Bad actors on the systems are not the only weaknesses of the system.
Other systems are potential weaknesses of your system.... But what do I mean by that?
If other systems have better ease of use while blocking 'enough' bad actors it is likely your exceptionally defensive system will fail.
"I got blocked from SYSTEM1 for no reason, hey everyone, lets go to SYSTEM2", this is risky if one of the blocked people is high visibility, and these kinds of accounts tend lead the operator to make special hidden rules that tend to fall under security by obscurity of the rules.
I do not think every weakness is a vulnerability. Were it so, then all things are vulnerabilities to some agent or entity in some sense, since weakness is often defined in relative terms.
If another system is easier to use for say, signup. Then of course the system I propose will have to leverage its strengths to make up for the fact that it is harder to join. But there are plenty of nightclubs and restaurants that one can just simply not get into unless they know someone. They're often the most acclaimed.
If the system I propose leads to a celebrity's ouster then the mechanisms and business orientation of the system would need to leverage that ouster to its benefit after, of course, making sure that the system as designed only ousts truly irritable people.
One may say, "but if a given celebrity attracts many people and their ouster would lead many of them off of the platform how can this be used to our benefit?"
But it is precisely this dynamic that the system that I advocate for has as its chief strength! Those that would leave merely at the call of a scorned leader despite having a more fruitful and productive conversation on the platform are those that are most probably least likely to positively engage with the platform in the first place.
Um, so you're reinventing the private club... quite an original idea.... But not really a useful one in any sense. You don't need any special technology to implement this idea. Just have a membership board that votes in/out members if it's such an exclusive group. This in itself is rather solved problem, but not a useful problem worth discussing when addressing issues on a larger scale.
What I advocate for is not a simple up and down vote by the existing members. What I advocate for is a web-of-trust without the cryptography and with some sane AI to handle things like responding to malicious account take overs and other tricky bits like dealing with forged identities.
This isn't my invention. This has been used before in a limited form at Dribble and it worked to keep the riff raff out.
It's way too much friction. It's why we are commenting here, on this open site, instead of lobste.rs
As an absolute last resort, yes, invite only does work. But people will only seek out invites if there is something extremely desirable to be found on the site like a private torrent tracker.
It works just fine if you're willing to move to an invite only system and ban not just the bot, but the person that invited them. Possibly even another level up.
The problem with this system is that it leads to much less inflated numbers about active users, etc. So very few companies do it.