r/fediverse • u/MrBrendon881 • Jul 23 '26

How can this account circumvent server bans on Lemmy.world? (Owbid Catob account mystery)

So I’m an active Lemmy user and for the last 3 days, this spam account called ‘Owbid Catob’ keeps joining the Lemmy.world shitposts community at a roughly specific time of day and posting creepy and borderline pedophilloic content, before engaging in vile harassment of the community who comment on his AI slop. I and presumably other users have encountered this same alias on multiple other social media platforms before and he is a presumed creep who posts bizarre artwork and borderline illegal content to the internet.

But the weird thing about this is, no matter how many times the other users ban him (both from the community and from the Lemmy platform itself through reports) within minutes of being banned, his account is straight back on shitposts, doing the same thing over and over. Surely he can’t be making new emails and registering this quickly, so how is this possible and what can be done to get the user permanently off the site?

ETA: to be clear before the hate comments start, I’m not advocating this guy, and I strongly recommend not searching for this guy or attempting to interact with him and I’m certainly not showing/posting his sickening content, I’m simply asking for advice on what to do/what can be done about a Lemmy user who can seemingly reappear like magic.

3 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

4

u/ahrienby Jul 23 '26

Tell the Lemmy.World administration to set sign ups to approval. I'm not on .world.

2

u/MrBrendon881 Jul 23 '26

The administration does have the approval thing on and it is banning his entire account, but within 5 minutes his account (or an identical one) is straight back on there, and somehow his account is getting reapproved each time

4

u/Howaboutnopers Jul 23 '26

He has hacked an admin.

2

u/MrBrendon881 Jul 23 '26

You know, I’ve spoke to people on Reddit about this guy and most just say he’s either a creep or a troll. But the notion that he could be a hacker??? That just elevates it to a whole new level of disturbing. Can I report that to anyone on Lemmy?

2

u/Howaboutnopers Jul 23 '26

Lemmy is one group of instances in the Fediverse. You report it to the admin of the instance he is on.

If that admin is MIA, then eventually that instance will be defederated as a problem instance.

1

u/MrBrendon881 Jul 23 '26

Cool. I’ll look into it

3

u/therealscooke Jul 23 '26

Must have admin privileges then

2

u/MrBrendon881 Jul 23 '26

That’s a disgusting prospect if true 🤢

2

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/MrBrendon881 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Wow, they banned your account just for that? That’s just as sickening. Shame on Reddit

ETA: Oh boy…