Sunsetting the Garuda Linux Matrix services

Due to recent discussions and recent developments, we will unfortunately have to sunset the Garuda Linux Matrix services on the 17th of October (2 weeks from the creation of this post).

This is due to the rampant abuse of Matrix as a platform both in regards to spam and illegal content that is being distributed on Matrix as a whole, as well as distributed on the official Garuda Linux Community channel and instance, creating both a moderation and legal issue for us. We don’t have the moderation capabilities to keep a matrix channel, let alone a matrix instance fully moderated. Repeated instances of abuse have unfortunately forced our hand.

On the sunsetting day, access to https://matrix.garudalinux.org will be revoked and data will be deleted in the future (the Matrix services are using over 300 GB of Garuda Linux infrastructure storage).

Please make sure you transfer the admin permissions of your rooms to another account on another matrix instance and rejoin your rooms on another server to ensure you won’t lose any data or access.

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I feel like these kinds of decentralized services like that mastodon and matrix are being flooded by illegal stuff intentionally by mossad/CIA/feds as part of an effort to destroy the possibly of non controlled services taking over. I wouldn’t put it slightly past them.

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:joy: :joy:, I never thought of it that way. I was just shocked text can consume 300GB. Don’t you think those bodies would probably spend more time in places that are of intrest rather than spam random nodes on the internet.

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mossad literally runs internet spam programs. I don’t think you understand the feds.

Maybe,but instead of spamming and generating 300 GB of shit ,

Why wont they simply hijack everything, why the hell they need to do this

They can simply hijack it, and then can pretend as private hacking organization.

And on the other hand these instances actually benefits them , because they know the people to whome they need to do extra survey are already filtered and they are using these platforms, because normal peoples won’t use these platforms as they never get to know . Hence they would actually promote it . :wink:

See, just a slight change in perspective gives you a different story :upside_down_face:

I don’t get played easily with words, but I can easily play with words :stuck_out_tongue:

what are you talking about? nothing has anything to do with that 300 gb. “hijack everything” would accomplish nothing sort of like seizing all the worlds fiat currency. thats not a different perspective (from factual statements btw) thats just dumb. what kind of hollywood idea of what feds do inhabits you?

Well, you didn’t read the whole part

My message in short was , the peoples who might be the one which should be surveyed like very tech savy or like journalists are very often using these these platforms and it gets easy to look over them if they use a different platform that is not being used by general peoples.

That’s only I wanted to say.
Sorry, my English is not that good so not able to explain properly

I do not know how Matrix works, but would it be possible to integrate the Matrix server with the forum’s authentication system? This theoretically could be done using Single Sign-On (SSO) methods like OAuth2 or SAML, ensuring that only athenticated forum members can access the Matrix instance.

Alternatively, the Chat feature could be implemented in the forum itself, via the Discourse Chat module.

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It would be possible via SSO yes, but a lot of spam is actually from other homeservers that we have no control over, meaning the issue would unfortunately stay unsolved.

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If you can distinguish federated users from your own instance users, could you implement a manual verification process involving for example a bot that asks for a TOTP you can only get from the forum’s user profile section, in order to “authenticate” the user and link it with the forum user?

A solution like this would probably be possible, but that is exactly the kind of moderation resources we don’t have.

We spend most of our custom software efforts on either Garuda Linux directly or associated projects. (Like recently: A lot of work going into version 4 of the chaotic-aur maintainer tools.) I personally believe spending that much time developing a custom solution to our moderation problem for our Matrix instance is time that could be better spent elsewhere.

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Would registered Garuda user moderation volunteers be of any help in stemming the tide of illegal/spam materials? How could users volunteer to become moderators? I’m thinking that with more people working to stop this type of trash, we may be able to keep this resource, and stop the garbage, at least, on our instance, but I don’t know if this would work. What do you think?

Ernie

This is a bummer. I like Matrix in spite of its flaws, and it does have its issues with spam, but in practice I’ve seen so much more spam make its way cross-channel through the telegram bot than any other source. The use of bridges makes procedures for reporting a bit more opaque, so it usually sits for a few minutes. Is garuda going to continue operating the room itself from a third party homeserver?

Unfortunately, more volunteers would not help. It’s a bigger issue than that.

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That’s the nature of moderation, it always sits for a moment. Admins can’t look at rooms constantly. We’re only humans after all!

No, it will be terminated.

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I am sure that the garuda team did not take the decision to discontinue the service lightly. They will have weighed the pros and cons as best they could and discussed possible solutions.

The available manpower is better used in Garuda than in a service for which there are many alternatives. We should therefore simply accept this decision.

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NEVER MIND - I DID READ NOW

Gathering from what I’ve read, I will not be able to join the public #garuda:garudalinux.org room because I would need an invitation, since federation is disabled?
If I try to join the public room from my own homeserver, I get:

Failed to join
MatrixError: [403] You are not invited to this room. (https://matrix.deadsec.net/_matrix/client/v3/join/%23garuda%3Agarudalinux.org?server_name=garudalinux.org&via=garudalinux.org)

Oh, sad that it got abused so much.

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Yes, very sad indeed. Besides the usual crypto spam, the last straw was some very illegal content posted in the Matrix side :frowning: there aren’t real moderation tools for Matrix yet and content posted here will eventually end up on our servers. In case of the mentioned post, that’s a very bad thing. You don’t want to be exposed to that :melting_face:

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Sorry, I’m probs a bit hard of reading here ^^; so there won’t be a Matrix channel/chat for Garuda anymore, starting tomorrow?
Will that mean there’s no more IRC bridging etc as well, and everything will stay on Telegram from now on?

The bridging services are actually currently offline, but they will be online in a few hours again. There will be bridging between discord <> telegram <> irc.

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