At this point, it’s become a bit meme on Reddit to share the creepy or disgusting DMs you receive. However, nothing like that has happened to me here yet, even though I’ve been active for the equivalent of three or four of those pervy chat invitations on Reddit. I’m no less active here.

  • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
    11·
    11 hours ago

    I recall some users get threatening / doxxing messages, but the admins shut that down pretty fast. I think that qualifies as creepy.

    The other week I saw someone publically replying to Velma that they know who she is and where she lives in a “not threatening” threatening way, which was pretty fucked up.

    To get these messages, you need to severely irritate a special kind of user. I most often see it as a result of having escalating political arguments.

  • Gonzako@lemmy.world
    17·
    14 hours ago

    Well, you haven’t given me consent! I’m a pervert but you gotta show interest first.

    • Maiq@piefed.zipEnglish
      12·
      18 hours ago

      That was some fucked up snuff ending. I often think about that time in lemmy history, really try not to bring her up and refer to her as “she who must not be named”.

      • shartgargle@lemmy.zip
        9·
        16 hours ago

        I remember “her” but I don’t recall the ending. To me it just kinda went away with a blip.

        • Maiq@piefed.zipEnglish
          18·
          15 hours ago

          Not gonna say much besides it was grim. Then lemmy instances joined together and banned the user, whoever it was and started blocking the image. Soon after there seemed to be a general consensus across the board to stop talking about her/them. To stop feeding whatever they were doing. And the fediverse moved on.

        • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
          13·
          9 hours ago

          Someone was DMing people pictures of a woman with a typical “Hi I’m Nicole, lets chat” type of message. At first people were sharing the dm’s to laugh at the obvious scam, and it was an achievement if you a) got a message at all and b) got a new photo. However we soon realized there were many too many different similar “webcam” style pictures to be some random lady a scammer/troll pulled of facebook or something.

          Supposeldy, people started digging and found a live stream, and that led to other issues with a flood of random people asking her about Lemmy (not sure if that part is true).

          Anyway, we started to suspect it was some disgruntled ex or crazy viewer sending the messages who was either screenshoting a live stream or a hacked webcam.

          Admins decided clear out all posts about her to stop the attention so people would leave the actual lady alone and discourge anything similar.

        • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world
          3·
          12 hours ago

          I got DMs from “her” also. A while back there was someone who would send pictures of herself (not graphic in any way) and try to initiate conversations… Lots of them. I forgot what the pretext was and also the intent, but “she” had to go. You don’t want to be like “her.”

    • expatriado@lemmy.world
      27·
      22 hours ago

      i don’t think we never knew if it was her or someone else using her pictures pretending to be her

      • shweddy@lemmy.world
        321·
        22 hours ago

        I’m 51% sure it was spam/malware. I feel like I recall reading something that said something along the lines of they were sending messages out so that when the picture loaded they’d get location/ip data of the users who opened the message

      • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
        23·
        21 hours ago

        I actually dug into her (I was bored) and ended up finding her. The photo was really old but she seems to be doing well. Idk what the point of the message spam was though or why they’d use her picture

    • Zak@lemmy.world
      18·
      22 hours ago

      I got messages from that account, but none of them were creepy, disgusting, or pervy. They seemed like a social experiment or some such.

      I didn’t reply though. Maybe people who interacted with the account got something more explicit.

  • Lumidaub@feddit.org
    55·
    22 hours ago

    Lemmy is SO so so so much smaller. They have to be real desperate to try here, especially when reddit is a thing that exists. Everybody say, “thank you, reddit!”

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      13·
      22 hours ago

      We’re what… 1% of the size of Reddit? Less? (Lemmy+Piefed, not the whole Fediverse). To set up custom APIs and annoyances for what would probably be almost insta-banned doesn’t seem worth it compared to Reddit who will happily allow you to send to near everyone. Hell a basic NSFW subreddit is probably magnitudes larger than all of us.

      • QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works
        8·
        12 hours ago

        sigh I just have to do the math for this one, I just NEED to know the actual number.

        according to reddit they had 1 billion monthly active users in 2022, then they stopped reporting it for I assume stock reasons 🤷‍♀️

        we know Lemmy monthly active users is ~40,000. I added all of the totals from piefed statistics page for Lemmy + Piefed + Mbin https://piefed.social/statistics?software=Lemmy

        so that’s 1,000,000,000 vs 40,000

        that’s a ratio of 25,000 to 1. For every one Lemmy user there is 25,000 people on Reddit. that’s 0.004%

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        10·
        18 hours ago

        Much, much less. Reddit has some fraction of a billion active users, going by it’s status as one of the big world platforms, while we have some fraction of 10,000, so more like 0.001%.

        • Dave@lemmy.nz
          5·
          17 hours ago

          Lemmy + Piefed (+mbin if you want) is something like 38,000 users.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
            5·
            37 minutes ago

            Users in general, or active users? Reddit probably has tens of billions of inactive accounts.

            If it is active users, and Lemmy-Piefed is suddenly growing, that’s great, though.

            • Dave@lemmy.nz
              10·
              17 hours ago

              That’s “monthly active users”. Though a bit different from how reddit counts their MAU as Lemmy can’t report on logged out users (since that info isn’t collected or shared between instances) and doesn’t report on users logged in but not interacting (you must vote, comment, or post within the last month to count).

              The fediverse is growing but slowly, and is nowhere near the peak of 3 years ago. But no one expected it to stay.

              If you check the Lemmy history you’ll find it very slowly losing users, but piefed is gaining users faster than Lemmy is losing them.

              Unfortunately fediverse.observer shut down recently so it’s hard to find the past stats these days.

              • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
                1·
                12 minutes ago

                Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for the details.

                but piefed is gaining users faster than Lemmy is losing them.

                Wonderful! Glad to hear it. The last thing I heard was just the slow shrinking.

                It can’t really go wrong, since it’s an open standard. Slow, steady growth will get us there eventually. Or intermittent growth.

                Unfortunately fediverse.observer shut down recently so it’s hard to find the past stats these days.

                Boo!

      • Hadriscus@jlai.lu
        2·
        18 hours ago

        We’re what… 1% of the size of Reddit? Less?

        I have no idea but my gut says not even one-thousandth

    • clif@lemmy.world
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Instead of sending a DM, we upload the text to an unlinked, unlisted, text file with a randomly generated filename, on a webserver running on a non-standard port, and no domain name associated with it. If the user finds it, then it was meant to be 💘

      “Sending” you one now.

      • QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        4·
        12 hours ago

        In spring 2025 there was lots of spam featuring picture of a woman and some text “Hey, I am Nicole, but you can call me the fediverse chick”. Those messages went into people’s DMs if I recall correctly. It was downright relentless wave of spam and as an instance admin I had to handle at least 30 reports a day at one point. Those messages could also feature spam links and even gore. Wild theories about who Nicole really is and where the spam originates started popping up. There was even speculation that this could be related to a murder.

        Thankfully all that spam later fizzled out, and it drove development of Lemmy’s moderation features.