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2026-07-17 05:21:32

cazabon@mindly.social

I keep seeing this weird thing happening in the fedi, and I'm not sure if it's malicious or not.

I keep seeing what look like obvious duplicate accounts - same account name, same profile image, same description, only different Mastodon instances - taking identical action. Following my account, or boosting or favouriting a toot, all simultaneously (or close enough not to matter).

I'm having trouble imagining why anyone would do this deliberately. Is there some Mastodon/Fedi app that automatically creates a duplicate account - a "backup" or something - and mirrors all your activity from one account to the other?

[edit: fix typo]

#fediverse #mastodon #duplicate #DuplicateAccount

2026-07-17 05:25:35

Sea

Sea1Am@mastodon.social

@cazabon

I spotted one of those the other day for the first time. I dont know what their game is.

2026-07-17 08:39:44

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Sea @C. Are you absolutely certain that they are all Mastodon accounts? Have you checked their profiles at the sources (in a Web browser, in case you're on a phone with a dedicated Mastodon app) and seen a Mastodon profile page?

I mean, yes, some of them are on Mastodon. But not all Fediverse actors that at least sometimes appear in several instances are on Mastodon.

See, certain non-Mastodon Fediverse server software has a feature called "nomadic identity" (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Nomadic_identity). This makes it possible to create clones (live backups sync'd bidirectionally against each other in real time) of one's identity with everything attached to it on other servers. First and foremost, it's Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla; https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) that offers this feature, and it has since 2012.

What you see in this case is not two separate Fediverse identities, one of which is an automated reposter bot. It's one cloned nomadic identity, only that Mastodon can't understand it as such because it lacks the technical means to do so.

The idea behind this is resilience by redundancy: One server with your identity goes down, and you lose nothing because you still have the exact self-same identity with everything on at least one other server. Even if that server goes back online, the instance of your identity on it catches up with the others. The whole concept was born from Friendica servers disappearing and their users losing everything.

Fediverse server applications that know nomadic identity see all instances of a cloned identity as one and the same identity.

But Fediverse server applications like Mastodon that don't know nomadic identity see them as separate Fediverse accounts with separate identities.

For example, the Hubzilla channel that I'm replying from right now has one clone, so it has two instances. Mastodon understands them as two individual accounts. So do all Mastodon users, also because the huge majority of them has never heard of nomadic identity.

Thus, there are Mastodon users who follow both my main instance and my clone because they think these are two separate accounts. And now they end up receiving each one of my posts twice. Also, the federated timeline of the Mastodon server that they're on lists each one of my posts twice.

The latter also happens when one user on any given Mastodon server follows my main instance, and another user follows my clone.

Most Mastodon users, upon seeing my posts twice, will assume that I'm running some automated reposting bot (technically speaking, I could, but I don't) that serves to a) increase my reach and b) circumvent mutes and blocks. At least some may be tempted to block both my original instance and my clone.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Clone #Clones #NomadicIdentity

2026-07-17 05:26:01

brett

brett@brettiverse.com

@cazabon I haven't seen this personally but I think if you're trying to force something to the Explore page, the most account-efficient way to do this is have one account on each big instance.