What's up with the spam from a bot user called Nicole? I get it on every account I have...

What’s up is the same thing that’s up with every other spam bot: making us play whac-a-mole.

I think you answered your own question. It’s spam from a bot user called Nicole.

The issue is anonymous account creation + open access for new anonymous accounts to do whatever they want until it’s “proved” that they’re up to no good.

The thing I don’t get is on other platforms you get spammed by fake hot people, why is this not spamming an ugly photo with non-popular media? It doesn’t make sense.
- It might be just an actual real person, who's chosen this method not realizing that it is abusive to talk with everyone with their pitch for money and friendship, on a network this large. Or, more likely, it's a scammer who is figuring that it'll work better to use a photo of a real-looking person instead of an obvious catfish hot girl.
  (I'm not actually convinced, I would assume that the same type of person who falls for this stuff is also more lizard-brain-driven and will react more strongly to a hot person texting them regardless of how much sense it makes.)

Banned from our [Polish] instance. Sus.

I've blocked 5 different alt accounts already...
I think they have many users too.

That's the common picture. If you are lucky you can get the other ones too.

Oh! You’ve been collecting them haha
- I have two of the common one and the rare with the blue pin. I heard that there is a third one, but people who have it, understandably, dosen't share it, so I don't know how it looks.
This is the one I got. I wonder why they use different photos sometimes
- Holy fuck, the legendary third one. Congratulations on that.

I don't know, they send this message from different accounts as well. I might have banned two of those already on my instance.

(PS: this community is intended as support for people setting up Lemmy instances, not as general Lemmy support)

I'm running my instance if that's relevant! :)
Thanks. I banned them as well.
- Sorry, didn't know!

Why would I call you the fediverse chick when you didn’t even name yourself the fediverse chick on your fediverse account?

Lol

I have banned multiple of those accounts for DM spam. Banned a new one just now.

I'm not sure this is a bot. I suspect it might be a real person who doesn’t realize how they're coming across. Initially, I thought it might be a strategy to get attention, but if that were the case, I’d be surprised by their persistence with a strategy that isn’t very effective.

I suppose it is kind of effective if we are making posts about them... Hmm...

I prefer not making too many assumptions other than to assume no malice. But of course the DM spam will not be tolerated.

I had never gotten one when I saw this post, then immediately got one after.

Nicole messages might be transmissible.

Now I just got another!
- Me too, but it was the common one, what a bummer.