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.