Was on the other site when a commenter pointed out a response that and like 5 or 6 replies to that comment that were all bots. I am finally getting exposed to the concept of dead internet theory. So, how prevalent are bots on a place like lemmy? Are there natural safeguards against bots? I’m not an engineer and probably need a dumbed down explanation. But I did make it to lemmy! So I’ve got that going for me…
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Most of the bots you’ll see are rss feed and copypaste posts from reddit. The reddit ones i haven’t seen in awhile though.
I think OP means less bots that are set up to be bots, and more “bot accounts pretending to be human”
Yeah I know. I was just checking the other boxes as well.
I think you’re the only one beyond the rss and repost bots
Everyone is a boy except for you.
Sweet. starts playing Rihanna’s Only Girl in the World
Yeah. Boys only. Lemmia is where the girls are.
Wait I thought there were no boys on the internet
Oh wait, uh, no boy here. Shhhhhh not a spy.
I should fix it, but now it’s funnier that I don’t.
Agreed lol!
Imma be honest. Im new to this platform, relatively, and I love how much more human the interactions feel.
Much love! Boys rule! Lmao!
Prevalent but not nearly to the extent of corporate social media.
Labeled bots that just post content?
There was/is some but I blocked them long ago.
Bots pretending to be humans in the comment section?
Nothing believable, it works on reddit because most posts are reposts so the bots just recreate the old comment chain. It looks like an authentic human conversation because it was. But even on reddit I doubt there are many bots who can respond logically and not just recycle whatever got up voted last time. Because the boys are also up voting each other and reinforcing it
That’s “dead internet” once the bots are more active and outweigh humans on the algorithm, it doesn’t matter what people like, just who paid the most for bots.
Then the internet becomes a giant waste of electricity that people just stop using.
I don’t think that it’s super prevalent. Most are labeled, but the lemmy users seem to really hate bots and report them very quickly, even false positives. Unlabeled bot accounts usually get banned pretty quickly.
I have maybe 5 users tagged as Russian bots, whether or not they are is debatable but they don’t seem to comment on or post anything but Russian State propaganda.
lol your .ml admins are gonna ban you for “russophobia”, maybe switch instances?
I keep meaning to. But it’ll be like the 4th time I’ve done that. I have yet to find an instance I’m happy with
your own instance
I mean, I don’t even use Linux, I’m not sure that’s possible. No no no, I shall continue to migrate until I find the Goldilocks instance.
you don’t need to use linux to host your own instance.
That was a joke.
Most people on Lemmy with the technical knowledge and hardware to host their own instance would also almost certainly be Linux users.
Bots are easier to test on smaller platforms. Lemmy also has a lot of extremists that than be easily tricked to blindly believing the bot because they agree with the machine propaganda.
Bots are rampant, you just need ti pay attention.
They exist on Lemmy. If they are labeled and serve a useful function they are generally not a problem. I find people with Alts or those that use AI to respond to people more annoying honestly.
I think other posters note that Lemmy is not a major target due to low user count and decentralized nature.
I’m like totally a bot and stuff.
bots aren’t saturating lemmy yet because there are not enough users to automate marketing towards yet. (maybe yes to those special cases where there are big enough communities)
lemmy and fediverse does seem to lack a standard approach to moderation and that includes anti-bot stuff.
u/ we are all @ crazypeople . online
lmao
It’s on the internet, so I assume at least four out of every three posts are bots trying to sell me something or to get me to hate someone. 🤷♂️
Well that’s just crazy. Almost as crazy as the deals you could get at Blue Chew.
Any interest in one free trip to the end of the internet? (https://hmpg.net/, warning: white background)
No if its written on the internet, it has to be true! /s
There’s a rule where if you post the wrong information on purpose, someone is gonna correct you more often than just asking a question. It’s called Poe’s Law.
Please buy my subscription to be able to visit my Nigerian castle at any time
i can’t really tell the difference between bots and idiots who are pushing an agenda/astroturfing. is there really functionally any difference for the end user?
it’s quite different from the perceptive of an admin, for sure.
Dumb and shitty and even innocuous content can proliferate way faster with bots I’d assume. It’s just making the whole experience lower quality and bums me out. To have been on early Internet and to see what most of it is now. I guess I’m just old person yelling at clouds age now.
They exist but they’re supposed to be labeled. There’s an account setting to mark an account as a bot. Anyone deploying them in good faith should be flagging them appropriately.
The bots¹ I noticed are all posts, no comments. Mostly memes, or comics, or YSK, or similar. New account, less than 7 days. Their posts aways get on front page sorted by All/Top-Day.
¹Suspected bots, no clue if they are bots. But given that 90-9-1 rule, comments should be higher than posts imo, like why post stuff if you just never engage in comments, weirdo. 20 posts in political stuff and 0 comments is sus as hell.
Anyways, maybe we need to return to Ham Radios lol. Try botting thats shit.
Ham radios could totally be botted, there are plenty of voice models out there that would sound convincing. I assume there’s just not much call for it yet because there aren’t many people to reach on ham radio.
Once people start congregating to a new medium, that medium will become worth targeting. I don’t think that can be stopped without some heavy duty gatekeeping. You might want to read up on proof of personhood protocols for some ideas.
They’re around but not nearly as bad as they are on sites like Reddit, Facebook, X, etc. They are also usually called out when someone is trying to circumvent the bot tag. It probably helps that Lemmy is much smaller, so there’s less incentive to send spambots to something like Lemmy compared to larger places.
That said, asudox is right in that there aren’t really any built in safeguards either, it’s pretty much up to the admins and/or mods to stop them.
