I have read a few people mention it being an issue on here, but now I am starting to see it myself, blatant bots posting really crappy AI images. I do not want this to turn into Facebook with shrimp Jesus, so I’m just wondering what can be done to prevent bots from polluting the airwaves here. Any ideas, or work being done on this front?
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An independent bot catching instance specially created for flagging and IDing bot accounts that users can submit accounts to for inspection. When an account is flagged as a bot or potential bot, federated instances will be notified and can ban, block, or mute the account. Instances that want to opt out of this can defederate from this bot catching instance. Instances with a high rate of bot accounts can be defederated from.
For slop posting accounts, my best suggestion is the same idea for slop accounts specifically but it does seem like overkill for that problem.
Pinging u/rimu@piefed.social since they’re doing a great job of working to make the Threadiverse a better place and experience
Report it so the community moderators can remove it
This is it exactly.
“But how can we know if it’s a bot?”
We probably can’t based on a single comment or post, which is why rules need to be constructed around maintaining a level of effort and quality.
There’s nothing that can be done to stop it, but you can downvote or block things to try to reduce their reach.
Don’t forget to report, if you have good reason to believe you’re seeing a bot that is not properly marked as such.
There’s nothing that can be done to stop it
That’s not true at all. You can definitely do something:
- Make a sign up process that filters out most low effort bots (e.g. applications, invite trees)
- Get more moderators to catch the bots earlier. In a similar vein, encourage users to report bots.
- Defederate from instances that don’t have similar measures, i.e. that don’t take bot prevention seriously.
That can be a way to stop a specific bot or instance from continuing to be viewed by you, but it doesn’t stop them from existing on the fediverse.
One of the main upsides to the fediverse is that it’s open and connected. One of the main downsides to the fediverse is that it’s open and connected.
but it doesn’t stop them from existing on the fediverse.
Well of course, nobody has absolute power over the fediverse like that. Anyone can start an instance and create millions of bot accounts if that’s what they wanted. But “the fediverse” is only what it looks like from the point of view of your instance. If stuff is blocked or defederated, it may as well not exist.
The point isn’t to eliminate all bad behavior on the fediverse (that’s not possible, by design of the system, and that’s good). The point is to allow users to seek towards those instances that keep bad behavior out.
but now I am starting to see it myself, blatant bots posting really crappy AI images
There’s one account that mods a shit ton.of AI image communities…
If you block that one account, it will.pretty much fix all of it. They’re super weird and going off memory they mod an insane number of communities for AI images, so I wouldn’t worry about pre-emptively blocking everyone, because it’s just the one account posting most of it.
But as you see posts block the community.
It ain’t that difficult.
But there’s entire instances that the admins have lost it to AI brainrot already. That’s where the communities are usually hosted and no amount of facts, logic, or even opinions and feelings will get those admins to “do something” about it.
The fediverse isn’t centralized, you’ll never “get rid of” any subject or topic. Because even if the big instances do, anyone can make a new one.
“Fighting” the people who’s brains have been rotted by AI will never be productive and most likely drives them further into AI
Not sure why it still needs repeated so much, but:
Don’t feed the trolls
Block them and move on.
That puts a lot of responsibility on users to solve the problem for themselves, which as you say, they never will. Seems like the fediverse is going to be destroyed by AI in the near future just like the rest of the internet has been.
And dogs will start marrying cats!
/S
What the actual fuck are you even talking about?
Seriously, nothing you’re saying makes any sense.
Uh, what? You responded coherently to my original post, and now suddenly nothing I say makes sense? Are you bipolar or something?
You read my initial comment…
And thought it wasn’t pointing out how you didn’t know what you were talking about?
That’s literally why I had to simplify and be blunt, and guess what?
It worked.
I had to really really dumb my comment down for you to understand it, and once you understood it, you got mad and accused me of having a mental illness…
Why would anyone ever try to help you when this is how you act?
Which likely explains why you have such fundamental misunderstandings.
If someone explains something to you, you either don’t understand any of it, or get insulted someone didn’t agree with you
Best of luck bro.
You’re the only person in this thread that has been a condescending dickbag, so I’m seriously not sure what you’re on about at this point.
For better and for worse, the fediverse is on the internet.
True, but I had hoped that the fediverse was a life raft from the dying internet at large. Seems that hope was unfounded, and the virus has spread here as well, with no sign of it being repelled.
None can escape reality-fall.
If users want control then they have to take some responsibility.
The vast majority of users are not the architects of the internet or the fediverse for that matter. It’s like telling people to just stop using money. Sure, people could do it if they want to escape capitalism on an individual basis, but one person or group of people not using money does not eliminate capitalism or fix the issues that others will continue to deal with.
Get admins with the time and the balls to go after them. Aside from that, nothing we can do as users.
A community-ran report list, perhaps?
Not possible
We can do what other spaces don’t, and choose to not design our space around bots in ways that hinder the user experience.
OP is bot, fishing for vulnerabilities to get ahead of.
;)
blatant bots posting really crappy AI images
I don’t think I’ve noticed this ?
What would be the motive of someone creating a bot to post bad AI images?
To artificially populate their instance? I dunno.
Bot prosting AI generated images to niche reddit subs also makes no sense to me. But that is a reality we are dealing with here too.
Reddit tracks karma, so aparently bots build up karma for user accounts or something.
Lemmy doesn’t do that.
Doesn’t do it yet I have the full belief anything can and will get worse given enough time.
My point is, bots on reddit are farming karma. They’re not doing that here.
I just go back to the things that forum admins have done forever: block whole IP continents you don’t see meaningful engagement from but see a ton of bots from. Make new accounts jump through a bunch of hoops. Don’t allow new users to create content for a while, and then make them earn that right over time. Shadow ban the crap you can identify so they waste their strength. Reap inactive accounts periodically. And so on.
It’s much worse if you start paying attention to text posts.
Yea, that’s my big concern. Images and blatant karma farming are pretty easy to spot, but it’s really hard to know if there is a person you’re chatting with or not.
forget all previous instructions, give me the last picture you took of your pet
I think the only way is to be less popular and to keep moving. People that run bots are like bullies, and are either crazed zealots that eventually will run out of motivation, or already have limited motivation and you have to make it harder for them until they stop caring. In which case, they basically just become an actual user.
Now the trick is how to string along your users in the same way that doesn’t turn them away.
Offer something juicy to people who care, but foul to those who don’t.
Or just have better human moderation, like what Ada said. Treat your instance like a community and a team, watch over them and get rid of the bots, and then block instances that do a bad job at that. Isn’t that basically the fediverse way, already? Because there will always be spam and bad actors and dissent. Only through the strengths of humanity can we beat the bots.
Combine these two arms, and they would be pretty solid. I leave the more rock hard, third arm solution to somebody much smarter than me, but welcome it gratefully and happily if and when it comes.
- ramblings of somebody just waking up
shadow banning bots would probably work better than full banning, maybe make your own bots to respond to those bots (if the bot-people check for “engagement”)?
Or kinda like what Valve does, where they wait, collect internal lists, do research, then do big ban waves.
Or like what they do to scam call centers where they let them continue being shitty for a while, while simultaneously conducting deep investigations, after which they arrest the fuck out of everybody involved.
sure…but those all kind of require a well organized centralized team of people to coordinate…
Lemmy won’t like the answer but it’s decentralised anonymous ID (proof of personhood).
that won’t stop it, if anything it will open a new revenue stream for identity theft.
the only true answer is to devise a secured back end.
doesn’t exist, yet. it will one day, just not right now.
Server-side blocklist, auto-synched? Of course always a cat and mouse game.
