this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Bots are running rampant. How do we stop them from ruining Lemmy? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
289 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit are increasingly infested with bots and fake accounts, leading to significant manipulation of public discourse. These bots don't just annoy users—they skew visibility through vote manipulation. Fake accounts and automated scripts systematically downvote posts opposing certain viewpoints, distorting the content that surfaces and amplifying specific agendas.

Before coming to Lemmy, I was systematically downvoted by bots on Reddit for completely normal comments that were relatively neutral and not controversial​ at all. Seemed to be no pattern in it... One time I commented that my favorite game was WoW, down voted -15 for no apparent reason.

For example, a bot on Twitter using an API call to GPT-4o ran out of funding and started posting their prompts and system information publicly.

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/chatgpt-bot-x-russian-campaign-meme/

Example shown here

Bots like these are probably in the tens or hundreds of thousands. They did a huge ban wave of bots on Reddit, and some major top level subreddits were quiet for days because of it. Unbelievable...

How do we even fix this issue or prevent it from affecting Lemmy??

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

by embracing methods of verifying that a user is a real person

edit: to add this example

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework-beta-version/uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework-beta-version

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Such as?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Making them multiply prime numbers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A typical process is:

You take a photo of a document (e.g. a passport or driving licence)
It is checked digitally to confirm it is genuine
You take a photo or video of yourself which is matched to the one on the document

No thanks. Hard pass

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

why?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm not comfortable uploading things like my passport to entities that have proven time and time again that they don't care about data security.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

fair enough

in this case it would be the british government that already has my passport and driver license photos stored digitally so this would just be to validate a digital login as a real person

would that change your mind at all?