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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??

(page 6) 47 comments

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Is this a problem here? One thing we should also avoid is letting paranoia divide the community. It's very easy to take something like this and then assume everyone you disagree with must be some kind of bot, which itself is damaging.

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

Yeah, it’s a problem. You just don’t see it as often yet. A while back there were a large number of communities being blasted by bots, and they would make it into the hot category because nothing else was going on at the time.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

One argument in favor of bots on social media is their ability to automate routine tasks and provide instant responses. For example, bots can handle customer service inquiries, offer real-time updates, and manage repetitive interactions, which can enhance user experience and free up human moderators for more complex tasks. Additionally, they can help in disseminating important information quickly and efficiently, especially in emergency situations or for public awareness campaigns.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago

Give up. There is no hope we already lost. Fuck us fuck our lives fuck everything we should just die.

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

I love dailydot. They summarize tiktoks about doordash and then provide the same video at the bottom of the page. I can feel my mind rot while consuming it but I still do it.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 3 months ago

Make your own bot account that randomly(or not randomly) posts something bots will reply to, a system based response preferably. Last I was looking at bots they were simply programs, and have dev commands that can return information on things like system resources, or OS version. Your bot posts commands built in from the bot apps Dev, the bots reply like bots do with their version, system resources, or whatever they have built in. Boom - Banned instantly.

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