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submitted 1 year ago by 1337tux@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml

Lemmy has multiplied it's number of users (maybe more accurately accounts) in just few days. How much do you think is the percentage of bot accounts? Is Lemmy having problem with bot farming?

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[-] DerWilliWonka@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

I wonder how people come up with the bot superstition? Just a feeling or is there any valid indication of massive influx of bot accounts?

[-] TheAngryBad@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Experience, mainly.

I used to run a phpbb forum, on average the bot signups outnumbered the real people 10 or 20 times. And that was with some fairly robust anti spam measures in place - something I think this platform is too new to have properly sorted out yet.

I may be wrong, I don't know how the back end here works, but any place where people can post publicly will be infested with bot signups very quickly. The only real variable is how good the anti spam measures are.

[-] DerWilliWonka@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

What is something someone can gain by swarming an instance or forums like yours with bots? I cant wrap my head around it. Also if someone has an instance and swarms it with bot accounts, it may seem like you got a popular instance but where is the revenue if there are noone who is able to click an ad? Do they do it just for the lols?

[-] GizmoLion@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Spin up 50 bots.
Sign them all up for lemmy.
Let accounts interact/age.
Sell accounts to companies who want to advertise as one of the cool kids.

Happened on reddit nonstop.

[-] TheDeadGuy@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Any conversation, be it political or commercial. All it takes is something sounding confident, a grain of truth and lots of upvotes to convince people.

That's why I like seeing downvoted as a red flag people can pay attention to

[-] GizmoLion@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Pretty much why Reddit removed downvotes I think... brands got tired of users raining downvotes on them for shilling lol.

[-] adamthinks@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Except that Lemmy doesn't show overall karma, so there's no use in doing any of that here.

[-] DerWilliWonka@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I have some tiny bit of doubts left but at least it does sound like one possible reason for people swarming servers with bots

[-] fu@libranet.de 1 points 1 year ago

@fu @GizmoLion @1337tux @DerWilliWonka @TheAngryBad I'm not on board with the selling part tbh, but I like the bot idea, it worked for #Reddit like the guy said

[-] GizmoLion@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I feel like you're reading a completely different conversation...

[-] fu@libranet.de 1 points 1 year ago

@GizmoLion @realcaseyrollins @1337tux @DerWilliWonka @TheAngryBad its not likely, but with how the Fediverse works its possible, whether slow federation between certain servers (for example I frequently will have posts Friendica tells me have posted to 130/135 servers within a minute but those last few can take days or never post at all) also you guys might not both see the same conversation based on who you've blocked, or been blocked by, etc. If you ever want to verify, you should be able to view it on their instance (on Kbin this is what is listed under MORE as LINK TO FEDIVERSE)

[-] fu@libranet.de 1 points 1 year ago

@realcaseyrollins @GizmoLion @1337tux @DerWilliWonka @TheAngryBad if it's not a PUBLIC conversation of course you won't be able to see it on their server if you don't have an account on that server that is included in the private body (like Friendica's default of "friends only")

[-] GizmoLion@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Looks like you are @ing someone I can't see.

Well, that's the first major point against this fediverse business... Who's going to stick around to have a conversation when everyone's only getting bits of it? That's kinda antithetical to discussion...

[-] GizmoLion@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Looks like you are @ing someone I can't see.

Well, that's the first major point against this fediverse business... Who's going to stick around to have a conversation when everyone's only getting bits of it? That's kinda antithetical to discussion...

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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
130 points (97.1% liked)

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