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submitted 3 months ago by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I've had a pretty depressing morning, scrolling through my Subscribed feed and realising that 90% of new posts were from the same two bot accounts (bagel and somethingmelon, can't be remeber exactly and I've blocked them.)

Thankfully, a few people had made "ai slop" comments under one, so I checked the post history and, sure, a new account posting at a implausible rate. And once you started looking at the posts they were kinda samey, generic or a bit off. But I think that if the bot had been programmed to post at a slower rate, I don't think I'd have really noticed.

So my question is, should people be allowed to report bot accounts? And can/should mods be expected at assess someone's humanity? The very idea is gross, but so is the thought that lemmy would be very easily swamped by a small number of more careful written bots.

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[-] StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 months ago

If a bot isn't declaring itself as a bot, yes. Report it.

[-] slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

If it's a bot that is not registered as a bot, yes it should be reported.

If it's registered as a bot account it doesn't show up in my feed because I have the hide bot posts.

[-] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

The only reason I have that setting off is because I really enjoy the daily bunnies community. And that one is basically just a bot posting the daily illustration

[-] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 1 points 3 months ago

Perhaps bot block should have a whitelist.

[-] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This would be nice. Or something like an NSFW filter, so you can know a bot posted but ignore it unless you want to see it.

[-] JGrffn@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

I'd just like to clarify that thick Latina bots will NOT be reported. Thank you for your attention on this matter.

[-] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 months ago

As long as all it is is something like a bot that checks a website and posts the latest links in it's own sealed off community ( just the bot allowed to post and maybe comments off to keep discussion on posts done by actual people ), I don't have much of a problem with it as long as it doesn't interact with others in the comments, real or bot. And as long as there's something like an icon to clearly show it's something like an RSS bot, I don't mind. Reporting them, I'd say they're fine not to be as long as they don't interact with people.

But other types of bots? Spam posting bots? Yeah, maybe we shouldn't have them and they should be reported, after actually assessing whether or not they're an actual bot account and not just someone without a life. I don't care how much lower it makes the daily post count and such drops, I'd rather see less things that are posted by a human than more things posted by bots.

Also, this comment has made me a little annoyed because with how I have my phones keyboard set up, every time I type "bot" it wants so badly to autocorrect to "not" instead.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Thanks for the thread. I've been noticing those accounts and have been trying to figure out what action I should take as a mod.

What's really fucked up about it is that the content is actually pretty coherent and on-topic, and it seems clear that at least some of the comments are human -- like it's more "tool-assisted" than fully "bot." So it feels like it's almost valuable but also kinda 'cheating,' which (from a mod perspective) makes it hard to decide what to do about it.


What I'd really like to know is what techniques these accounts are using and what they're actually up to. The other day I gave one a warning and demanded an explanation, but I only got an angry reply and then the account was nuked by an admin before I had the chance to do anything else.

this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
7 points (100.0% liked)

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