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Bots are running rampant. How do we stop them from ruining Lemmy? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

288 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 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (19 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 4 months ago (18 children)

Such as?

[+] [email protected] -6 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Usually by tying your real world identity to your screen name, with your ID or mail or something.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/digital-identity

i think it should be anonymized as well so that no PII is associated with your online ids even though they are verified

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hard pass.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/digital-identity

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

From the article you linked:

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

Like I said, hard pass.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

sorry for spam replying you, i didn't notice it was the same username :)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Thats the opposite of something to embrace.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/digital-identity

does this government system sound ok in any way?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Sounds like your going to need your ID to rub one out once they get things running.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Agreed, but that's hasn't stopped people before...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

...and people will hand it out without question.

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