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How Will Lemmy and Social Media Handle Advanced Bots in the Future? (discuss.online)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As technology advances and computers become increasingly capable, the line between human and bot activity on social media platforms like Lemmy is becoming blurred.

What are your thoughts on this matter? How do you think social media platforms, particularly Lemmy, should handle advanced bots in the future?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For commercial services like Twitter or Reddit the bots make sense because it lets the platforms have inflated "user" numbers while also more random nonsense to sell ads against.

But for the fediverse, the goals would be, post random stuff into the void and profit?? Like I guess you could long game some users into a product that they only research on the fediverse, but seems more cost effective for the botnets to attack the commercial networks first.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There is a lot to be gained by politically astroturfing, and that is already widespread in the fediverse

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

Has someone posted an argument, or do you in the future see yourself seeing an argument with someone on here taking the side of "alternative facts" and letting that change your mind? If not then it's just someone likely downvoted to the bottom that people will ignore anyways, not worth the time to post it. I think something like Facebook works for these types of things better, as the population is generally older and more likely to see and reshare just any nonsense true or not.

Because I personally don't see the fediverse as a great medium for trying to bring people into the cult, and the ability to bring people out of the cult is even less likely online, fediverse or not.

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

In general I believe all online communities are toxic when it comes to political discussion and just enable cult behavior. I think both Facebook and the fediverse have the ability to sway options, but at different capacities.

Facebook is simple and easy to use, and because of that it’s widely adopted and you make connections through people you (kinda sorta) know irl. This leads to a false sense of security and can poison your bubble of connections.

With vote manipulation, whitewash communities, brigading, bots, and general anonymity, the fediverse is not any better equipped to deal with “alternative facts.” It being more niche and less user friendly weeds out some people, and you are left with a user base that has slightly more education and decision making skills…but no one is completely immune to manipulative tactics. Bots with agendas are not always easy to identify and continue getting more refined. It’s easy to lose track of the push & pull if you are chronically online..which many fediverse users are.

I don’t have any solutions other than attempting to educate on how to spot misinformation and approach ideas critically. Even with doing that it’s far for 100% and that number keeps declining with age.