this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024

121 points (88.1% liked)

Fediverse

28490 readers

426 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Posts must be on topic.
Be respectful of others.
Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

121

Is the bot/troll situation getting worse? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

174 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It feels like the amount of both, divisive posts and ghoulish comments is rising again.

One could argue that the world has a lot of divisive stuff going on and lemmy just talks about it. But the way people post about stuff seems more oot and hateful than it has been in the past.

Not saying it is that but if I wanted to bring the Fediverse down or at least keep my customers from going there, I would sow this stuff as much as I can.

I'm blocking ghouls left right and center atm but if I ever asked a friend to join lemmy, I'd hate to think of what they would see that I dont anymore.

Do we need stronger moderation?

Maybe ban politics from c/memes?
Become a little more stringent on "dont be a jerk" rules in communities?

One thing that really bothers me is the collapsing "discourse". Trying to mend fences and keep the conversation between sides going ime leads to nothing but downvotes and shitstorm.

I feel like a little more interaction (instead of intervention, at first) of the moderators would do wonders there.

Thanks for reading this rant. Have a nice day.

(page 2) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah we should have ignore and reporting lists that is on an invite only basis, which then can be shared by users of said list. If you didnt get invited then you should be able to copy a users reported/ignored list to make the whole fediverse more palatable. Each bunch of list users can then cross reference each potential bad actors. Then each month each admin could implement a ban of thoses accounts and perhaps try to filter new incomers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I’ve certainly encountered a few of them myself. I keep reporting them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Good idea. Thanks for commenting. Have a good one. :)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You're not imagining it. I'm pretty sure you can see regular work from propaganda teams on lemmy. I'd love to see the backed logs to confirm it.

They tend to work in very hostile teams to brigade topics.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (7 children)

I‘m encountering it this exact moment in a piracy discussion where some very abusive people start arguing for IP and excuse the blatant manipulation by calling limited licenses „buying“ and „owning“.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I followed the thread you're talking about, you might be a bit overly sensitive to what constitutes a conversation on the internet. I don't find the trolling any worse or better today vs. last week or last year.

You might want to make an account over at beehaw, they like to stay pretty sheltered over there and have defederated from, well, pretty much everyone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Well, I‘m not a bit overly sensitive I just dont like to be manipulated and insulted. It frankly do not care how people treat their family and friends. Having a discussion without personal attacks is normal and everything else is normalized abuse.

load more comments (11 replies)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's interesting right?

I'm thinking the architecture of the fediverse makes it particularly vulnerable to these sorts of attacks.

I'm pretty sure I've spotted bots circle jerking on some subjects also which makes me think there's a few different sources.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Very interesting indeed.

I‘m starting to report, block and ban accounts from being viewed on my instance that use abusive language but from a systemic standpoint we should find a design solution to make this work.

Reddit had karma for this reason among others. People needed to make helpful contributions to prove they are able to function in the group.

For many reasons this is not implemented in the fediverse but a design solution would be good.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (5 children)

If I was designing an anti troll/bot system I'd implement a few things. Let's call any bad actor on here a bot/troll or broll for ease.

Reputation based posting isn't a bad idea if carefully done
When a broll is banned any users from the same ip are flagged a suspect and a subsequent ban causes delayed posting from that ip. If a VPN the instance host list has the same effect applied. Exceptions based on Reputation.
You can check if text is ai/llm generated and an automated api check before posting and immediate ban if found.
Checks on if a user posts inhumanly fast or is oddly active etc would be sensible.
Any broll system has to be adaptive and measures taken need to be kept secret (this post for example).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Very good ideas! Any idea if something like this already exists? If not, shall we work on something? I have some experience in python if that helps.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

PieFed is an open source lemmy alternative (written in Python) that makes good use of karma/reputation, as shown in this video:

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/system/media_attachments/files/111/648/646/494/228/522/original/02cb1b5182a1f9b6.mp4

Try the demo site at https://piefed.social and check out https://join.piefed.social. Also see https://piefed.social/c/piefed_meta for recent feature announcements.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I‘m not searching for another thing to start but a way to make the current thing work. But thanks.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Thanks but not sure what's currently implemented or even what the code base is written in 😅.

I might have a poke around and see if there's any low hanging fruit.

Call me crazy but with a 5b ipo about to start I'd be shocked if reddit wasn't paying some troll farms to brigade the fediverse and it'd be a shame if spez wins