Technology

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

I think the larger problem is that we are now trying to be non-controversal to avoid downvotes.

Who thinks it's a good idea to self censor on social media? Because that's what you are doing, because of the downvote system.

I will never agree downvotes are a net positive. They create censorship and allows the ignorant mob or bots to push down things they don't like reading.

Bots make it worse of course, since they can just downvote whatever they are programmed to downvote, and upvote things that they want to be visible. Basically it's like having an army of minions to manipulate entire platforms.

All because of downvotes and upvotes. Of course there should be a way to express that you agree or disagree but should that affect visibility directly? I don't think so.

Long before cryptocurrencies existed, proof-of-work was already being used to hinder bots. For every post, vote, etc., a cryptographic task has to be solved by the device used for it. Imperceptibly fast for the normal user, but for a bot trying to perform hundreds or thousands of actions in a row, a really annoying speed bump.

See e.g. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

This combined with more classic blockades such as CAPTCHAs (especially image recognition, which is still expensive in mass despite the advances in AI) should at least represent a first major obstacle.

A chain/tree of trust. If a particular parent node has trusted a lot of users that proves to be malicious bots, you break the chain of trust by removing the parent node. Orphaned real users would then need to find a new account that is willing to trust them, while the bots are left out hanging.

Not sure how well it would work on federated platforms though.

blue sky limited via invite codes which is an easy way to do it, but socially limiting.

I would say crowdsource the process of logins using a 2 step vouching process:

1. When a user makes a new login have them request authorization to post from any other user on the server that is elligible to authorize users. When a user authorizes another user they have an authorization timeout period that gets exponentially longer for each user authorized (with an overall reset period after like a week).

2. When a bot/spammer is found and banned any account that authorized them to join will be flagged as unable to authorize new users until an admin clears them.

Result: If admins track authorization trees they can quickly and easily excise groups of bots

I think the only way to solve this problem for good would be to tie social media accounts to proof of identity. However, apart from what would certainly be a difficult technical implementation, this would create a whole bunch of different problems. The benefits would probably not outweigh the costs.

1. Make bot accounts a separate type of account so legitimate bots don't appear as users. These can't vote, are filtered out of post counts and users can be presented with more filtering option for them. Bot accounts are clearly marked.

2. Heavily rate limit any API that enables posting to a normal user account.

3. Make having a bot on a human user account bannable offence and enforce it strongly.

As others said you can't prevent them completely. Only partially. You do it four steps:

1. Make it unattractive for bots.
2. Prevent them from joining.
3. Prevent them from posting/commenting.
4. Detect them and kick them out.

The sad part is that, if you go too hard with bot eradication, it'll eventually inconvenience real people too. (Cue to Captcha. That shit is great against bots, but it's cancer if you're a human.) Or it'll be laborious/expensive and not scale well. (Cue to "why do you want to join our instance?").

How do we even fix this issue or prevent it from affecting Lemmy??

Simple. Just scream that everyone whose opinion you dislike is a bot.

Internet is not a place for public discourse, it never was. it's the game of numbers where people brigade discussions and make it confirm to their biases.

Post something bad about the US with facts and statistics in US centric reddit sub, youtube video or article, and see how it divulges into brigading, name calling and racism. Do that on lemmy.ml to call out china/russia. Go to youtube videos with anything critical about India.

For all countries with massive population on the internet, you're going to get bombarded with lies, delfection, whataboutism and strawman. Add in a few bots and you shape the narrative.

There's also burying bad press with literally downvoting and never interacting.

Both are easy on the internet when you've got the brainwashed gullible mass to steer the narrative.

By being small and unimportant

One argument in favor of bots on social media is their ability to automate routine tasks and provide instant responses. For example, bots can handle customer service inquiries, offer real-time updates, and manage repetitive interactions, which can enhance user experience and free up human moderators for more complex tasks. Additionally, they can help in disseminating important information quickly and efficiently, especially in emergency situations or for public awareness campaigns.