this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2024
61 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37801 readers
231 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

A well backed as usual peice by Benn Jordan on the basics of how misinformation farms work according to their own internal documentation, the goal of creating a post truth world, and why a sizable percentage of twitter users start talking about OpenAi’s terms of service every time they update it.

top 13 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ProdigalFrog 35 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Absolutely incredible breakdown of the problem. In addition to twitter, I strongly suspect Reddit is infested with a similar increase in bot accounts, which would explain how a sub I used to moderate there has some of the highest page visits its ever had, yet its actual user engagement hasn't changed at all, or even gone down.

Corporate websites, who have a financial incentive to allow the bots, have become completely unusable. The difference in interaction on Lemmy is incredibly stark, which goes to show that the fediverse seems to be far more resilient against bots since we can defederate from an instance that gets taken over, like cutting off an infected limb to stop the spread.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Hopefully, but I worry no small part of it at the moment is just that we’re too small to be worth the bother. If the fediverse grows big enough to matter, well I worry about what dedicated teams of people working a full time job could do. One or two people can easily run a few dozen active accounts, which in turn could easily dominate conversation on an instance.

[–] ProdigalFrog 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hmm... That could be an issue, you're right.

If it does get that bad, we'd gave to act more defensively by only federating with instances that have reviewed sign-ups and have received an endorsement on fediseer.

That would result in a more isolated experience, but if that's the only way to combat it, then we'll have to shift with the needs of the moment to keep it mostly humans we're interacting with, and to make the moderation workload manageable.

[–] dennis@midwest.social 1 points 1 month ago

It has started already and its coming from lemmy.ml, you can check how news-related posts align with this admin's (davel) profile, if you post anything contrary to it, you'll notice a lot more downvote than news-related communities outside lemmy.ml

Here's some sample of what he spreads:

https://midwest.social/post/19339660/13589968 Under replies

His profile is full of Chinese and Russian propaganda

[–] dan@upvote.au 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

the fediverse seems to be far more resilient against bots, since we can defederate from an instance that gets taken over,

It's very easy to spin up a new instance though, so I'm surprised there's not a lot of spam. AFAIK most servers still federate with any new servers by default as soon as a user on the new server subscribes to a person/community on an existing server. That's important to ensure equal treatment and that new servers are not disadvantaged, but it can also have issues.

[–] ProdigalFrog 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The Fediseer project from @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com helps prevent bot farms from proliferating, as new servers require an endorsement from an already trusted instance to become 'legit'. And they can be marked as untrustworthy as well, causing them to be defederated fairly quickly, limiting its reach.

We also have a MUCH higher moderator to user ratio compared to corpo sites, with a range between 100 to 2,500 users per mod depending on instance, Vs. 250,000 users per mod on sites like twitter, so we can more adequately spot and deal with spam on the network.

[–] dan@upvote.au 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Thanks for the info! I didn't know about the Fediseer project - I don't think it existed when I created my Mastodon and Lemmy servers, or I just wasn't aware of it.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's been out for the past year. It's all word of mouth but a lot of instances have fediseer badges to draw attention to it.

[–] dan@upvote.au 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Thanks for maintaining it! I signed up, now I just need to see if anyone's willing to guarantee my single-user Lemmy instance. Not adding my Mastodon since I don't know if I'll even keep running it.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

FYI when you request a guarantee, you can specify another instance to solicit a guarantee from. They will get a PM to inform them.

Generally getting people to guarantee for others consistently has been the biggest struggle on fediseer >_<

[–] millie@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

We absolutely have this problem on Lemmy too. Even on Beehaw. Hell, there's a particularly high profile user here who posted constantly and focused squarely on spoiling potential Democrat votes who utterly disappeared the moment he was told by staff to knock it off. All other engagement dropped off and I still haven't seen him post-election.

How many others were less prolific and didn't shut down their activity? How many other accounts are literally just the same person?

[–] JaymesRS@literature.cafe 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I only have 2 followers, is it possible that I’m the bot? Wait, how would I know if I was? Is this the Matrix? Damnit! Maybe there’s a website to find out? BotOrNot? What even is a traffic light? Is a bus a car? What about a truck? Is a motorcycle a bike? A scooter? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrgh….

♫ Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do….. ♫

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 2 points 1 month ago

Calm down ~~IBM~~ HAL