There is so much obvious astroturfing on reddit.
There is so much obvious astroturfing on reddit.
Take this post for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/comments/1ll6ocg/see_it_say_it_censored_kneecap_is_not_the_story/
Speaking from experience, people in Ireland are overwhelmingly pro-palestine.
There is this user in the comments: https://www.reddit.com/user/EntireCourage308/
Its a nearly year-old account, it started posting about a month ago, it made some innoculous posts, then pivoted to posting far-right misinformation in the r/northernireland subreddit.
There's loads of other accounts just like it.
Looked at the front page earlier today and one of the top things was an AI generated video of POC trashing NYC. Comment section was an endless chain of “democrats hate America” and “we imported the third world”.
palintir bots are also making headways into the site.
I remember when we used to laugh and ignore people with these default-generated Reddit usernames... What a stupid community they've become. If you can't take the few seconds to create a username, you're not there for anything more than spamming bullshit.
ts a nearly year-old account, it started posting about a month ago, it made some innoculous posts, then pivoted to posting far-right misinformation in the r/northernireland subreddit.>
thats called warming up the account, and its designed to avoid the reddit ban evasion filters partially. it looks more legitimate if your "posting in a certain way", then the sudden switch to a propaganda path/spam is always the objective for these accounts. reddit has gotten too sensitive and are catching people that do this if they dont have any anti-detection methods employed.
Amusingly enough, brazen astroturfing (especially in political subs) was one of the main reasons I was looking for an alternative to Reddit and found Lemmy. Two years ago.
And it's certainly only gotten worse since.
Do people think there is a reason this won't happen to Lemmy eventually?
It will definitely happen to lemmy, unless someone conceives an ingenious AI sieve beyond current human reckoning. But the bots haven’t yet come to our peaceful little commie Linux forum, and that’s something worth appreciating, in and of itself. Every day is a blessing.
Well, first off it can't bhappen "to Lemmy" because Lemmy isn't va site - it's a piece of software.
It not only can and will but already has happened to individual instances. And they end up getting defederated by other instances and then either fix the problem or fade away.
And individual users can just move to other instances (or if they're smart, just stop using or even delete their account on the problem instance and keep using their other accounts on other instances).
And through it all, the rest of the fediverse just keeps chugging along.
Which illustrates the key difference between Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed/etc. and traditional social media - the fediverse is flexible. Individual instances can and will and do come and go, and it doesn't affect the fediverse as a whole.
Sure there's individuals doing it already.
It only becomes a problem when a medium starts reaching a significant audience, then interventions are needed, like when Reddit boomed. Then the US regime put their puppet there.
Same as they did with Facebook,etc...
With Lemmy being different I suppose they will have to find new ways or just massively use bots or paid trolls.
Same story. One year ago. That and stopping drinking are some of the best choices I've made in a long time.
I still use reddit occasionally for its smallest communities where I know I'm still interacting with humans. I assume the top posts are all bot posts with bots flaming bots in the comments. Everyone's time is worth more than that.
Bring back the enthusiast forums that were supported by calendar and sticker sales, we didn’t know how good we had it.
I'll only search up reddit posts on Google, and it's almost always about a movie/show or a game I'm currently playing or looking to play.
SAME. I had been very sick and off social media during the whole exodus, so had no clue about the lemmyverse, but going back to reddit the astroturfing was sooo bad, I just had to look for alternatives.
Yes it takes very little searching to find this shit on reddit.
But - and I'll probably get tons of downvotes, but still: the Fediverse is not safe from this.
edit: considering our APIs are free & open it could even be easier, esp. if you don't want to leave a money trail
edit2: I definitely don't mean to diss the Fediverse in any way! It stands sky high against walled-in platforms. Just stay vigilant and real. This is not paradise.
It really isn't, even on my instance used by like... 3 or 4 actual people so far, I have had more than enough spam accounts - and those were relatively harmless. Support the server admins and mods of the servers you are on/communities you are in, if able, they are the ones who are engaged in cleaning up incursions like it. Oh, and report things.
For what it's worth, I do believe the Fediverse has higher resilience, thanks to a different culture, decentralised nature (with helpful platforms like Fediseer) and a lack of the "we just need numbers as big as possible for our investors to be satisfied"-incentive to tolerate anything that looks like engagement.
i tend not to report people on lemmy, because of bad experience with reporting people on reddit for misinformation/spamming,,etc. i mostly just block them.
Its easier to spot here, and since we're split up into small severs, its easier to moderate.
Its easier to spot here
It's super easy to spot on reddit. Even easier than that?
There clearly aren't that many bots (of all kinds, incl. humanoid) in the Lemmyverse (yet), so I guess they stand out more, but beyond that?
its easier to moderate
Hm. How so?
I learned early that admins (and possibly also mods) have more insight into user behavior, is that what you mean?
Beyond that the mod/admin structure is pretty much the same as on, say, reddit.
Nothing can be prevented entirely online, but empowering users with the tools to choose their own experience and tailor their feed with the communities and users they choose themselves is a giant step in the right direction.
Reddit chose the path of consolidation and central control, and the results were inevitable.
No place is safe from this until we are forced to log into the internet with IDs issued by a global government. And obviously that’s a hideous nightmare of its own. and still not a solution.
Anonymity online is important to preserve.
But it’s also the source of so much unchecked bullshit, cheating, exploitation, manipulation, etc etc etc. And now with stronger AI in the mix, it has also made everyone paranoid, only wanting to trust old accounts, calling everything they disagree with a bot, etc.
In short, the internet was a mistake. A big huge self inflicted, unavoidable, and necessary mistake.
Yep. The astroturfing and hive mind made it easy to leave after the API debacle. Any modestly large sub pretty much made outside opinion not worth sharing. Smaller subs were still mostly ok, but even those were being overrun with reposts or people skirting the purpose of the sub trying to get karma. You couldn’t have discussions anymore, it was people posting for karma and people responding in ways to hop on karma coattails.
Agree. It's the nastiness that goes with it as well, if you have a different opinion you get smacked down for it. It's horrible.
I started to understand how screwed up Reddit was when I saw a front page post with like 70k upvotes on a video for a "fishing knot" that requires using both free ends of the line. Either 70k people didn't think about that for more than one second, or it's all bots. Tens of thousands of them.
bots, on a forum i go to , they buy hundreds if not thousands of accounts to do this.
People don’t think on social media. At least average normal people don’t.
I really think that a large percentage (far from a majority, tho) of what people see as new bot activity on social media is just a rise in “normies” using things like reddit.
Just look at all the people being fooled by ridiculous AI shit.
Accounts like this are usually taken over by right wing bots. Accounts that didnt care about politics, all of a sudden, have a huge agenda. Its just bullshit
only occasionally look at reddit and yeah the push is super obvious
the "hot" section for my vpn region the other day was just the top 4 pro-regime dumps
Yep.
Berkshire Partners uses bots to boost their portfolio on Reddit
and palintir using thier bots to train thier AI better, and produce propaganda on reddit.
Who is Berkshire partners?
im guessing Warren buffets investment firm.