this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
561 points (96.2% liked)

Technology

59578 readers
3420 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
L3s@fry.gs
L4s@fry.gs
L4s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
561
Bots are running rampant. How do we stop them from ruining Lemmy? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Buttflapper@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
287 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit are increasingly infested with bots and fake accounts, leading to significant manipulation of public discourse. These bots don't just annoy users—they skew visibility through vote manipulation. Fake accounts and automated scripts systematically downvote posts opposing certain viewpoints, distorting the content that surfaces and amplifying specific agendas.

Before coming to Lemmy, I was systematically downvoted by bots on Reddit for completely normal comments that were relatively neutral and not controversial​ at all. Seemed to be no pattern in it... One time I commented that my favorite game was WoW, down voted -15 for no apparent reason.

For example, a bot on Twitter using an API call to GPT-4o ran out of funding and started posting their prompts and system information publicly.

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/chatgpt-bot-x-russian-campaign-meme/

Example shown here

Bots like these are probably in the tens or hundreds of thousands. They did a huge ban wave of bots on Reddit, and some major top level subreddits were quiet for days because of it. Unbelievable...

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Such as?

[–] CluckN@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Making them multiply prime numbers.

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A typical process is:

You take a photo of a document (e.g. a passport or driving licence)
It is checked digitally to confirm it is genuine
You take a photo or video of yourself which is matched to the one on the document

No thanks. Hard pass

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

why?

[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not comfortable uploading things like my passport to entities that have proven time and time again that they don't care about data security.

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

fair enough

in this case it would be the british government that already has my passport and driver license photos stored digitally so this would just be to validate a digital login as a real person

would that change your mind at all?