Ask Lemmy

Your explanation of why you think some users are bots is too vague. I myself was accused of being a bot once

Interesting how many people here get hung up on downvotes and advise to either block the techies, the tankies, or both. And quite hilarious how this adivice gets so quickly derailed into 'political discussions' (rather namecalling and blocking each other). I wasn't even talking about downvotes, I don't care much about them, and I try to not get involved in political stuff where people consider it a useful way to discuss about any issue, because that's just kindergarden stuff and I'd expect a bot to be able to be a little more convincing than just downvoting my post or comment. Yet another reason to spend more time offline - I'mma switch all of you off! And you! And you!!

People on here are not subject to algorithms. There is no algorithmic manipulation to some sort of hive mind. Oh. And some use LLMs to translate their posts.

I've noticed a lot of weird comments taking extremely obvious jokes entirely literally but as the others have said there's an abundance of autists here so it's hard to say.

If it reassures you, I personally haven't perceived too much bot activity here, at least not compared to Reddit. Either they're much stealthier here, or they're not here in much force.

Something I've seen on Reddit several times now, but not here, is obvious bot vote manipulation. I.e. you would go to, for example, a subreddit of a niche music artist, a newish account will make a post linking to some really obvious scam merchandise site for that artist, it would be replied to by several collaborating new bot accounts expressing desire for said merchandise and they'd all be upvoted, and regular users calling out the scam or bot activity get massively downvoted. Eventually it gets deleted by a human moderator. Not seen anything like that here.

I'd imagine Lemmy is less vulnerable since it's small, bot makers will gain more for targeting bigger sites like Reddit, and I hope if it got bigger here the decentralised setup would give ways to defend against it, like defederating instances (temporarily if appropriate) that have been compromised by a lot of bots.

Not bots. Who would develop propaganda bots to for lemmy just to spite 1 particular person.

I think the trap is that you should look for accounts that seem extra normal. Those are your typical bot accounts. Impeccable spelling, and more elaborate structure than you'd typically find in a social media comment, but very "locally plausible" content.

In my experience accounts that seem weird are run by weird humans.

Honestly you are best off blocking the Lemmy.ml instance. They are Tankie authoritarian boot lickers that keep showing up in abusive mod communities and they have their own community dedicated to their brigading: meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works

Same with lemmy.dbzer0.com if you are sick of the Ai simps.

You are likely seeing their bots and them pushing fascist propaganda.

EDIT: https://lemmy.world/post/29072279 Here’s ample evidence to back up the tankie claim

Also happy cake day!