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.

  • JaymesRS@literature.cafeEnglish
    1·
    6 minutes ago

    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…… ♫

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
    6·
    46 minutes ago

    Absolutely incredible breakdown of the problem. In addition to twitter, I strongly suspect Reddit is infested with a similar increase in bit 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.orgOP
      3·
      22 minutes ago

      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 could easily dominate conversation on an instance.

    • dan@upvote.au
      3·
      46 minutes ago

      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@slrpnk.netEnglish
        3·
        38 minutes ago

        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
          1·
          31 minutes ago

          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.