While browsing the fediverse I come across more and more accounts that seem … a bit off, a little uncanny. The stuff they post seems random, their comments slightly weird. What’s going on, is the fediverse being overrun by bots? Or am I as a fanatic anti-AI person just losing my mind and seeing the enemy everywhere?

I hate the fact that I now question every interaction that seems a bit off - it seems such a stupid waste of my time and I’m afraid I might just end up blocking real people who happen to express themselves in a strange way - as a neurodivergent person I know how bad I would feel about being ostracized as ‘too strange to be real’. How would you handle this?

  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    47 minutes ago

    I don’t block users, I have a “firewall” on my brain (metaphorically speaking). I over analyze every comment, its kinda like a “spot the bot” mini-game.

    I estimate there are like 1/3 bots especially on very heated political memes on the front page. I’m automatically just blocking out the “voting is useless, don’t vote” sentinment, very unproductive. Also idk wtf is with the “don’t protest, revolt now, kill [insert name of politician] right now”, like why the f would you say that on the open internet where there are government automatic data scrapers archiving all this for evidence? (Remember you can get extradited for making threats) Like jokes sure thing, but don’t be that explicit lol. Fed-posting is so common lol.

    The less political, the less “bot-like” it feels.

    I get what you mean, that’s why I always overthink every comment and scan for like everyone’s profile.

    Hey… Wait a minute…

    GET DOWN, JOHN CONNOR. THE OP IS A TERMINATOR /j

  • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
    9·
    4 hours ago

    it seems such a stupid waste of my time and I’m afraid I might just end up blocking real people who happen to express themselves in a strange way

    I definitely get accused of being a bot a lot, I’m just like this

  • BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    3 hours ago

    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.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    311·
    6 hours ago

    There are definitely bots, but I would treat everyone as human until proven otherwise. It’s one of the least botted out places, so enjoy the relative peace and quiet.

  • Beesbeesbees@lemmy.world
    20·
    6 hours ago

    Not the vibe I’ve gotten. I do get that vibe over on Reddit. I think the quirky conversations and novel responses make me lean away from bot. However I’m not an expert.

    • v01dworks@lemmy.world
      6·
      4 hours ago

      Yeah half the reason I left Reddit was that it felt either like a hive mind or like it was just full of bots, or both, and I left before LLMs took off. I can’t imagine it’s gotten any better since then

      • Beesbeesbees@lemmy.world
        6·
        4 hours ago

        Right? The same chain of “jokes” as top level comments. Thousands of thousand of comments that were very off topic or incredibly shallow perspectives. Copy/pasted comments up and down the chains. Then there were the obvious advertising disguised as post/conversations. Ick. I still maintain my account for the local/state subreddit and metalcore subreddit and that is it.

        • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 hour ago

          This

          BTW have you tried Skub? It’s pretty amazing. I’d link it but it’s against sub rules. Hit me up with a DM if you’d like to know more

        • v01dworks@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 hours ago

          Seriously! I could read a post title and then accurately guess what the top comment would be way too often and it was just slowly driving me insane to be on there

          I deleted my account after the API changes that killed the Apollo app and I basically only go on there now if I get a post as a relevant result in my search engine lol but I’m never going back as a regular user

  • JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.de
    21·
    6 hours ago

    Every account on reddit fediverse is a bot except you.

    Jokes aside, I haven’t noticed anything. I don’t really see what would anyone gain by setting up bots posing as real humans. Especially on Fediverse. I’m not saying it’s never happening but I don’t think it’s very common.

    • schmorp@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
      91·
      6 hours ago

      The ‘why’ is what I am wondering about. If I were an evil fascist I would fill this place with bots to keep the lefties arguing with the void instead of going outside for direct action. Other than that, curious programmers watching their creations interact in the wild?

      • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        Lemmy is seriously not large or organized enough for anyone to consider it. An evil fascist organization has shit to do, like real oppression - not piddling about with a bunch of autists who call for revolution from their moms basements.

      • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        If I were an evil fascist I would fill this place with bots to keep the lefties arguing with the void instead of going outside for direct action.

        Sadly, there aren’t enough people here to make that worthwhile.

        Other than that, curious programmers watching their creations interact in the wild?

        Even with LLMs, getting appropriate responses is a bit of an effort. So is integrating with Lemmy. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that we’re really lazy, and it’s unlikely that there’s a significant volume of bot coders here.

        Just Google the number of Lemmy bots. There are disappointingly few.

      • Forester@pawb.socialEnglish
        51·
        5 hours ago

        Out of curiosity is your instance still federated with .ml or that other tankie haven I forget the name of. If so, yes you probably are seeing a lot of bots. It’s quite obvious when you look at downvote and upvoter brigades. Pretty unusual for five people to all vote within half a second of each other. Then to not see any other votes for a while.

        • LemmeAtEm@lemmy.ml
          11·
          38 minutes ago

          The “tankie” instances are the least likely to have bots. They’re the most vehemently anti-AI and the moderators most active in banning any kind of bot-like activity. Hexbear, the one that all the dronies clutch their pearls about most and accuse of brigading the most doesn’t even have downvotes - they are incapable of mass downvoting.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
          71·
          4 hours ago

          Pretty unusual for five people to all vote within half a second of each other

          This is actually a consequence of how votes federate out. They go out in batches, all at once, after a little bit of a delay.

          I actually do also think that people are artificially trying to rig the votes about particular things (and frequently the admins catch some people doing it with careless obviousness), but this isn’t an indication, it’s more difficult to detect than that.

  • jjmoldy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    5 hours ago

    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.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
      1·
      17 minutes ago

      Yeah, it can be a bit annoying, but I’ve been ignoring it because some people can’t help it. Now I mostly find it amusing.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
      4·
      4 hours ago

      Im probably guilty of writing a lot of those tbh. Its always a toss up if I get a joke, think I get a joke but get it completely wrong, dont get a joke, or dont even realize something is a joke.

  • Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com
    5·
    5 hours ago

    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.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    4·
    5 hours ago

    been that way since I joined.

    it’s crazy how I can call someone out in a low traffic community and end up with 30 downvotes in five minutes.

    it’s also funny how when you call different people out on similar topics you get the same word-for-word response back from weeks or months ago.

    I’m not saying it’s bots, but…

    1000001734

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
      1·
      15 minutes ago

      Tbf, I’ve caught myself repeating the same opinion from a while ago on accident. I’m a person of habit, what can I say?

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
      5·
      4 hours ago

      tbh just with how the fediverse works I would not trust vote counts here whatsoever. The downside of having no central authority over the network is that anything that lets one instance affect the whole network, like votes from bots on one instance being federated, cant be entirely trusted.

      • BroBot9000@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        And like with “Who’s line is it Anyway” everything is made up and the points don’t matter.

        They are magical internet points and getting thin skinned over downvotes is pathetic 😂

        • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 hours ago

          couldn’t care less for the downvotes tbh, if anything I’ll wear them as a badge of honor.

          my problem is getting 30 downvotes in five minutes in a sub that has maybe five active users at any given hour of the day.

  • BroBot9000@lemmy.worldEnglish
    102·
    2 hours ago

    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.

    Also happy cake day!

    • A Wild Mimic appears!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      21·
      2 hours ago

      Ok, since you keep talking shit about dbzer0.com, i want to add something here.

      First of all, we keep our instance pretty bot-free. It’s been a while since i registered, but all applications are getting reviewed before an account is activated. We do have singular bots for administrative things, but you can be sure that db0 would stop obvious bot activity pretty fast.

      And regarding AI - it’s not that we go out into the fediverse and proselytize. We have a few communities regarding GenAI, but the opposite is the case: we had to implement a rule to stop external mass downvoting and brigading in those communities, because instead of an discussion about the image generated, external users started (always the same) discussions about how evil GenAI is.

      So, no blocking necessary, except the communities you don’t want to interact with :-) Have a nice day :)

  • anothermember@feddit.ukEnglish
    6·
    6 hours ago

    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.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    4 hours ago

    I await with interest the first serious accusation that I’m a bot. A very well armed bot, perhaps. I certainly type some strange things, but you guys have probably seen my hands too many times.

    Unless my hands are also AI generated. Hmm.

    I’ve already garnered the achievement of having several people on one of the Discord servers I hang around on of treating me as if I’m literally a penguin. Nobody’s yet come up with a credible explanation of how I’d be able to type. (Including, surprisingly, the obvious hunt and peck gag that presents itself.)