this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Lemmy has multiplied it's number of users (maybe more accurately accounts) in just few days. How much do you think is the percentage of bot accounts? Is Lemmy having problem with bot farming?

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[–] DerWilliWonka@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What is something someone can gain by swarming an instance or forums like yours with bots? I cant wrap my head around it. Also if someone has an instance and swarms it with bot accounts, it may seem like you got a popular instance but where is the revenue if there are noone who is able to click an ad? Do they do it just for the lols?

[–] GizmoLion@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Spin up 50 bots.
Sign them all up for lemmy.
Let accounts interact/age.
Sell accounts to companies who want to advertise as one of the cool kids.

Happened on reddit nonstop.

[–] adamthinks@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Except that Lemmy doesn't show overall karma, so there's no use in doing any of that here.

[–] TheDeadGuy@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Any conversation, be it political or commercial. All it takes is something sounding confident, a grain of truth and lots of upvotes to convince people.

That's why I like seeing downvoted as a red flag people can pay attention to

[–] realcaseyrollins@social.freetalklive.com 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] DerWilliWonka@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I have some tiny bit of doubts left but at least it does sound like one possible reason for people swarming servers with bots

[–] fu@libranet.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] realcaseyrollins@social.freetalklive.com -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@fu @GizmoLion @1337tux @DerWilliWonka @TheAngryBad I'm not on board with the selling part tbh, but I like the bot idea, it worked for #Reddit like the guy said

[–] GizmoLion@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like you're reading a completely different conversation...

[–] fu@libranet.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@GizmoLion @realcaseyrollins @1337tux @DerWilliWonka @TheAngryBad its not likely, but with how the Fediverse works its possible, whether slow federation between certain servers (for example I frequently will have posts Friendica tells me have posted to 130/135 servers within a minute but those last few can take days or never post at all) also you guys might not both see the same conversation based on who you've blocked, or been blocked by, etc. If you ever want to verify, you should be able to view it on their instance (on Kbin this is what is listed under MORE as LINK TO FEDIVERSE)

[–] fu@libranet.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@realcaseyrollins @GizmoLion @1337tux @DerWilliWonka @TheAngryBad if it's not a PUBLIC conversation of course you won't be able to see it on their server if you don't have an account on that server that is included in the private body (like Friendica's default of "friends only")

[–] GizmoLion@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Looks like you are @ing someone I can't see.

Well, that's the first major point against this fediverse business... Who's going to stick around to have a conversation when everyone's only getting bits of it? That's kinda antithetical to discussion...

[–] fu@libranet.de 1 points 1 year ago

@DerWilliWonka @1337tux @TheAngryBad there are cetainly some who do it for the lulz, and there are some who probably do it as a way to encourage others to make security changes to the platform. Personally, I think it would be more useful to file issues via git, but what do I know, I'm just an old-timer who quit college after failing security class, and thereby losing my scholarship.