• iterable@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    31·
    8 months ago

    Not just Reddit every website I go to now I see this. Even on official game forums like World of Warcraft. Using to promote content or advertise in a way that tries to be organic.

    • tacosplease@lemmy.world
      27·
      8 months ago

      My favorite are the YouTube comments saying to follow Jesus or whatever regardless of the actual content of the video. Who is that even for? LOL

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        61·
        8 months ago

        Have you watched any sporting events recently. Some Christian group is willing to pay millions of dollars for a 30 second “Look at this puppy. Pretty great, right? Jesus. He loves puppies, too” ad spots.

        I have to assume that we’re just dealing with people who have way more money than sense, and this is literally the best they can come up with in terms of evangelism.

      • iterable@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        15·
        8 months ago

        Most likely those “Mega” Churches. If you post proof or call it out watch yourself get spam reported. I have gotten reported and temp banned when the bots abuse the automated systems. I know a few devs and they are scared that they can’t keep ahead of trying to ID and remove Ai like this.

      • Cynaster@lemmy.world
        7·
        8 months ago

        My favorite is the comment I see on 80% of videos: “Upvote if you came here from Tik Tok”

    • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      8 months ago

      My mechanical keyboard people haven’t really migrated over to Lemmy, so I after I stopped posting to Reddit (I still lurk… sue me) I signed onto a couple of legacy forums. A few months ago, one forum had a poster ask about a sketchy email he got from a vendor asking them to mention their keyboard X number of times, and didn’t even have to be uniformly positive, as long as he didn’t completely shit on them. They needed the visibility. He seemed iffy and I think decided against it, not least of which was that the payment was, IIRC, a free keyboard.

      Not two days later, a veteran poster on the other forum magically mentions this obscure and unremarkable vendor, and while they’re qualified in their praise, they sure spent a lot of time talking about them. I was about to call it out, but then I just thought, “well hell, at least the company’s still using real people as shills. This is life now.”

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    355·
    8 months ago

    It’s a good thing Lemmy isn’t popular enough to have bots and propagandists posting here with less moderation than Reddit…

    …Right?

  • kevincox@lemmy.ml
    6·
    8 months ago

    I more and more think that the only way to manage online community is via invites. There are major downsides (difficulty of bootstrapping and reduced anonymity) but it gives a way to combat this. If a significant number of the users you have invited are bots you get your invite privileges revoked (or you get banned). It creates a chain of accountability and you can ban as high as necessary to severe the corrupted branch.

    • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      4·
      8 months ago

      This feels like implementing a certificate authority system for individual users I wonder if it is feasible to use of a web of trust that is less cumbersome and more resilient than the original GnuPG WoT, that could do the same thing. Instead of hierarchical introductions you have trusted users vouch for you not being a bot (one could even think about extending this to general rule abidance, turning it into a full on reputation system). It would feel pretty bad to loose an account, just because whoever invited you later also invited a bunch of bots/untrustworthy users

  • Turious@leaf.danceEnglish
    11·
    8 months ago

    Been happening a lot longer than you imagine. I stopped using Reddit when the third party apps got shut down. At least the last year of my time there was calling out repost bot accounts. Threads like that on smaller subs with week moderation were really common.

    Even on some better moderated subs, they got through.

    Reddit died for me a long time ago.

  • mistrgamin@lemmy.world
    36·
    8 months ago

    r/FluentinFinance is just five different accounts made less than a year ago that reposting the same political twitter screenshots with the exact same titles that all get boosted to the front page every time. Idk if everyone there is too caught up in arguing the same points they made a week ago to notice or if everyone who eventually finds out gets banned.

  • Shyfer@ttrpg.network
    21·
    8 months ago

    This is incredible. Like, it was always obvious from a gut feeling or seeing comments reposted in the exact same thread, but this makes it even more obvious.

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
      12·
      8 months ago

      Depends on the instance. Some instances will enshittify, others will fight against this sort of thing. Since Lemmy is federated, if we’re stuck on the former we can move to the latter without losing access to the entire network.

      • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮@lemm.ee
        33·
        8 months ago

        You can’t fight against it. That’s the point. The only tactic is to stay stealth as long as possible.

        You won’t win with barrage of AI generated content and massive corporate machine of marketing. No filters or countermeasures are enough against the brute force of money. Not to mention Lemmy is relatively easy to spam and troll compared to Reddit if someone wants to do it.

        It’s vulnerable by design because the same vulnerability is a feature of freedom of speech and openness when there are no bad actors.

        It’s kind of like anarchism if you think about it. Great concept but collapses from miserable human condition.

        I predict we will all(technical hyperliterates) be on some form of TOR sooner or later because that’s the only place where advertisers and ai won’t dare to go.

        • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          71·
          8 months ago

          You can fight against it, but it’s an uphill battle. The most likely responses to work will be invite only systems for account creation (something I’ve seen predicted happening to art communities to filter out AI garbage) and some kind of reputation/report system to weed out spammers and the accounts that invited them.

    • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
      151·
      8 months ago

      I’ve been using reddit a bit the past couple weeks, it’s getting pretty dry in the fediverse, especially for local content. I got permabanned from our local Reddit communities thread over literally pretty much nothing about a year and a half ago, basically questioning a power mods opinion on something, and then after getting temp banned, asked what the heck like if you aren’t agreeing with me just respond with something, and then I got permabanned.

      Anyways I wrote them a kind note today asking to be unbanned, as it is a pretty big sub (343k users for a city of 1.5M), and a good source of information. Told them like look, I’m pretty boring and I can behave, like could you prevent me from having to create a new alt account and let’s let bygones be bygones?

      The response I got was really condescending, they banned me from mod mail, and basically it was just a really weird response. All they had to say was no, thanks, and I would have moved on with my day. I think some of the mods are suffering from some pretty serious mental health issues these days, if not a god complex in the slightest. Reddit is a really really unhealthy place, and thankfully those people reminded me of that. I quickly deleted the app from my phone, and I think I’m done for good this time. The fediverse may be drying up a bit, but at least most of the people on it can behave like adults.

      • Blaze@reddthat.com
        4·
        8 months ago

        (343k users for a city of 1.5M),

        You can maybe try to create a community here? If a lot of people are on Reddit, you might get some on Lemmy as well

        • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
          1·
          8 months ago

          Unfortunately that same community is about 460 people on Lemmy. There’s been three attempts thus far, the main 460 person community seems to be the one that’s sticking. At the beginning a couple of the regulars posted on the communities reddit sub, and were instantly threatened with permabans, and any mention of Lemmy on their sub apparently gets deleted and results in bans. I couldn’t make this shit up, it’s pretty unhealthy. But there is tons of local content on the reddit sub. We were an affected family that were involved in a local crisis last fall for example, and it was really useful for that as well, to connect with other local affected people in a way that couldn’t be directly tied back to us by any adverse parties, so we could voice frustrations and support each other. Thankfully I have an alt account that is unbanned, so I could use it for that. But it’s still really irritating, I’m a grown adult, but it still just bums me out that people can act like that, I dunno.

      • p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world
        12·
        8 months ago

        Idk if it’s drying up just because it’s slower with responses. I think we’re just used to the reddit shitbots constantly responding to us on reddit. The slower pace is better because here, there’s actually people responding, not bots.

        • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
          3·
          8 months ago

          That’s one of the few remaining options on Reddit. I heard from Holiday Fart Cruise that Facebook doesn’t permit alt accounts to exist for long.

          These platforms have their uses for local information, as a lurker, but interacting with them gets shittier by the day.

          • livus@kbin.social
            1·
            8 months ago

            I’ve had an alt on facebook for years. Just give it a realistic name and fill in all the crap about its likes and dislikes education etc and make it join some groups.

            As long as it’s believably a person they leave it alone.

          • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
            1·
            8 months ago

            Reddit is at end stage enshitification. I don’t even know how people tolerate that app or the website. It speaks volumes when there was a robust third party access marketplace.

            I just wish the local content would relocate somewhere else. Once people wake up, and it does, that’s it for Reddit.

        • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
          2·
          8 months ago

          Yeah it was a momentary lack of judgement. I’m actually a bit embarrassed for myself that I wasted a few minutes of my day kindly asking people I already know are unreasonable weirdos to not be unreasonable weirdos for a moment. I had a laugh to myself about it last night afterwards, and now onwards we go!