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How can Lemmy avoid the bots? (self.lemmyworld)

submitted 1 year ago by voiceofchris to c/lemmyworld

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I recently made the jump from Reddit for the same immediate reasons as everyone else. But, to be honest, if it was just the Reddit API cost changes I wouldn't be looking to jump ship. I would just weather the protest and stay off Reddit for a few days. Heck I'd probably be fine paying a few bucks a month if it helped my favorite Reddit app (Joey) stay up and running.

No, the real reason I am taking this opportunity to completely switch platforms is because for a couple years now Reddit has been unbearably swamped by bots. Bot comments are common and bot up/downvotes are so rampant that it's becoming impossible to judge the genuine community interest in any post or comment. It's just Reddit (and maybe some other nefarious interests) manufacturing trends and pushing the content of their choice.

So, what does Lemmy do differently? Is there anything in Lemmy code or rules that is designed to prevent this from happening here?

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[–] mjgood91 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I reckon it'd depend significantly on the instance. Beehaw has a signup form reviewed by humans - measures like this are by no means perfect, but coupled with other bot detection software could help. If an instance developed a real issue with bots, other more strict instances could potentially ban up votes and comments from accounts on it.

At the very least, tracking instances that account interaction came from should be quite doable, so users part of more strict instances could filter out upvotes and comments from less strict instances if desired.

[–] voiceofchris 10 points 1 year ago

Well that's something at least. Individual instances blocking each other (working against other problematic instances) is at least better than the Reddit admins turning a blind eye because they have a fleet of their own bots out there behaving as bad as any others.

[–] nivenkos 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Beehaw's approach isn't scalable.

They want to have 4 people moderating every community, managing the creation of any new communities, and reviewing every sign-up request.

It's no surprise they've buckled on federation already. I give it a week before they stop accepting new sign ups or community creation requests too.

[–] mjgood91 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I do agree Beehaw won't be able to grow significantly if they keep doing things the way they're doing them right now. At present point, they're going to likely remain a more niche community long-term with how they're operating. Who knows though, maybe this is what they want. Lemmy would have to do something different though without a herculean moderation effort.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Beehaw has a signup form reviewed by humans

I'm honestly not sure what difference that makes with federation. Someone from a server with easy signup can still post and comment in Beehaw subs. It doesn't really scale well to manually review signups, either (with an essay question when I saw, lol).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Someone from a server with easy signup can still post and comment in Beehaw subs

Only if Beehaw federates with the other instance, though.