this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Are any of these accounts bots?
Or maybe how many of these accounts are bots?
Are they all bots?
Around 95% accounts are bots. Around 90% if we are positive and assume that a lot of redditors joined since the bot farming started.
So what are the Bots doing? Who created them and why? I don't understand the purpose of bots.
Currently nothing but once activated they may start spamming stuff everywhere. Owners can decide what gets upvotes and what gets downvotes which gives you a lot of power on a platform where downvotes/upvotes mean everything.
Still don't get it - someone makes a comment, bots upvote it so it gets seen by more people. Not really going to change the world.
Sure, but do you like ads that masquerade as posts? Because if you do then you'll love the delicious taste of Diet Coke, grab one today! (16900 upvotes)
Oh boy, I, for one, love the taste of Diet Coke, the perfect refreshing drink when you and your family watch my new movie, "Barbie", only in theaters July 21st.
no diss I actually am super excited to watch anything with Ryan Gosling in it
He gets us.
Companies advertising on here through AMA's should also be prevented because it's just advertising
They don't want to change the world. They want to let you know about hot singles in your area
I don't see what the problem is here...
IM IN YOUR AREA IM IN YOUR AREA I KNOW THE FIRST THREE NUMBERS, IM IN I KNOW THE FIRST THREE NUMBERS, IM IN TEACHIN BITCHES HOW TO SWIM TEACHIN BITCHES HOW TO SWIM
Yeah, but this can give you popularity and attention that people crave and it will be pretty damn useful in scamming others too.
It will change enough minds on enough issues that this can be both very profitable and very significant for those using this for some kind of benefit to themselves or their organization. This is not a small effect when doing this on a large social media site (which isn't Lemmy yet).
Many of them are doing nothing so far.
No doubt they are available for sale to some company or individual that wants to buy them wholesale and start spamming or astroturfing.
People wanting to sell them for $$ mostly. In some cases, people biding their time to use them for mass spam, social misdirection, opinion forming, etc.
In social media, a common and concerning use of them is to use them wholesale (comments, posts, and votes) to try and sway mass opinion on some issue to something the person responsible for the bots wants.
Thats seems bad. I know some bots are hepful. But 1 million bots seems like they for something nefariously.
Like trying to keep people on reddit?
Or just too generally troll the fediverse.
I'd go to Facebook first
Yeah, I hope that people farming them are just trolling the fediverse and don't plan on using them.
Lol trolling is bad. A bot army could make things miserable here.
Trolling in the sense making people freak out while not doing anything with those bots. That's what I'm hoping for although it's improbable.
I was thinking more racist transphobic trolling aided by an amry of lurking upvoting bots........but ya know.
If it's anything like Reddit's bots, they'll probably post copy-pasted comments to gain upvotes, then they'll start spamming advertisements and scams once they have a good amount.
I'm just afraid that these bots are bascially here to sabotage lemmy.
The fediverse is so awesome, there is no way big social media corps can play nice in the long term.
I would not be surprised if that's what they'll try to do, especially with Facebook apparently trying to enter the fediverse. They'll probably try to destroy the instances that aren't part of a big corporation.
I'm hoping their project (and other companies' similar projects) never takes off.
Yup. I hope the federated model can defned against these things. But im really nervous.
Lemmy is so cool rn.
I'm looking active user all time. It's 50k person
Active doesn't count people who just lurk though. So while the majority of these new accounts are bots, there are still more than 50k real people.
The platform has 3 years so I was thinking more in terms of real human made accounts.
I'm no bot and joined 6 days ago :)
Welcome friend.
About 2.45 million of the 2.5 are, yes.
As i suspected.
Yes unfortunately but lemmy is still growing
I'm going to link my comment because I don't want to rewrite it for everyone I reply to where it is relevant
https://lemmy.world/comment/548294
Thanks for the reply!
And I totally agree.