Hi everyone,
I think it has become clear that many bot accounts are swarming the communities. Sometimes we can’t be sure whether a specific account is a bot, but there are some clues. I will not post the clues here since they could be used by bot creators to bypass the rules.
Lemmy (the software) currently doesn’t have tools to automate moderation, so everything has to be moderated manually.
That said, I will be adding a few anti-bot rules to the /c/comicstrips community:
- A limit of two posts per person per day.
- Bots are not allowed. There will be heavy moderation of suspected bot accounts. If an account is identified as a bot, its posts will be deleted and it will receive a permanent ban.
- Banned users will have their posts removed.
And thank you to everyone in the community who reports possible spammers and bots. It helps a lot.
Here is the previous post that I fixed before, which contains a few discussions about this subject: https://lemmy.world/post/42127013
Do you have any comments or suggestions? I’m listening.
(This is not the future that Asimov expected.)
Lol the bots down voting all the comments is hilarious
Suck it bot-authors
It’s all me 😭. The newest one got a belly laugh out of me though, not gonna lie. I crossed out the only one that isn’t a day old account.
Here’s what I think is going on, since calling him out is probably the best (copy pasted from an other comment):
He is always posting divisive content. He probably downvotes certain comments and tries to instigate arguments to make Lemmy feel hostile. It’s to turn people off and get them to leave imo.
Oh I misunderstood this comment initially and thought you were admitting to making alt accounts to downvote but someone actually created a bunch of alts with your name to downvote you and others? Psychotic behaviour lol
Much thanks, appreciate all the time and effort you put in
Finally
- A limit of two posts per person per day.
This should probably be linked to the account age and combined with a time limit between posts of 30 minutes or an hour, as the bots I have seen usually post in quick succession.
It’s fairly easy for a bot to post at random times. However it’s possible to create a bot to check for bot behavior.
I made a few tests with bot moderation and quickly reached Lemmy.world instance limits (because the bot needs to read the posts consecutively and also get the user’s public data).
When the account reaches the limit, it can’t log in for a period. I don’t want my account to be banned, so I will not continue trying to create moderation bots for Lemmy instances.
Is there a way to change the title or pin an automated comment to flag the post as a bot instead of deleting it? I think it’s better to sensetize the community on the subjects the bot accounts target so it’s easier to spot it elsewhere. I also think deleting posts also deletes interesting comment chains midway at times. I’ve had it happen and it’s a bit frustrating.
I guess it wouldn’t stop it from getting on the all feed though. I wish there was a way to lock votes or reset them.
Edit: one of the bots down voted me lol, he actually created extra accounts with my name to downvote. I guess it’s his idea of taunting.
Edit: The guy is actually losing it lol. Everyone in this thread, including recent comment history for me and cannedtuna, is being downvoted by bots with my name.
Thank you! I’m so tired of seeing the same fucking dude post from a million alt accounts.
Amazing thank you! I was getting close to unsubscribing since new (seemingly bot) users would flood this community and my front-page as a result
edit: wow the vote counts on the comments in this thread are weird
Lemmy is popular enough to have bots now? Crazy.
I don’t get the appeal. Preparing to redirect to paid content? Just to feel cool?
He is always posting divisive content. He probably downvotes certain comments and tries to instigate arguments to make Lemmy feel hostile. It’s to turn people off and get them to leave imo.
Yeah I don’t get the appeal of bots at all. I also like that Lemmy isn’t that busy or popular personally.
I’ve considered using a script to post more often, so that the quieter communities don’t seem like a wasteland. More posts= more engagement = more human posts
you could also require alt-text for every post (or at least for new accounts) because it would increase the effort to post. but that could probably discourage some users from posting and is kinda hard to check automatically.
A pretty straightforward thing for a bot to do, I would think.
Yes, agreed. But the spam bot could just add random alt text or post descriptions. Checking if the text makes sense involves using an LLM with vision capability ($).
creating or checking alt-text?
Both. I don’t see any “mechanical” action like this as likely to be useful. Probably easier for a posting bot to remember to do than a human.
Edit: It’s funny when comments like this get downvoted. The downvoting isn’t going to change how easy it is for bots to add alt text when posting. Is ignoring their capabilities going to help combat them?
