this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Is the bot/troll situation getting worse? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)
submitted 10 months ago by haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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It feels like the amount of both, divisive posts and ghoulish comments is rising again.

One could argue that the world has a lot of divisive stuff going on and lemmy just talks about it. But the way people post about stuff seems more oot and hateful than it has been in the past.

Not saying it is that but if I wanted to bring the Fediverse down or at least keep my customers from going there, I would sow this stuff as much as I can.

I'm blocking ghouls left right and center atm but if I ever asked a friend to join lemmy, I'd hate to think of what they would see that I dont anymore.

Do we need stronger moderation?

  • Maybe ban politics from c/memes?
  • Become a little more stringent on "dont be a jerk" rules in communities?

One thing that really bothers me is the collapsing "discourse". Trying to mend fences and keep the conversation between sides going ime leads to nothing but downvotes and shitstorm.

I feel like a little more interaction (instead of intervention, at first) of the moderators would do wonders there.

Thanks for reading this rant. Have a nice day.

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[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

You're not imagining it. I'm pretty sure you can see regular work from propaganda teams on lemmy. I'd love to see the backed logs to confirm it.

They tend to work in very hostile teams to brigade topics.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 6 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I‘m encountering it this exact moment in a piracy discussion where some very abusive people start arguing for IP and excuse the blatant manipulation by calling limited licenses „buying“ and „owning“.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I followed the thread you're talking about, you might be a bit overly sensitive to what constitutes a conversation on the internet. I don't find the trolling any worse or better today vs. last week or last year.

You might want to make an account over at beehaw, they like to stay pretty sheltered over there and have defederated from, well, pretty much everyone.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well, I‘m not a bit overly sensitive I just dont like to be manipulated and insulted. It frankly do not care how people treat their family and friends. Having a discussion without personal attacks is normal and everything else is normalized abuse.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You mentioned them calling something buying and selling. Did they also insult and manipulate you?

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Not sure if this is a sincere question.

Manipulative and degrading rhetoric is what I‘m talking about. Bad faith arguments, assuming that someone arguing in a certain way must be naive or stupid, etc.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The question is definitely meant to highlight that I think you may be exaggerating, but in that purpose it is sincere.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sincere trolling you mean?

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No. Sincere use of a rhetorical question to make a point. While also leaving the door open, via format, that you might actually be telling you the truth. I purposefully leave both those avenues open because I don’t try to control the direction a conversation will go.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 10 months ago

So instead of stating your honest opinion, you use rhetoric, something people will likely misunderstand, in a situation like this, where very many people are in fact trolling? Did it occur to you that this isnt the most promising approach if you actually want a meaningful discussion?

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

He didn't seem very sincere tbh. Odd

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do you also get the feeling that this might be what we were talking about?

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What you’re talking about is banning people across many instances at once. Please don’t do that to me.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We will see. Especially if someone behaves like you, engaging someone over multiple threads without actually being interested in their opinion or trying to sincerely interact with them, they are prime examples for the „noise“ I‘d like to reduce.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

I engaged you over multiple threads specifically because I am interested in your opinions.

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's interesting right?

I'm thinking the architecture of the fediverse makes it particularly vulnerable to these sorts of attacks.

I'm pretty sure I've spotted bots circle jerking on some subjects also which makes me think there's a few different sources.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Very interesting indeed.

I‘m starting to report, block and ban accounts from being viewed on my instance that use abusive language but from a systemic standpoint we should find a design solution to make this work.

Reddit had karma for this reason among others. People needed to make helpful contributions to prove they are able to function in the group.

For many reasons this is not implemented in the fediverse but a design solution would be good.

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If I was designing an anti troll/bot system I'd implement a few things. Let's call any bad actor on here a bot/troll or broll for ease.

  1. Reputation based posting isn't a bad idea if carefully done
  2. When a broll is banned any users from the same ip are flagged a suspect and a subsequent ban causes delayed posting from that ip. If a VPN the instance host list has the same effect applied. Exceptions based on Reputation.
  3. You can check if text is ai/llm generated and an automated api check before posting and immediate ban if found.
  4. Checks on if a user posts inhumanly fast or is oddly active etc would be sensible.
  5. Any broll system has to be adaptive and measures taken need to be kept secret (this post for example).
[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Very good ideas! Any idea if something like this already exists? If not, shall we work on something? I have some experience in python if that helps.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

PieFed is an open source lemmy alternative (written in Python) that makes good use of karma/reputation, as shown in this video:

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/system/media_attachments/files/111/648/646/494/228/522/original/02cb1b5182a1f9b6.mp4

Try the demo site at https://piefed.social and check out https://join.piefed.social. Also see https://piefed.social/c/piefed_meta for recent feature announcements.

[–] Blaze@discuss.online 2 points 10 months ago

Thank you very much for sharing, I'll keep an eye on it.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I‘m not searching for another thing to start but a way to make the current thing work. But thanks.

[–] Blaze@discuss.online 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, Piefed uses Lemmy communities and comments, it's almost just another interface.

The reputation is indeed interesting, example in this thread with warnings "low reputation, beware!": https://piefed.social/post/27070#post_replies

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 10 months ago

Ah! Understood. Thanks for clarifying.

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks but not sure what's currently implemented or even what the code base is written in 😅.

I might have a poke around and see if there's any low hanging fruit.

Call me crazy but with a 5b ipo about to start I'd be shocked if reddit wasn't paying some troll farms to brigade the fediverse and it'd be a shame if spez wins

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thats an interesting idea! Thank you very much for mentioning it!

We can absolutely write a bot in python and could try to use it like that. I already made a discord bot so this shouldn’t be brutally hard.

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Awesome 👍 I'm more c#/Java, angular if there's anything I can contribute.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well, I do know some c# but not enough for it to be functional.

You could hit me up on github or pm here to get a repo set up somehere and go from there.

What do you think?

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm currently on holidays but that sounds great when I return. I might even get started early. Can you pm the details?

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The other person we came across now tries to somehow discredit me. Whatever their plan is. Jeez.

Sure, I‘ll send you a pm. Have a nice vacation.

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Thanks. Yeah that was odd

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can check if text is ai/llm generated and an automated api check before posting and immediate ban if found

If this LLM-detection function ever results in false positives, this system will be banning innocent people.

Also there are many, many cases where a person openly displays results from an LLM, without it being in any way antisocial.

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The odds of someone coming up with the same sentence as an llm within common sense bounds of time far exceed winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning.

Your second point is straight up nonsense. This platform is for humans to interact. The use of bots is inherently deceptive.

Fascinating to have someone argue for them. I think the backend logs will be pretty illuminating.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don’t know what a person “coming up with the same sentence as an llm” would have anything to do with this unless the LLM detection is based on direct string comparison.

The use of bots is inherently deceptive

Nope. I can say:

Here’s what GPT-4 generated when I gave it that prompt: “[some LLM output that would get them banned by the machine we’re proposing to build]”

That is not deceptive. But it would be detected by this system and result in them being banned. Because you guys are gung-ho to build a powerful head-cracking machine and didn’t think of an obvious edge case.

[–] blahsay@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

You're wrong and don't have the technical knowledge to understand why and I can't be asked explaining it.

Relax, it won't affect that case.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So these trolls’ tactic is to disagree with you about semantics?

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, not really.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Okay here. Since you want to mark me as a troll now, I’m just gonna stop being polite about how I do this. Because the polite way Om trying to do this is coming across to you as inauthentic, and the inauthenticity is coming across as trolling, and now you’re talking about applying this proposed mega ban hammer to me.

I don’t believe that you’re capable of seeing this clearly, and I won’t believe it until I you have linked to at least ten comments, in other threads, that you think represent this particular type of toxicity you’re complaining about.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 1 points 10 months ago

Whatever you think mate. Feel free to imagine anything you like.

If you have arguments, feel free to argue. If not, just go somewhere else.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Here’s the thread. The readers here can judge for themselves how much abuse haui_lemmy was receiving: https://lemmy.world/comment/7230392

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Do you have evidence of this? Same users showing up at the same times, that sort of thing?