this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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For the threads with the older one on the left: https://lemmy.world/post/14859950

(Thank you @[email protected] )

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[–] [email protected] 218 points 7 months ago (7 children)

My understanding of how this works is that that left one is real accounts making real comments, at least in the majority.

Then when the link gets reposted, either by a bot or naturally, potentially depending on the title, the bots scrape the old comments and post them.

It's content farming. And Reddit is probably okay with this.

[–] [email protected] 177 points 7 months ago (6 children)

The right one is the "real" accounts. Notice how the left one is newer and all the accounts have names ending with four digits, except where they aren't copies from the right.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 7 months ago (2 children)

No, the left one is older and most the names in the right contain four numbers.

What's going on here?

Maybe op updated the picture?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I did, because other people complained in another comment that it was confusing to not have the older thread on the left.

Anyway, it's pretty obvious which one is which one

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 7 months ago (18 children)

Reddit is going to poison LLMs sooner than I thought.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago

LMAO while AIs reading training data sets get stuck in infinite loops.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's account farming. They make fake accounts look legitimate so they can use them to influence opinions on the site.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago

Basically replaying a thread to make it look like there's activity in the sub.

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[–] [email protected] 183 points 7 months ago (6 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

I didn’t believe this when I first heard about it but it’s looking more true everyday

[–] [email protected] 57 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, even if we're not quite "there" yet, it feels like we're at least moving in that direction

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I have a more realistic description of "Dead Internet Theory" that involves no conspiracy theories:

The Internet is becoming a monoculture, which is killing the vibrant, diverse, resilient, innovative space it used to be. Manifestos about a better way of life, and creative personal websites have been replaced with vapid social status posts in bland bootstrap layouts that double as data collection schemes. Technology that empowers people has been replaced with technology to restrict people. Bots masquerading as people is just the cherry on the sundae, the inevitable outcome of having created such a monoculture, a place where large orchards of content are so easy to pollute. The modern Internet ducking sucks, it has been ruined by people.

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I remember when the narwhal used to bacon only at midnight.

Now the narwhal is forced to bacon continuously.

This kills the narwhal.

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 7 months ago (2 children)

They lost so many users they needed the "engagement" numbers for the IPO so they opened the flood gate. Now they are stuck with an issue they can't fix without admitting the fraud.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (10 children)

Never trust a default username

[adjective] [noun] [3-4 digits] is always a sign of bad news, on social media and Xbox Live

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 7 months ago (14 children)

Reposts has always been a major issue on reddit, there are an infamous moderator who would delete posts with traction and repost it himself for karma.

Using bots to duplicate comments on reposts is a new low though.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 7 months ago (21 children)

We use manual approval for programming.dev accounts where there is a very simple instruction you must follow to be approved. The amount of spam that fails that test makes me concerned about the amount of bots from instances without any barriers for account creation.

What happens on reddit (in regards to spam) will inevitably finds its way to ActivityPub link aggregators like lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (12 children)

I am sad that the current generation of federated social media/networks still doesn't have much, if any, implementation of web of trust functionality. I believe that's the only solution to bots/AI/etc content in the future. Show me content from people/accounts/profiles I trust, and accounts they trust, etc. When I see spam or scams or other misbehavior, show me the trust chain connecting me to it so I can sever it at the appropriate level instead of having to block individual accounts. (e.g. "sorry mom, you've trusted too many political frauds, I'm going to stop trusting people you trust")

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That's been happening for ages. I'm sure if you check the profiles you'll find other posts with all the same bots commenting. A lot of lazier ones wait exactly a year to repost, and it's pretty obvious in subs for something like a live service game where they'll be reposting complaints that are way out of date. One in the Monster Hunter sub reposted a trailer for Iceborne which had been out for 3 years by that point.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

I'm mildly annoyed the recent thread is on the left not the right, but this is super interesting so thanks for sharing! 🤖

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

shit like this was happening before the exodus, you'd go into one thread then the other where it's crossposted, and it's the same comment, but with some dot, commas in weird places and it's a reply to another comment and doesn't really makes sense.

oh and youtube comments are full of nonsensical AI convos that like recommend financial advisors, or coins to invest in, like bruh

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Just paid a visit. It’s really gotten bad. Horrible titles that make little sense. People falling over each other to make tired quips instead of conversation, and the rest to point out how someone is wrong or one-up the commenter.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Give them some credit. They've finally changed the user name generator to random words instead of Adjective_Noun_####.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They have not, left is the more recent post. The right one could be real and is just recreated by these bots.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

I've noticed that many Reddit users with the username format Word_Word_Number (for example Absolute_Bot_1230) are almost guaranteed to either be a bot or extremely inflammatory -- it's like everything they post is meant to generate controversies.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah reddit has a name generator that you can choose from when you create an account and that's the format it uses. Those names are almost exclusively bots and throwaway/anon accounts

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[–] Eezyville 39 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Lmao! Dead internet theory!

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 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.

[–] SuddenDownpour 36 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Just said on a Reddit r/worldnews' thread that the subreddit has been astroturfed for years, as a response to someone wondering how could people in the comments be wishing for more innocent Palestinians be killed, and surprise surprise, I got instabanned. The site is becoming a façade of a fake reality in far more ways than one.

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[–] Immersive_Matthew 33 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Would be even hard to detect now that AI can write the same message in different ways. I question every comment I read, especially the ones appealing to one’s emotions.

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[–] iterable 31 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (5 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thank god this isn't a problem here

P░ U░S░S░ Y░I░ N░B░I░O ░

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago (1 children)

hey...

There's no pussy in your bio...

😡

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Lemmy is not immune to this!! We need to develop FOSS to mitigate/detect that

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (7 children)

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

...Right?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (13 children)

The internet is full of bots, Reddit is no exception. Believe it or not, neither is Lemmy.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I feel really bad for this person. This is what engagement looks like.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I remember the reddit hug of death, from back when ordinary websites existed and got visitors, instead of just the same 25 mega corp sites that get linked now.

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[–] ShankShill 28 points 7 months ago

Another settlement needs our help. I'll mark it on your map.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (3 children)

IMO the only way to not be infected by bot content is to not be popular, or small enough to be irrelevant.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Nobody uses reddit. The exodus did more damage than people thought. This doesn't surprise me.

[–] starman2112 27 points 7 months ago (6 children)

I mean a lot of us still use reddit, you can just ignore the main site and focus on your niche communities

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (14 children)

To be fair, I sound like a bot sometimes.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah, I've seen that a bunch of times. Some subredits seem to be a particularly popular places to karma-farm to make convincing sock-puppet accounts to sell. Often someone in the thread points out that it is a bot repost - but the fake post and fake comments are easier to engage with compared to the accusation that someone is a karma-farming bot.

(And of course, these bots-in-training will upvote each other's comments and posts... so it always looks pretty popular.)

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 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.

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