I disagree. Lemmy is more resistant to bots because there’s no perverse incentive to boost user activity numbers to please investors and advertisers. Reddit for example doesn’t really care if most comments are fake on a post. It’s still interaction and it pumps numbers. Lemmy is built and run by us. It serves no other masters.
Given that users naturally self-sort into instances, your trolls are also more likely to congregate on instances and communities that can be blocked. I don’t want to name any names but I do block some instances from my view for a reason. The Russian bots congregate in places that are amenable to this, and the design of Lemmy encourages this self-sorting into places where you’re accepted.
The problem is still significant, but there are advantages to the fediverse.
I think it would be more likely bots would flood instances with posts at a level that was unrealistic for the small scale admins we currently have to combat.
This’ll probably be an “agree to disagree,” but I think most websites do make good faith efforts to lower bot usage. Not because I trust them or anything, but because the perception that bot spam is out of control is bad for their bottom line. It drives away real users and high bot activity makes advertisers disinclined to trust that the high traffic is of any value.
I disagree. Lemmy is more resistant to bots because there’s no perverse incentive to boost user activity numbers to please investors and advertisers. Reddit for example doesn’t really care if most comments are fake on a post. It’s still interaction and it pumps numbers. Lemmy is built and run by us. It serves no other masters.
Given that users naturally self-sort into instances, your trolls are also more likely to congregate on instances and communities that can be blocked. I don’t want to name any names but I do block some instances from my view for a reason. The Russian bots congregate in places that are amenable to this, and the design of Lemmy encourages this self-sorting into places where you’re accepted.
The problem is still significant, but there are advantages to the fediverse.
I think it would be more likely bots would flood instances with posts at a level that was unrealistic for the small scale admins we currently have to combat.
There is a bit of a chain of trust, however. Instance fills with spam bots? Defed.
Spam bots start making their own instances? Go to whitelists.
And as henfredemars says, because there is no financial incentive to grow the userbase, instances can slow things right down if the spam starts.
This’ll probably be an “agree to disagree,” but I think most websites do make good faith efforts to lower bot usage. Not because I trust them or anything, but because the perception that bot spam is out of control is bad for their bottom line. It drives away real users and high bot activity makes advertisers disinclined to trust that the high traffic is of any value.