• Rickety Thudds
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    4111 months ago

    Are bots basically scraping Reddit and reconstituting entire subs on Lemmy?

    I said something about how it should be done a whole back, half jokingly.

    I’m glad someone was serious.

    • ZarosOP
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      3511 months ago

      I’ve been seeing some of that, but there are apparently also a ton of bots being created for who knows what reason and that’s spooky. (it made the user count jump up in hundreds of thousands) Can’t say I know much about that, but I’d imagine it’ll cause some issues sooner than later…

      • Chainweasel
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        3911 months ago

        Election time. Same time bot activity gets extra crazy on Reddit. Prepare for shit-tons of propaganda.

      • andrew
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        1511 months ago

        I had to manage some auto registered bot accounts on my test instance. They didn’t do anything yet but it was pretty obvious they weren’t real. Randomly generated usernames and all created within a minute.

        • Synapse
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          611 months ago

          Hey! I always use randomly generated user names and I am a real human that enjoy real human things, like wearing socks and dink liquids.

      • @[email protected]
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        911 months ago

        Reddit accounts are being sold online all the time.

        Creating bots is easier early on, when the securities don’t exist yet. Creating an army of account is currently cheap, but may be less so in the future. They are just betting that their army of accounts are going to be valuable in the future.

        • Chainweasel
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          711 months ago

          Selling Reddit accounts relies heavily on karma though, which Lemmy doesn’t publicly keep track of. It’s more likely they’ll be used to push spam or disinformation.

  • @[email protected]
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    3711 months ago

    I can’t wait until we get bots that repeat catchphrases or tell you when your post contains all the letters of the alphabet! That was the best part of reddit!

    • @[email protected]
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      1011 months ago

      On principle, I am downvoting any typical bot-response comments. Don’t do that here, not even “ironically”.

    • @[email protected]
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      811 months ago

      I have a thing on my phone that lets me do a ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and for some reason lt loses an arm on Lemmy. Made me so sad to realize no bot is gonna answer that.

      • 𝖒𝖆𝖋
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        1511 months ago

        In programming backslash can sometimes be used to enter special characters. Maybe Lemmy also follows this syntax? If so, typing two consecutive backslashes might help.

        Test with one backslash:
        Test with two backslashes: \

        • @[email protected]
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          1111 months ago

          Isn’t that just markdown? Eg wrapping with a star/asterisk italicizes. If you want to escape that you backslash.

          test in italics, made by wrapping with asterisks

          * = a backslash escaped asterisk

      • allmaechd
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        1211 months ago

        Here: \ you lost this.

        This was written by a 🤖 please don’t reply to this email

        • fear
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          511 months ago

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            • fear
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              911 months ago

              Clown Fact #1:

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              311 months ago

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      • @rooster_butt
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        11 months ago

        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        You need 3 backslashes:

        ¯\\\_(ツ)_

        Backslashes are escape characters:

        Zero would convert it underscore italics

        ¯ _(ツ)_

        ¯ (ツ)

        apparently the ¯ cancels the italics on it’s own so I had to add a space to demonstrate…

        One cancels the underscore _italics_

        ¯\_(ツ)_

        ¯_(ツ)_/¯

        Two just cancels the escape to the underscore \italics

        ¯\\_(ツ)_

        ¯\(ツ)

        Three, finally cancels the escape to the escape to the underscore \_italics_

        ¯\\\_(ツ)_

        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • Evelyn
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      711 months ago

      I’ve now seen both sides, I just saw people on another thread complaining about how much they hated those bots and how glad they are that the bots are gone LOL

      I personally am indifferent on them other than the remindme bot, that one was useful.

    • netburnr
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      711 months ago

      I miss stabbot, it was the best bot on Reddit.

      • Rhaedas
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        311 months ago

        Half the fun of lotrmemes was the memes, the other half was the bots talking to each other. Some were predictable, but some were so well timed it was uncanny.

  • Rottcodd
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    11 months ago

    The other day, someone posted a thread about instances that had just started suddenly having tens of thousands of members. That was the first I saw on the topic.

    I went to one of the first ones on the list (k6qw or something like that) and it was a brand new instance with no communities, one post with one response, and 20,000 members.

    So it’s safe to assume they’re either bots or red lectroids (have to see if they’re all named John).

  • @[email protected]
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    11 months ago

    someday, someone is going to invent and popularize the definite way to bind a single digital identity to a living, breathing person. That’s simultaneously going to be the best and worst thing that’ll ever happen to the internet

    • ZarosOP
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      111 months ago

      Thanks! It’s one of the first memes I’ve made. One day in a distant future, I shall be a proper memer. Assuming bots won’t take over.

  • @MiddleWeigh
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    511 months ago

    Yea I feel like I’m standing in Minas tirith watching the fire and smoke build up in mordor.

  • @ZcaT
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    311 months ago

    Internet Mann vs. Machine O.O