There’s currently (*comparatively) no money to be made with bots given Lemmy’s comparatively small size, I’d wager. Bots on Reddit are used to advertise and to push companies’ agendas. Lemmy’s too small for that
There is definitely money to be made. Whether it is shilling for a product or even attempting to inflate market share in the hopes of converting said market share into either donations or outright selling to investors.
Yeah, I don’t think they have figured out how to properly manipulate lemmy yet (I have seen a shocking amount of facebook “why don’t these kinds of posts go viral” levels of nonsense, for example). But bots are cheap and to pretend that there is not an active effort to figure out how to manipulate us is naivety, at best.
Maybe it is just that I am an old. I watched reddit fall. Hell, I watched fucking gamefaqs “fall”. Not to mention usenet and the rest. Because the reality is that where there are people, there is money. And modern day advertisement techniques (whether it is AI bots or just people in a warehouse in the global south) are increasingly cheap.
If Lemmy had the numbers Reddit does, we’d have more bots. I expect our admins are more responsive and more willing to take risks (like banning legit users when they’re a false positive for a bot). But the APIs available also make bots easier.
The longer term solution is probably a paid instance and/or identify verification. A one-time fee of $5-15 would significantly hinder bots and help the fediverse to be sustainable. It means bans stick much better, and slows cheap bots from having infinite attempts to achieve indistinguishably.
Identity verification comes with its own problems, but they may be workable. People don’t want to post under their real names, but that information doesn’t need to be revealed. It could be possible to have regional instances that verify and publish only your general location, such as state or county.
We have a bot problem, but we also have admins/ mods that don’t want to bloat their numbers with bots (mostly). The fediverse helps us hold each other accountable, and if any community is full of bots, you defedirate them. I don’t mind the auto posters that seed content. I like the OSRS update bot, etc…
Why isn’t lemmy taken over with bots yet? Is it just a matter of time?
There’s currently (*comparatively) no money to be made with bots given Lemmy’s comparatively small size, I’d wager. Bots on Reddit are used to advertise and to push companies’ agendas. Lemmy’s too small for that
There is definitely money to be made. Whether it is shilling for a product or even attempting to inflate market share in the hopes of converting said market share into either donations or outright selling to investors.
Yeah, I don’t think they have figured out how to properly manipulate lemmy yet (I have seen a shocking amount of facebook “why don’t these kinds of posts go viral” levels of nonsense, for example). But bots are cheap and to pretend that there is not an active effort to figure out how to manipulate us is naivety, at best.
Maybe it is just that I am an old. I watched reddit fall. Hell, I watched fucking gamefaqs “fall”. Not to mention usenet and the rest. Because the reality is that where there are people, there is money. And modern day advertisement techniques (whether it is AI bots or just people in a warehouse in the global south) are increasingly cheap.
If Lemmy had the numbers Reddit does, we’d have more bots. I expect our admins are more responsive and more willing to take risks (like banning legit users when they’re a false positive for a bot). But the APIs available also make bots easier.
The longer term solution is probably a paid instance and/or identify verification. A one-time fee of $5-15 would significantly hinder bots and help the fediverse to be sustainable. It means bans stick much better, and slows cheap bots from having infinite attempts to achieve indistinguishably.
Identity verification comes with its own problems, but they may be workable. People don’t want to post under their real names, but that information doesn’t need to be revealed. It could be possible to have regional instances that verify and publish only your general location, such as state or county.
Everyone on lemmy is a bot except you.
We have a bot problem, but we also have admins/ mods that don’t want to bloat their numbers with bots (mostly). The fediverse helps us hold each other accountable, and if any community is full of bots, you defedirate them. I don’t mind the auto posters that seed content. I like the OSRS update bot, etc…
Beep boop
Oh fuck I blew my cover
My guess is we’re still too small and niche to be a tempting target.
I think the federated nature of lemmy will make it an easy target when it does come along though.
Disclaimer: I don’t really know what I’m talking about.
Edit: Spelling
Because there’s no value in it at the moment. Reddit accounts sell for quite a bit of money as they can be used for marketing or propaganda.
Why do you assume it’s not happening already?
WHY ARE YOU YELLING
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