I’ve had a pretty depressing morning, scrolling through my Subscribed feed and realising that 90% of new posts were from the same two bot accounts (bagel and somethingmelon, can’t be remeber exactly and I’ve blocked them.)
Thankfully, a few people had made “ai slop” comments under one, so I checked the post history and, sure, a new account posting at a implausible rate. And once you started looking at the posts they were kinda samey, generic or a bit off. But I think that if the bot had been programmed to post at a slower rate, I don’t think I’d have really noticed.
So my question is, should people be allowed to report bot accounts? And can/should mods be expected at assess someone’s humanity? The very idea is gross, but so is the thought that lemmy would be very easily swamped by a small number of more careful written bots.
I go into my settings and I remove all bot posts.
I have no idea why they allow bots. Usually websites are trying to get rid of bots, but I guess it’s backwards on Reddit and lemmy
There are some bots that just automate something, like reposting something regular from elsewhere to the fediverse instead of doing it manually. A bot that reposts old comics that are finally being online makes sense instead of having a person go and post each one individually.
Like if the accounts that post old Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes comics is a bot I would be fine with that. It is just automation.
A bot account pretending to be a person by posting complex discussion topics and doing fake replies goes against the purpose of the fediverse.
The etiquette on Lemmy/Piefed is that bots are tagged as bots. I doubt anyone would allow a bot larping as a user.
I don’t mind some of the open bots (c/dailygames has some that post links) but it’s these shady llm bots pretending to talk about naps or giving life tips that bug me. And sadly, because they aren’t openly tagged as bots, I don’t think my settings can help.
I saw a article a while back. I cannot remember what website in particular, but over 51% of the users were bots.
This AI is going to start talking more and more casually like it’s a human. And when it does, you’ll know that these bots were only the first wave of the terrible problem that’s to come.
I’m basically just here unless the fediverse gets popular enough for bots to overwhelm the humans. Nothing here can really prevent it.
After that I’m not using the internet socially ever again.
Yup, is a depressing future. I love chatting with strangers on the Internet, but increasingly I can’t see a way of excluding bots without destroying accessibility (constant captcha bullshit) or privacy (forcing users authentication with ID). Neither are acceptable, so maybe I’ll be forced to speak to my actual human acquaintances…
Maybe it will force people to talk in person again