Can’t a corporation just enter the space whenever they want to? Can’t they start or even buy out larger instances? Even if Lemmy does take off, wouldn’t this inevitably happen anyway if the space gets popular enough?
I hope you are right about better mechanisms to detect and control Astroturfing. It is what killed Reddit for me, not the whole API mess.
If you want a Reddit example, go look at the “Naked and Afraid” subreddit dedicated to the show. Almost all the activity is from accounts with the same semantic naming pattern and who have the same account pattern in terms of age and ratio of karma.
When you look at what is being posted, it is obvious that Discovery/Max paid some shitty social-media marketing company to “increase engagement”. They will post for a thing, against a thing, opened ended questions, etc. then all the other fake accounts pile in and respond. Creating comment chains 8-12 deep with fake comments to try and keep you “engaged” with their content.
The same thing will happen here. The Astroturfers don’t care about community standards, rules, “shame”, or accounts. They create and burn accounts by the hundreds of thousands. They also make money in this, so they will just continue to optimize for any criteria the fediverse uses to move content to “hot” visibility.
I haven’t seen a platform yet that has a good way to combat this.
Not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it certainly sounds like bad actors. Where did the existing toolset fall short? Were there mods? Did they remove these posts/comments? Minimum account ages?
Once we identify the tools needed to fight the spam, they get deployed. If effective, the spammers move on to the next arms to push their wares. I know I saw a LOT of comments shortly before the end of Reddit that the parent was a karma-farming bot.
We will always be behind the curve, since it’s the nature of being reactive, but hopefully we can keep the return low enough to make it not worth the effort for most.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community space dedicated to being helpful and answering each others’ questions on various topics.
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All posts titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That’s it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it’s in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content. Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
Matrix Chat Room
To find & join our chat room, log into fluffychat.im(or any other matrix client) and put #nostupidquestions:matrix.org on the search bar.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
I hope you are right about better mechanisms to detect and control Astroturfing. It is what killed Reddit for me, not the whole API mess.
If you want a Reddit example, go look at the “Naked and Afraid” subreddit dedicated to the show. Almost all the activity is from accounts with the same semantic naming pattern and who have the same account pattern in terms of age and ratio of karma.
When you look at what is being posted, it is obvious that Discovery/Max paid some shitty social-media marketing company to “increase engagement”. They will post for a thing, against a thing, opened ended questions, etc. then all the other fake accounts pile in and respond. Creating comment chains 8-12 deep with fake comments to try and keep you “engaged” with their content.
The same thing will happen here. The Astroturfers don’t care about community standards, rules, “shame”, or accounts. They create and burn accounts by the hundreds of thousands. They also make money in this, so they will just continue to optimize for any criteria the fediverse uses to move content to “hot” visibility.
I haven’t seen a platform yet that has a good way to combat this.
Not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it certainly sounds like bad actors. Where did the existing toolset fall short? Were there mods? Did they remove these posts/comments? Minimum account ages?
Once we identify the tools needed to fight the spam, they get deployed. If effective, the spammers move on to the next arms to push their wares. I know I saw a LOT of comments shortly before the end of Reddit that the parent was a karma-farming bot.
We will always be behind the curve, since it’s the nature of being reactive, but hopefully we can keep the return low enough to make it not worth the effort for most.