Social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit are increasingly infested with bots and fake accounts, leading to significant manipulation of public discourse. These bots don't just annoy users—they skew visibility through vote manipulation. Fake accounts and automated scripts systematically downvote posts opposing certain viewpoints, distorting the content that surfaces and amplifying specific agendas.
Before coming to Lemmy, I was systematically downvoted by bots on Reddit for completely normal comments that were relatively neutral and not controversial at all. Seemed to be no pattern in it... One time I commented that my favorite game was WoW, down voted -15 for no apparent reason.
For example, a bot on Twitter using an API call to GPT-4o ran out of funding and started posting their prompts and system information publicly.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/chatgpt-bot-x-russian-campaign-meme/
Bots like these are probably in the tens or hundreds of thousands. They did a huge ban wave of bots on Reddit, and some major top level subreddits were quiet for days because of it. Unbelievable...
How do we even fix this issue or prevent it from affecting Lemmy??
Implement a cryptographic web of trust system on top of Lemmy. People meet to exchange keys and sign them on Lemmy's system. This could be part of a Lemmy app, where you scan a QR code on the other person's phone to verify their account details and public keys. Web of trust systems have historically been cumbersome for most users. With the right UI, it doesn't have to be.
Have some kind of incentive to get verified on the web of trust system. Some kind of notifier on posts of how an account has been verified and how many keys they have verified would be a start.
Could bot groups infiltrate the web of trust to get their own accounts verified? Yes, but they can also be easily cut off when discovered.
I mean, you could charge like $8 and then give the totally real people that are paying that money a blue checkmark? /s
Seriously though, I like the idea, but the verification has got to be easy to do and consistently successful when you do it.
I run my own matrix server, and the most difficult/annoying part of it is the web of trust and verification of users/sessions/devices. It’s a small private server with just a few people, so I just handle all the verification myself. If my wife had to deal with it it would be a non starter.