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??
The indieweb already has an answer for this: Web of Trust. Part of everyone social graph should include a list of accounts that they trust and that they do not trust. With this you can easily create some form of ranking system where bots get silenced or ignored.
Every time I see this implemented, it always seems like screwing over the end user who is trying to join for the first time. Platforms like reddit and Tumblr benefit from a friction-free sign up system.
Imagine how challenging it is for someone joining Lemmy for the first time and suddenly having to provide trust elements like answering a few questions, or getting someone to vouch for them.
They'll run away and call Lemmy a walled garden.
Even on Reddit new accounts are often barred from participating in discussion, or even shadowbanned in some subs, until they've grinded enough karma elsewhere (and consequently, that's why you have karmafarming bots).