As technology advances and computers become increasingly capable, the line between human and bot activity on social media platforms like Lemmy is becoming blurred.

What are your thoughts on this matter? How do you think social media platforms, particularly Lemmy, should handle advanced bots in the future?

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[–] Blaze@feddit.org 14 points 4 months ago (11 children)

I saw a comment the other day saying that "the line between the most advanced bot and the least talkative human is getting more and more thinner"

Which made me think: what if bots are setup to pretend to be actual users? With a fake life that they could talk about, fake anecdotes, fake hobbies, fake jokes but everything would seem legit and consistent. That would be pretty weird, but probably impossible to detect.

And then when that roleplaying bot once in a while recommends a product, you would probably trust them, after all they gave you advice for your cat last week.

Not sure what to do in that scenario, really

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 18 points 4 months ago (10 children)

I've just accepted that if a bot interaction has the same impact on me as someone who is making up a fictional backstory, I'm not really worried wheter it is a bot or not. A bot shilling for Musk or a person shilling for Musk because they bought the hype are basically the same thing.

In my opinion the main problem with bots is not individual acccounts pretending to be people, but the damage they can do en masse through a firehose of spam posts, comments, and manipulating engagement mechanics like up/down votes. At that point there is no need for an individual account to be convincing because it is lost in the sea of trash.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 9 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Even more problematic are entire communities made out of astroturfing bots. This kind of stuff is increasingly easy and cheap to set up and will fool most people looking for advise online.

[–] drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I am convinced that the bidet shills on reddit are bots. There's just no way that hundreds of thousands of people are suddenly interested in shitting appliances.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Big Bidet at it again

[–] drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

You might consider me an independent thinker (I shit in the woods)

[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 1 points 4 months ago

There's an easy way to tell.

If they're talking about a bidet without a heater, they're a bot because no human on earth wants an ass spraying of cold water.

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