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How Will Lemmy and Social Media Handle Advanced Bots in the Future? (discuss.online)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month 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

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A bot shilling for Musk or a person shilling for Musk because they bought the hype are basically the same thing.

It's the scale that changes. One bot can be replicated much easier than a human shill.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

So my second paragraph...

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