• Rickety Thudds@lemmy.ca
    301·
    2 years ago

    Are bots basically scraping Reddit and reconstituting entire subs on Lemmy?

    I said something about how it should be done a whole back, half jokingly.

    I’m glad someone was serious.

    • Zaros@lemmy.worldOP
      19·
      2 years ago

      I’ve been seeing some of that, but there are apparently also a ton of bots being created for who knows what reason and that’s spooky. (it made the user count jump up in hundreds of thousands) Can’t say I know much about that, but I’d imagine it’ll cause some issues sooner than later…

      • andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun
        9·
        2 years ago

        I had to manage some auto registered bot accounts on my test instance. They didn’t do anything yet but it was pretty obvious they weren’t real. Randomly generated usernames and all created within a minute.

        • Synapse@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 years ago

          Hey! I always use randomly generated user names and I am a real human that enjoy real human things, like wearing socks and dink liquids.

      • VerPoilu@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        2 years ago

        Reddit accounts are being sold online all the time.

        Creating bots is easier early on, when the securities don’t exist yet. Creating an army of account is currently cheap, but may be less so in the future. They are just betting that their army of accounts are going to be valuable in the future.

        • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 years ago

          Selling Reddit accounts relies heavily on karma though, which Lemmy doesn’t publicly keep track of. It’s more likely they’ll be used to push spam or disinformation.

  • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
    294·
    2 years ago

    I can’t wait until we get bots that repeat catchphrases or tell you when your post contains all the letters of the alphabet! That was the best part of reddit!

    • Mutelogic@sh.itjust.works
      9·
      2 years ago

      On principle, I am downvoting any typical bot-response comments. Don’t do that here, not even “ironically”.

    • webghost0101@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
      71·
      2 years ago

      I have a thing on my phone that lets me do a ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and for some reason lt loses an arm on Lemmy. Made me so sad to realize no bot is gonna answer that.

      • 𝖒𝖆𝖋@szmer.infoEnglish
        14·
        2 years ago

        In programming backslash can sometimes be used to enter special characters. Maybe Lemmy also follows this syntax? If so, typing two consecutive backslashes might help.

        Test with one backslash:
        Test with two backslashes: \

        • diablexical@vlemmy.netEnglish
          9·
          2 years ago

          Isn’t that just markdown? Eg wrapping with a star/asterisk italicizes. If you want to escape that you backslash.

          test in italics, made by wrapping with asterisks

          * = a backslash escaped asterisk

    • Evelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      4·
      2 years ago

      I’ve now seen both sides, I just saw people on another thread complaining about how much they hated those bots and how glad they are that the bots are gone LOL

      I personally am indifferent on them other than the remindme bot, that one was useful.

      • Rhaedas@kbin.social
        4·
        2 years ago

        Half the fun of lotrmemes was the memes, the other half was the bots talking to each other. Some were predictable, but some were so well timed it was uncanny.

  • Rottcodd@kbin.social
    24·
    2 years ago

    The other day, someone posted a thread about instances that had just started suddenly having tens of thousands of members. That was the first I saw on the topic.

    I went to one of the first ones on the list (k6qw or something like that) and it was a brand new instance with no communities, one post with one response, and 20,000 members.

    So it’s safe to assume they’re either bots or red lectroids (have to see if they’re all named John).

  • fiah@discuss.tchncs.de
    121·
    2 years ago

    someday, someone is going to invent and popularize the definite way to bind a single digital identity to a living, breathing person. That’s simultaneously going to be the best and worst thing that’ll ever happen to the internet