For the threads with the older one on the left: https://lemmy.world/post/14859950
(Thank you @Nelots@lemm.ee )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
I didn’t believe this when I first heard about it but it’s looking more true everyday
We use manual approval for programming.dev accounts where there is a very simple instruction you must follow to be approved. The amount of spam that fails that test makes me concerned about the amount of bots from instances without any barriers for account creation.
What happens on reddit (in regards to spam) will inevitably finds its way to ActivityPub link aggregators like lemmy.
Honestly I already believe that this has happened.
My reason for thinking this is because of this:
The spike that happened on October 2023 after the initial spike that happened due to the Reddit protests seems unnatural to me.
Someone gave the explanation of the release of the mobile clients but even then I wouldn’t think it would lead to a spike equivalent to the initial one since it would mostly just be people using an account they already had instead of creating a new one.
Like honestly if someone knows what event happened then that made so many new users join I’d appreciate it.
I didn’t get into Lemmy until there was a mobile client available, Sync to be specific. I believe it since a lot of Reddit users were basically mobile only. So, for a few months I basically subsisted on YouTube alone.
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My understanding of how this works is that that left one is real accounts making real comments, at least in the majority.
Then when the link gets reposted, either by a bot or naturally, potentially depending on the title, the bots scrape the old comments and post them.
It’s content farming. And Reddit is probably okay with this.
It’s account farming. They make fake accounts look legitimate so they can use them to influence opinions on the site.
The right one is the “real” accounts. Notice how the left one is newer and all the accounts have names ending with four digits, except where they aren’t copies from the right.
The list of names at the left creeps me the fuck out.
I saw this exact same style of bot account years ago on Tumblr. They always follow the same naming scheme: one word or two words combined and then a string of 4 digits. I bet if you go to any of their profiles, you’ll find like 4 comments that are all copied from old threads and a bunch of upvotes on completely random subs, possibly even all of them being on other bot accounts’ posts and comments.
The real question is whether they’re being used to fake activity on Reddit, sway public opinion by posting this sort of political slant, or will they later be used to advertise scams and this is just to make them seem legitimate.
