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How to Deal with Astroturfing? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

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

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I found an account dedicated to spam posting "enlightened centrist" talking points and pundits. Their name itself is part of the advertising. They even would post the same content across multiple communities, without cross-posting. And not just political stuff, they posted the same meme about 4 times without linking them.

I know this sort of thing happened all the time on Reddit and essentially it was hopeless because of how the corporate power structure worked.

"Politics" and "News" communities seem especially "apolitical" (that is to say Neoliberal) and hands-off "free speech to the end user" about what is posted. I'll frequently see a lame article, sensationalist headline, instead of the first source or the most informative one. Or I'll see a great thread about a great news story - and someone reposts the same content the next day with better timing, and it will be weaker journalism with weaker comments - yet more people will see it. Now this doesn't constitute abuse, but it will be just as permissive of abuse of the system as Reddit was.

I've also seen threads asking about where to find good sources, how to find accurate journalism... without much great advice. It's sort of an acquired skill, but we have the potential to help people acquire it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I spent like half my time on Lemmy today just blocking bot accounts, bot communities, and chuds. The all feed looks about as bad as Reddit did now.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I haven't seen as much crap as you have. Perhaps my instance admin has already done the work for me. But I think we are vulnerable to this being the case. If the instance and community moderators are hands-off, the end user has to opt-in against misinformation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah Reddit was the only social media I used, and I think I'm just going to go without.

At least until the seas level, lemmy is all the worst parts of Reddit with none of the good, and I owe it to my mental health to not bother with the hordes of disengenuous bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

If you need a break, you should take it.

Take care.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you need a break, please take it. Your mental health is not worth sacrificing for random strangers on the internet. I will say it is highly instance dependent, so migrating to a smaller instance may change that experience.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As much as I dislike hexbear, they are still effective as a way to reduce the astrosurfing in some communities like news and politics.

Otherwise, public upvotes, but that's not very popular

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I can see that their more koaher techniques might be useful. I'm only aware of the techniques that got them defederated, though.
On US issues, they really played hardball and had great talking points.

I went through and called out the bs posts - and found that many other users had done so, too, and also downvoted them. I should know Lemmy users are much less naive than Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Absolutely. I think there's a bunch of mitigation efforts that need to be taken.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I could literally stalk this user to try and make counter-arguments to their posts, but I think they could just block me?

Or I could try to make the arguments to some moderators that he is botting or automating his posts, because the speed is... human, but highly productive.