Behavior analysis is definitely a popular way to handle this but it’s very difficult and resource intensive. Major issue is false positives as users are hard to predict in flexible environments like forums - is this person interested in all Honda posts as they are researching their new car purchase or they’re shilling for Honda?

It’s tough.

It’s impossible to tell how much of the posts are bots but if you look at the default subreddits I’d say that it’s definitely noticable.

Reddit is a popular grey marketing area - be it shilling products or political propaganda. Lemmy/Federation hasn’t reached enough mass for this to be a real problem yet but it’ll happen eventually and Lemmy is an easy target right now. I used to work in bot detection area and modern, well made bots (the ones you should worry about) are essentially indisguishable from real users but script kiddies can be an issue too.

The only real way to fight bots is to reduce the incentive which is more of a cultural thing - people have to call out shills and a more transparent platform definitely helps.

Sorry for the rant but I think bots/spam will play a big role if federation ever reaches the point where there’s enough eye-balls for shilling to be valuable.

I think I’m happy with the outcome. People were always looking for an alternative to Reddit and all that was missing was critical mass. Now the alternatives are totally usable outside of small niches which will catch up eventually.

Reddit is definitely shitting its pants. They used to have zero direct competitors.

I think a more realistic implication is that big chunk of reddit content is bots and propagandists.

Every time I read the news I’m getting more convinced how evil these two are but less and less convinced that Romanians will actually get them.

Free API access to mod tools. The problem is that Reddit’s promises are useless and what - the admin volunteers have to pay for API until they do? Pay to moderate their website?

One thing to note that noticable amount of Reddit traffic is actually bots and they’re not taking time off. Be it legit bots or bots farming karma to peddle corporate ads later.

Closed source/centralized software always ends like this. It’s always “not my problem” with people when it comes to propriatory software dying until, of course, it is :(

The further it goes the more it feels like this. It’s almost like conservatives don’t have a consistent philosophy about anything.

Reddit folks came out saying that with so many private subreddits the server struggled to build the front page for people.

The article is a bit misleading. He wants to get rid of block for stronger mute as you can get around block by logging out.

The counter argument is that block is still useful because I block someone I want zero interaction with that person and people are too lazy to log out anyway so it kinda works in practice.

I’m not sure why is he stirring shit up. The block feature is on point with free speech philosophy he trying to push. If anything he should be making blocking etc. More powerful.

Reddit had so much community favor too. The whole awards thing was born from people wanting support the website. If they really struggle to make money could have rolled out an optional subscription or something with a message that everyone would have fallen for. The incompetence is incredible.

Yeah public instagram is utter garbage. From photo quality to the current environment. Pixelfed is a really awesome federated alternative though I don’t really see how it could resist the same fate if it ever got as much mass.

Nah Terms of Service is not enforcable through browse wrap agreement in the US and most of EU. You can’t implicitly agree with a legal document just by looking at something.

Check out LinkedIn v Hiq case which went to 9th circuit and set the precedent for this. LinkedIn lost.

Reddit data is public and can be easily web scraped. Reddit doesn’t own it. Spez is just throwing random memes in to distract people.

Azul is such a beautiful game too. That’s usually my intro for people new to board games.

Hive is a modern, fun take on chess with a dynamic board. Its super fun and unlike chess its not figured out and people just don’t bother to throw a “book” at it. Every board game convention I try to find someone wirh Hive and it’d awesome!

I didn’t look into this but this looks way more complicated than it should be. The query in the issue looks absolutely ridiculous tbh.

That’s just bad engineering tbh.

Ah didnt see that increase though decentralized systems are inheritly very inefficient unfortunately