Comment on OpenAI: Our models are more persuasive than 82% of Reddit users
UsernameHere@lemmy.world 17 hours agoSo if a bunch of accounts on lemmy repeat an opinion that isn’t popular with people I meet IRL then that could be an attempt to change public opinion using bots on lemmy?
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
In the case of Lemmy, it is more likely that the members of communities are people because the population is small enough that a mass influx of bots would be easy to notice compared to reddit. Plus the Lemmy comminities tend to have obvious rules and enforcement that filters out people who aren’t on the same page.
For example, you will notice some general opinions on .world and .ml and blahaj will fit their local instance culture and trying to change that with bots would likely run afoul of the moderation or the established community members.
It is far easier to utilize bots as part of a large pool of potential users compared to a smaller one.
UsernameHere@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
It just has to be proportional. Reports on these bot farms have shown that they absolutely go into small niche areas to influence people. Facebook groups being one of the most notable that comes to mind.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
What do you think are the views being promoted by bots on lemmy?
Are their accounts you think are bots or are you assuming differing opinions from people you know in real life are bots? I know people who have wildly different views in real life, some of which I avoid because of those views.
UsernameHere@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It is tough to say. But there are red flags. Like when an opinion on a post is repeated a lot by different accounts in the thread but are heavily downvoted and an opposing opinion is heavily upvoted.
This is what I would expect to see if bots brigading a thread are using unpopular talking points.
For example, I see it a lot with anti DNC threads with the same accounts posting similar comments throughout multiple reposts of a single post. If I had to assume what views they are trying to promote, I would say they seem to be trying to discourage democrats to vote by sowing apathy aka FUD.