I think the only way is to be less popular and to keep moving. People that run bots are like bullies, and are either crazed zealots that eventually will run out of motivation, or already have limited motivation and you have to make it harder for them until they stop caring. In which case, they basically just become an actual user.

Now the trick is how to string along your users in the same way that doesn’t turn them away.

Offer something juicy to people who care, but foul to those who don’t.

Or just have better human moderation, like what Ada said. Treat your instance like a community and a team, watch over them and get rid of the bots, and then block instances that do a bad job at that. Isn’t that basically the fediverse way, already? Because there will always be spam and bad actors and dissent. Only through the strengths of humanity can we beat the bots.

Combine these two arms, and they would be pretty solid. I leave the more rock hard, third arm solution to somebody much smarter than me, but welcome it gratefully and happily if and when it comes.

• ramblings of somebody just waking up