Every social media site is overrun by hundreds of Russian bots, some worse than others (Meta products). What can we do to combat this? Should those of us who don’t want to live in a fascist dictatorship be running our own bot farms? Something has to be done to change the iron grip they have on the narrative of history and reality to the common man.
How can I make leftist bots to fight this plague?
Edit:
ITT: “Why you think it Russian bot, comrade? Russia never hack!”
There’s enough available research to show that Russia is running massive bot programs, you’re either living under a rock, ignorant, or it benefits you to deflect from the issue.
Edit 2: The user with the name like dimesix (I’ve blocked them) has gone through and downvoted all the comments he could on my profile. I wonder why this thread upsets him to such a degree that he’d do that?
Fight quantity with quality.
Yeah, I would have agreed with you a decade ago. But when the quality is a drop in the quantity ocean, it’s beyond pointless as a method to stop the plague.
I agree that there is a problem but if your only solution is to flood the platforms with counter messages, are you any better than those you are calling out? Wouldn’t you rather encourage a more authentic kind of posting? Not that I’m totally against bots but I think they should be allowed to form their own opinions. Ideally, when they are advanced enough, we should be able to convince bots of our point of view with a good argument. Otherwise it’s all just spam.
I have no idea how to respond to this abstract thinking. This post is about taking action against an active and controlled effort to destroy societies, there’s other time and places for philosophy.
I buikt a minimal bot some time ago on reddit. It was very simple. It reacted with predefined response when it detected specific terms.
While it was mostly made for a joke. I was surprised how efficient this was. I received mostly positive return as well as some infuriating responses. Still this was effective.
The current platform appears to actively prefer the russian bot presence. So an option might be to provide a FOSS bot maker that anyone could easily use that will also have the property to be easy to not be detected immediately as a bot.
Then these bots should both counter russian bots and promote this bot creation tool or even platform (bit a platform would certainly be easier to detect and block).
But by doing so, the dead Internet is closer than ever.
Code: https://git.esy.fun/yogsototh/redbot
See stack.yaml file for the env var to set. If you run it it should start a web interface. And you can create new bots from there.
PM’d
ITT: “Why you think it Russian bot, comrade? Russia never hack!”
It irritates me a lot when posters edit their original post with “ITT” with claims as if it were prevalent. From what I can see, at that point there were three comments, and only one of them said what you paraphrase-change-quote and reply to. Just reply to that comment. Which you didn’t do at all.
This approach feels evasive passive aggressive to me, and not constructive. Maybe a first step to combat them would be to reply in-place and not let them stand without context/answers where they are.
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Respectfully, and I have never asked this of anyone before, but can you just ignore my thread? You and I clearly do not see eye to eye, and I can’t see a reason for us to converse. This thread won’t hurt you if you ignore it. Thanks.
I’m interested in the topic, so I opened it and joined the discussion.
While I could have ignored the “ITT” note, it’s part of the post, and this time, I pointed out how I see them, with full reasoning. You could have ignored the comment.
You could have not left it.
Delusional! This guy wants only agreement. Anything else is bot behavior!
You’re definitely not a bot because a bot would never do something so absurd.
Okay, you have actively gone through my profile to find comments of mine to downvote and comment on, you are blocked.
You can block me. But that won’t save you from my downvotes, dummy.
You won’t be able to do a thing without some level of invasion of privacy (phone # verification would probably be the best).
We’re unfortunately rapidly approaching the point where we have to make a decision A) a little invasion or B) allowing bots to roam free and spread propaganda across all major social platforms. Even if you choose path A it’s up to the platform to implement it properly. See tiktok the racism and propaganda there has SKYROCKETED since being “allowed” to stay in the US (backdoor agreements to allow propaganda bots)
The golden age of social networks is over. Even if a comment section is not full of Russian bots, it’s either full with ChatGPT bots OR some crawler bots that farm content. That’s good, people need to stop their naive approach towards social media, that we’ve had so far. Communication will probably become more intimate as a counter-reaction. Until then, there is no need to fight for something that is simply obsolete.
If you believe my issue is that there’s icky comments online, you don’t live in America or you’re pro Trump. This is about stopping massive bot farms from controlling every fucking election and making humanity less intelligent by the day. I don’t give a fuck about Facebook or social media, but I can clearly see the damage that’s been done by electing the guy that the bot farms overwhelmingly pushed for.
It really is everyone. It’s not all bots. There’s troll farms that employ people in poor countries. Republican think tanks are their biggest customers, but nation states like Isreal and russia get in on the act. You can hire the same people to shill your product for you as well. That’s why you always see karma farming on Reddit, they’re seasoning the account in order to sell it. You can buy accounts for every platform or just pay for likes.
Are we even sure if Russian need bot ? Doesn’t America willfully elect pro Russian leader ?
“Willfully” after an extensive and long-running disinformation and disruption campaign, yeah. What you imply as “willfully” as if it were autonomously - implying without Russian influence - is a complete misattribution and misinterpretation. It’s a combination of forces. The Russian campaign is a significant actor in those.
I think all the american media that are pro trump have a much larger influence and I have a hard time believing Joe Rogan or CNN are Russian assets
Keep in mind that the pro russian idiot only got elected because of these bots.
when you come across one, leave a comment explaining said user is a bot and has a suspicious post history, then walk away. there’s no point you trying to argue with them, best you can do is paint a target on them for other unsuspecting users who may see your comment. if they are in breach of whatever platforms t&cs, no matter how minor, report them. overload the bots with bot reports
Why even comment when you have nothing to say?
To clarify, I believe you’re being dismissive, I believe you have ignored the body of my post and not read any of comments before leaving your dismissive comment.
I do not believe your methods would have any affect whatsoever on the ever growing issue. Most reports are not even checked by humans on social media, if they’re checked at all. This is akin to telling someone to pray about their abuser, yes you’re words are in the direction of their well being, but they hold no currency.
What are you going on about? The person you replied to directly answered your question of “how can we fight back?”. They gave a method for helping people identify them to lessen their impact and to report them if they violate a site’s TOS.
Why do you say they have nothing to say? Respectfully, you’re out of line with your comment here.
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Don’t feed the trolls. Block them
Yeah I don’t know what country (planet) you’re living on, but it’s bigger than annoying trolls.
Have you found a better plan yet?
Do you suppose this thread might be an attempt?
Didn’t see many concrete answers. Was just wondering if you’d discovered anything
A user has sent me some data to go over when I get home that I hope can maybe get me in the right direction, other than that I’m just trying to do something other than sit on my hands about the fact that Nazis are controlling the country I live in and spreading propaganda from every orifice into every corner of the Internet.
What makes you so sure they’re Russian bots? What are they saying that gives you that impression?
Researchers who spent tireless hours proving so, is what makes me sure. What’s the Kremlin like?
Putin living rent free in your head. 🤣
I’ve spent 1.7 years here as a Russian bot spreading propaganda that only ten people see. /s
Look at my history. Do I look like some Russian sleeper cell? Why would they waste their time and money?
Bruh, Russia is famous for their bot farms
Bruh, so is Israel, China, the CIA, North Korea, India, the UK, and many others.
