this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Lemmy has multiplied it's number of users (maybe more accurately accounts) in just few days. How much do you think is the percentage of bot accounts? Is Lemmy having problem with bot farming?

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

How much do you think is the percentage of bot accounts?

Probably half of them are bots.

Is Lemmy having problem with bot farming?

Yes, and it's quite serious.

The bright side IMO is lemmy is being recognized as a valid alternative to reddit, if it wasn't, bots would have no reason to try and be here.

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

Why do you think they are bots? I haven't seen any signs of that...

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

It's not "me" thinking, there are several posts bringing this problem to the attention of admins, basically they took advantage of servers with open registration to "spam create" thousands of accounts, you don't see signs because they're "dormant" for now (that's what bots do when a spam campaign is not currently active), you can recognize it by confronting number of users with user activity, for example, if you see a server with 6k users and only 5-6 posts, it means it's a bot farm waiting for a spam campaign to start.