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Beyond CAPTCHAs: How do we keep human‑pretending bots out of the fediverse? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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CAPTCHAs and sign‑up quizzes annoy real people and barely slow down determined bots. As the fediverse grows, we need smarter, more humane defences, ones that don’t push away genuine newcomers. What creative, non‑intrusive ideas do you have? Trust‑based vouching, proof‑of‑humanity protocols, behavioural signals... what feels both effective and aligned with the open social web? I’m building a social media platform and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

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[–] 1 point 1 month ago* (3 children)

Most low-cost and primitive bots. It costs nothing for ChatGPT to pretend to be a human in text. Are you sure they aren't still there, lurking? Look up survivor bias.

I remember encountering my first request to write an essay in order to join an instance. I was flabbergasted and chose an instance without this madness and it appeared this instance was shadowbanned by major ones. Was close to giving up on Fediverse at this point.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    They are still quite evident in the way they construct their messages, and of course any em-dash usage is a big giveaway.

    Someday they'll likely be able to answer those questions more convincingly, but right now it works for the most part.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Em dashes are the correct way to type—substituting them with hyphens is a typographical mistake.

    Also, look up Human or Not game.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    It is correct, it is very frequently used in much of the material LLMs were trained on, and the AI is correctly using it, but generally to excess. It uses it so often, that it has unfortunately become a signal that something might be AI written. That is just the reality at this point, and I suspect Em-dash usage by humans will begin to fall off, at least online to avoid that association (until the AI is trained on material that makes it not use em-dashes, at least).

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