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2 yr. ago

  • Hmm... That could be an issue, you're right.

    If it does get that bad, we'd gave to act more defensively by only federating with instances that have reviewed sign-ups and have received an endorsement on fediseer.

    That would result in a more isolated experience, but if that's the only way to combat it, then we'll have to shift with the needs of the moment to keep it mostly humans we're interacting with, and to make the moderation workload manageable.

  • The Fediseer project from @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com helps prevent bot farms from proliferating, as new servers require an endorsement from an already trusted instance to become 'legit'. And they can be marked as untrustworthy as well, causing them to be defederated fairly quickly, limiting its reach.

    We also have a MUCH higher moderator to user ratio compared to corpo sites, with a range between 100 to 2,500 users per mod depending on instance, Vs. 250,000 users per mod on sites like twitter, so we can more adequately spot and deal with spam on the network.

  • Absolutely incredible breakdown of the problem. In addition to twitter, I strongly suspect Reddit is infested with a similar increase in bot accounts, which would explain how a sub I used to moderate there has some of the highest page visits its ever had, yet its actual user engagement hasn't changed at all, or even gone down.

    Corporate websites, who have a financial incentive to allow the bots, have become completely unusable. The difference in interaction on Lemmy is incredibly stark, which goes to show that the fediverse seems to be far more resilient against bots since we can defederate from an instance that gets taken over, like cutting off an infected limb to stop the spread.

  • While I agree with her message regarding embracing joy and looking toward building things up and following a vision (I'm a solarpunk after all), I have some reservations with some of her other points, which ring a little too closely with new-age spiritualism for me, such as when she mentions that capitalist pharma discredited herbal medicines and alternative indigenous healing methods in order to push profit. Which, while true in some cases, shouldn't dismiss how the scientific method has also shown how many traditional alternative medicines and practices can be nothing more than a placebo or even outright harmful.

    Yes, modern medicine is a soulless and equally harmful profit machine, but the scientific method is simply a tool that can be used for either collective good or for harmful profit. It is not an evil in itself, but the system around it which incentivizes that evil.

  • I adore that, genuinely got a chuckle from me :)

  • The letter is suggesting that the vote counting machines were compromised, adding fake digital votes to the total after it had counted all of the real physicsl ballot votes. The letter suggests that a hand count of the physical voted would show the manipulation, because the extra digital votes would not show up in the physical ballots.

  • I'm not experienced enough to know for sure if those claims would truly hold water, but to my layman mind, it sure does sound like a compelling case to at least do a hand count.

  • Andor especially so, and in the best ways!

    Wish it wasn't so relevant tho.

  • Python Crash Course by Eric Matthes is a supremely good book to start with for an absolute beginner, and I would recommend it over Automate the boring stuff (that would be a great followup though!).

    It assumes absolutely no prior knowledge, explains concepts extremely clearly, never presents too much to overwhelm and frustrate beginners, and includes a good range of projects that should interest any perspective programmer.

  • Having such a clear example from history of how these things play out might give us an advantage they didn't have. I hope so, anyway.

  • I think XMPP would be the most appropriate tech for us to adopt, since it's easily self-hostable, has great mobile apps, is federated, and doesn't require an always connected bot to record chat history to know what was said while you were away. It's functionally an improved IRC.

  • Glad you found it helpful! It's a shame that PFAS isn't going to be banned for general purpose uses anytime soon, it's so damn dangerous for the benefits it brings.

  • I looked into them a while ago, and from what I can find, they seem to be legit in that they really do use the profits for tree planting.

  • The 'witch hunter' seemed to present a compelling case that you're not engaging in the community in good faith. How do you explain having so many contradictory posts?

  • To someone politically literate, that much is clear as day.

    For the average person, they are easily tricked by false promises that the right will do the opposite. :(

  • Neoliberalism utterly failing to staunch the ransacking of the working class due to capitalism

    ”Why is the right gaining momentum???"