I follow various “question-based” communities like AskLemmy, NoStupidQuestions etc and I have noticed some strange patterns recently. Mainly that some topics come up over and over again, like Nintendo Switch 2, foreign alphabets and foreign languages (especially Japanese). The users asking these questions will often (but not always) delete them after about an hour.
Looking into it further I’ve so far found 5 different accounts asking these questions. 4 of them have very similar profile pictures of characters from FPS video games (Battlefield, CoD and Metro), and they were all created between march 22nd and march 29th. On a recent thread of one of them, I asked them whether they were all alt-accounts. They immediately deleted the thread.
On a similar note, I asked another one of them about their thread deletions about a week ago. Once again, it got deleted rather quickly.
Sooo… Is the dead internet finally coming to Lemmy and we’re seeing an influx of LLM-based bot users which are given instructions on specific topics to talk about, as well as delete any thread where they’re called out? Or am I just being paranoid? Have you noticed any similar patterns on Lemmy recently?
It seems super obvious and yeah if you say something, they’ll delete the evidence/thread. I just gave up on calling them out cuz no one seemed to give a shit and they keep engaging with these accounts to this day. For the sake of generating content? Idk, beats me.
Part is maybe that English as second language doesnt always makes it easy to distinguish. Is it a problem of my english? The other’s English? Too short interaction?
So please, continue to call out, if it doesnt bother you too much! Because I interacted with LtDan in good faith in the beginning and took me a while to see what is happening.