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?
I have been wondering if “No Stupid Questions” is being misunderstood as a challenge. Originally, I think it was meant to be “no question too ‘obvious’”, but sometimes it does seem like there’s a contest on for asking the dumbest shit imaginable. All things considered LLM slop is likely, but it could still be “literally any topic for attention or activity’s sake” or plain old trolling.
When it comes to deleted threads that makes a lot of sense if you’re running a scam, but I suspect it’s also how people would react if enough people called them out for a bot.