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?
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You may also want to cross-post this to !strange_activity_investigations@piefed.zip.
Just did!
I’ve noticed a couple of newly created accounts promoting their vibecoded software in various selfhosting communities and more general IT communities.
I’m genuinely curious to know how those people end up in those coms or on the Fediverse at all. I don’t get the impression they keep tabs on this part of the internet.
Back in the day, random people falling into random internet corners was a product of boredom and a relative openness to trying out new Internet forums, I feel like most non-techy people just would not step anywhere outside of like eight walled gardens now
The mod in !selfhosted@lemmy.world has done a good job of updating the rules to deal with those. It seems like some SEO or supply chain scheme.
The ones mentioned in OP seem to be one user that is spreading their questions around multiple accounts, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if they’re posted at a rate that would be fine with a single account, and if they aren’t using more than one account in a particular thread.
From what I remember about the deletion pattern, one of the accounts claimed to be doing it for mental health reasons. Whether that is true or not, to me it felt like they were creating bait posts to rile people up. People saw through it most of the time
We do have bots, but at least some of the weird activity mentioned in this post seems to be from a handful of real people that are using the platform in a weird way
The ones mentioned in OP seem to be one user that is spreading their questions around multiple accounts, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if they’re posted at a rate that would be fine with a single account, and if they aren’t using more than one account in a particular thread.
I don’t think they directly interact with each other, but they do upvote each other’s threads. Example
Cheers for providing a different possible interpretation for those accounts. I didn’t see them comment on their deletions anywhere and as I wrote, my own attempts to reach out to them were only met with immediate deletions. It’s certainly possible that they’re human, even though I slightly lean towards the bot interpretation right now. Unfortunately, it’s just really hard to tell nowadays.
Sometimes even in communities that have nothing at all to do with apps or vibe coding.
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.
There’s definitely bots here though it feels wayyyyy way less than Reddit. Especially noticeable with accounts that try to lure in older men with their kink for age-play and such.
I caught those posts about the switch this morning that you noticed and ignored them for this exact reason.
There are LLMs roaming around here. I do see a few every month in !asklemmy@lemmy.world and ban them. Just report them and the mods will deal with them.
I got fed up and unsubscribed from communities like asklemmy just yesterday, because it was constantly just stupid topics. In a lot of cases the title would propose a question and the body of the message would already have a multiple paragraph long answer.
Not too long ago, some Lemmy users had to let Reddit refugees know that karma isn’t a thing on the Fediverse. People were making posts and deleting them after getting downvoted so that their karma wasn’t affected lol.
I don’t think that’s what’s happening here, but people deleting their posts after making them isn’t terribly unusual.
I’ve felt this way recently regarding the influx of censored posts/memes.
I’ve been here for 3 years now and I’ve seen more self censored shit in the past couple months than I’ve ever seen here before.
I’ve more than once wondered if these posts weren’t getting made by bots and wondered if the people defending self censorship aren’t also bots
That and constant overusage of emdashes.
PreLLM you would rarely see a dash unless it was to connect a cut-off work or combine (like how I just used). Now it’s on everything that really should be used with a comma.
Are two of them “commander graves” and “war soldier”?
Because I noticed similar and blocked them ages ago
CmdrGraves is one of them, yes. Haven’t seen war soldier, but I guess that’s probably another one then.
These are the likely ones I’ve identified
Shadow79@piefed.social
SilentStriker@piefed.social
LtDan@lemmy.zip
CmdrGraves@lemmy.zip
\TacticalRaptor@feddit.org
Ah, the War5oldier account is banned on its home instance and I guess they just didn’t re-use the name with another alt.
The only one of those that wasn’t in my blocks was raptor, but I guess I didn’t notice them as much. Comparing raptor to one of the others in that list, yeah, the posting is pretty similar.
Add LtDan lol and I think SilentStriker or someshit
Yep, I recall blocking at least Dan for the same reason as the other two. Not sure about the other one but can’t recall seeing posts from them anytime recently so probably did.
SilentStriker could be innocent. Idk there are so many of them, I could be remembering the names wrong. But yeah there seemed to be a weird military theme
Ugh, I wish I could add “reasons” for my user blocks as well as have the dates I blocked them available. Would make this easier. But yeah, Striker is in there.
I’m inclined to believe it’s part of the “group”. Every post I can see of it’s is a question which is the same thing seen with the others in the list here; none of them have a single post that uses a declarative statement as the post title. That’s more than a little sus given the context here.
Regardless, I tend to block accounts that I feel camp out and/or abuse the “ask” communities.
Those have been active for a few months now and usually get banned from most (non-ask) communities quite quickly.
What concerns me more is despite how obvious it is that they are bots, the posts often seem to get a lot of engagement from other accounts that are both human and some less obvious bots (or maybe lurkers).
Guilty as charged. I knew Lt.Dan was likely a bot, but his (it’s?) questions were interesting and engagement seemed high so I said fuck it and responded anyway.
I think there’s value in responding to some posts. I hope myself and another user were able to steer some men away from the obvious young woman trying to bait them into a romance scam.
Yes, the ones you mentioned. At least these accounts and threads are not always deleted. It’s happened before on lemmy that multiple posts get made on the same topic by new accounts and then both the post and account get deleted. I remember similar around last year so it’s not new.
What I don’t get is why. This time some of the posts are actually interesting and generate discussions but the OP never interacts with any comments. What do they gain from this?
I’m not sure either, but there are 2 scenarios I can think of:
- At some point, the bot accounts will edit all their old posts to some kind of spam adverts
- The accounts post harmless, normal posts for a few months to appear legitimate, then pivot to posting targeted political propaganda for some kind of state or private actor
They’re coming for us.
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.
Can you do IP bans on Lemmy? Maybe write it up and report it to the instance admin.
IP bans don’t work
