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’ve noticed a couple of newly created accounts promoting their vibecoded software in various selfhosting communities and more general IT communities.
Sometimes even in communities that have nothing at all to do with apps or vibe coding.
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
what are they even gaining, to train thier LLM scam? because there isnt profibility like there is on reddit.
I’m not sure to be honest, I think it might be to show up on search engine results. If that is the case, maybe there is a way to disincentivize them from doing that
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.
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
probably heard it from the grapevine, lemmy was all over reddit in certain subs, when reddit started the API crisis, plus the massive purges. at least in another forum some of them want to bot on here as well, but most of them just dont see the value in lemmy(aka profit). bots/spammers are lurking on reddit all the time, so they likely heard of potential new targets.