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?
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.