No doubt they are available for sale to some company or individual that wants to buy them wholesale and start spamming or astroturfing.
Who created them and why?
People wanting to sell them for $$ mostly. In some cases, people biding their time to use them for mass spam, social misdirection, opinion forming, etc.
I don’t understand the purpose of bots.
In social media, a common and concerning use of them is to use them wholesale (comments, posts, and votes) to try and sway mass opinion on some issue to something the person responsible for the bots wants.
Currently nothing but once activated they may start spamming stuff everywhere. Owners can decide what gets upvotes and what gets downvotes which gives you a lot of power on a platform where downvotes/upvotes mean everything.
Sure, but do you like ads that masquerade as posts? Because if you do then you’ll love the delicious taste of Diet Coke, grab one today! (16900 upvotes)
IM IN YOUR AREA
IM IN YOUR AREA
I KNOW THE FIRST THREE NUMBERS, IM IN
I KNOW THE FIRST THREE NUMBERS, IM IN
TEACHIN BITCHES HOW TO SWIM
TEACHIN BITCHES HOW TO SWIM
Are any of these accounts bots?
Or maybe how many of these accounts are bots?
Are they all bots?
About 2.45 million of the 2.5 are, yes.
I’m no bot and joined 6 days ago :)
Welcome friend.
Around 95% accounts are bots. Around 90% if we are positive and assume that a lot of redditors joined since the bot farming started.
Thats seems bad. I know some bots are hepful. But 1 million bots seems like they for something nefariously.
Yeah, I hope that people farming them are just trolling the fediverse and don’t plan on using them.
Lol trolling is bad. A bot army could make things miserable here.
Trolling in the sense making people freak out while not doing anything with those bots. That’s what I’m hoping for although it’s improbable.
Like trying to keep people on reddit?
Or just too generally troll the fediverse.
I’d go to Facebook first
So what are the Bots doing? Who created them and why? I don’t understand the purpose of bots.
Many of them are doing nothing so far.
No doubt they are available for sale to some company or individual that wants to buy them wholesale and start spamming or astroturfing.
People wanting to sell them for $$ mostly. In some cases, people biding their time to use them for mass spam, social misdirection, opinion forming, etc.
In social media, a common and concerning use of them is to use them wholesale (comments, posts, and votes) to try and sway mass opinion on some issue to something the person responsible for the bots wants.
Currently nothing but once activated they may start spamming stuff everywhere. Owners can decide what gets upvotes and what gets downvotes which gives you a lot of power on a platform where downvotes/upvotes mean everything.
Still don’t get it - someone makes a comment, bots upvote it so it gets seen by more people. Not really going to change the world.
Sure, but do you like ads that masquerade as posts? Because if you do then you’ll love the delicious taste of Diet Coke, grab one today! (16900 upvotes)
They don’t want to change the world. They want to let you know about hot singles in your area
IM IN YOUR AREA IM IN YOUR AREA I KNOW THE FIRST THREE NUMBERS, IM IN I KNOW THE FIRST THREE NUMBERS, IM IN TEACHIN BITCHES HOW TO SWIM TEACHIN BITCHES HOW TO SWIM
Yes unfortunately but lemmy is still growing
I’m going to link my comment because I don’t want to rewrite ot for everyone I reply to where it is relevant
https://lemmy.world/comment/548294
Thanks for the reply!
And I totally agree.