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in reply to Omer

Spez (Reddit CEO) just put out an announcemen talking about how they'll verify humans via a new rectal probe in collaboration with Meta AI that 3D scans your log factory.
in reply to warmaster

That sounds tempting, but still won't make me rejoin reddit.
in reply to cageythree

The only way I'll ever rejoin Reddit is if they fire that piece of shit, Spez, and every other piece of shit who had a hand in the monetization of their API access which destroyed third party apps like Apollo; and if they change that monetization, either making it free or making it so you have to be a paid Reddit subscriber to have expanded API access.

They did the whole thing with their API completely backwards, on purpose, to shut out the third party apps -- when they could have still been able to make money by doing it properly and not alienating a lot of their userbase.

And now that Reddit is effectively a right-wing cesspool of lies and bullshit, just like Twitter has become, even if they fix what they broke, it may not be worth rejoining.

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to ulkesh

or making it so you have to be a paid Reddit subscriber to have expanded API access.


Isn't that what they're doing? I've used Relay Pro via API until recently by paying for it.

The only reason I don't use that anymore is cause I went de-googled, so no play store subscription and thus no API access anymore, and since I can't stand the original app I came here.

in reply to cageythree

They made the prices so insane that most 3rd party apps couldn't justify the higher subscription price
in reply to cageythree

No, they made the third party app developers pay the license fees, not the users. If they changed that since I left, then that I'm ignorant of. It made zero sense to force payment from the developers and every sense to simply create a two-tiered API where maybe only a read-only front page works (no commenting) unless you're a paid subscriber to Reddit, which could be available via an authorization scheme on the logged-in user. It's simple to do. But they decided (at the time) to screw over the third party developers directly by forcing them to pay.

Thing is, even Christian (the guy who made Apollo) said a nominal fee makes sense and he would have been fine paying that, but he would have had to pay literal millions of dollars within like a month's notice in order to keep going, and have to pass that exorbitant cost onto his users who ALREADY paid him for yearly subscriptions/etc.

Simply put: Reddit should only have charged users directly, via subscription to Reddit, in order to use a fully-featured API irrespective of which client they use it through.

Spez is a greedy piece of garbage.

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to ulkesh

in reply to cageythree

in reply to warmaster

When I read "log factory" I was thinking of Splunk or something similar. I'm tired.
in reply to Omer

They should start with all the commenters in the thread praising the Spez.
in reply to Omer

Ooh, yay!
I just swung over myself after my eighth account permaban (with no link to alleged offending comment) within 24 hours of posting about how one of the admins is in regular contact with Ghislaine Maxwell while she's in prison🤔
in reply to SwifferWetjet

It's funny how they don't show you the comment.

I just got permabanned within a minute or so of posting something like "The only way to get Trump out of office is for 100,000 people to drag him out.". Appeal denied even though I said it was hyperbole.

I still like the sheer volume of content on Reddit but they are getting worse all the time.

in reply to dan1101

I don't think this should be an hyperbole. Get to work, now.
in reply to voidsignal

The only good Trump is a dead Trump. Wonder if I will get banned for saying that? Curious since I just migrated here from reddit after getting banned for expressing such sentiments.
in reply to Ravell

only the diet-reddit lemmy instances might do that; but i would like to believe that not even they are that red pilled.
in reply to dan1101

I got banned from here as well for saying verified facts with evidence. Its all the admins discretion in the end, and they're political.
in reply to maplesaga

Have you considered a more reasonable instance? I used to be on .world myself. Used to...
in reply to SwifferWetjet

You have a link to this administrator of Reddit being in contact with Maxwell? Inquiring minds want to know
in reply to teyrnon

A Google search later and here we are:

reddit.com/r/conspiracy/commen…

Haven't read this thread specifically but I see it's four years old. Plenty of goings on by the Internet sleuths since then. Believe /r/Epstein is where a lot of where I read was? May have to do some archive digging, since my accounts have been fully nuked just for mentioning this information, with absolutely no links provided by myself. Can't imagine the threads are all surviving it as well.

in reply to SwifferWetjet

Posts in the sub are a non-starter. The maxwellhill thing was debunked when it was pointed out that the account was active when Ghislaine was attending well publicized events. You guys are falling for right wing bullshit.
in reply to SwifferWetjet

Yeah... I had a 3 year account had been suspended a couple times for "suspensious activity" which I chalked up to my use of a VPN, multiple OSs, and still browsing mobile with RIF and revanced. Normally I just had to change my PW and refresh RIF but this last time when I did that I kept getting a login error no matter how many times I reset it. Turns out even though it still knee was email to send the requests too the account was like fully nuked. Everything is just gone.
in reply to Omer

One more reason to be glad I left that shithole. Also, expect Redlib to finally be killed off soon.
This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Omer

they'll go to piefed; there's nothing to get ready for.
in reply to eldavi

Lemmy, piefed, kbin, all valid and handy, tbh.

what's important is that people go to the fediverse, and also contribute every now and then to the devs and instance owners for hosting costs!

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to eldavi

Piefed does seem like a great alternative, but I'm in the "too good to be true" phase.
in reply to pelespirit

It has some anti-features that make it worse IMO, like the social credit score "feature," not to mention the right-wing and anti-communist views of the lead dev.
in reply to eldavi

That's the neat part. The Fediverse doesn't eat itself; more activity on Piefed is more activity on Lemmy.
This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to eldavi

Piefed is here talking to you right now. It's all the same shit
in reply to Omer

There are so many ways to do human verification that have worked for years. The biggest reason bots are plaguing the internet is because these corpos don't really try anymore. There's literally no reason to do face scans or IDs other than to unanonymize people and take their data.
This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Goodlucksil

Just open it all up to everyone. Fuck it. There's a point we all just get bored of it
in reply to Melvin_Ferd

Wait, the guy at the top of the chain asked human verification, not age verification...
in reply to Goodlucksil

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to Evotech

Speak to a customer service agent while they ask you a few timed-dated questions

Video chat with a customer service agent.

if it's a real name account:

Small credit card charge to a card in your name.

provide a scan of a utility bill

provide a scan of a car title

in reply to teyrnon

if all forms of verification are deal breakers, we either need to get laws made to make it unlawful, or we need to boycot services that require it.

The government is still going to do whatever it wants, and they already mishandle all your data.

in reply to teyrnon

I don't think we have enough gumption to actually do it, but here's to hoping.
in reply to teyrnon

People forget that glass bottles and gasoline are (relatively) inexpensive
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to WizardofFrobozz

That's why the stuck Iran, to close the straight and make gas more expensive ;)
in reply to teyrnon

I could see the first one, if it all takes place in a chatbox. Like, they have someone talk to you in chat for a few minutes to verify if you pass the turing test, then randomly once a month do it again.
in reply to teyrnon

Unfortunately they would have to pay people to do it so probably never happen. Although seeing them try to implement an LLM to try to tell if humans pass the Turing test would be kind of hilarious.
in reply to Ravell

An llm doing it is not acceptable I do not think.

As we all know, they are completely full of shit here, they allow and encourage the majority of the bots on their platforms because it inflates their numbers.

As such any system they set up will not be trustworthy in this regard.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to rumba

So instead of face scans or giving them my ID I have a video call with them and give them access to all my sensitive data? Am I missing something here?
in reply to rumba

You don't consider your credit card information sensitive data?
in reply to njm1314

Not when you can generally make a 1 time use card, or a "virtual" card that most brands offer. Granted the only places I've seen this type of verification used is where you're going to buy something anyways.
in reply to njm1314

I give it to a dozen different vendors a month. It's sitting in probably 20 vendors on the web right now just waiting for me to pay with it. I tell it to people over the phone. Giving it as a small charge, verification is the least of my worries.
in reply to Evotech

How about at a random interval once every couple months it will ask you to draw a picture of a cat in the browser and if it finds your drawing process too similar or the image too similar to one that's already in the database it will flag it without telling you. Three strikes and your out kinda rule. It's like drug tests but for the internet.

Even if you did, like, a line across the screen to save time there's no way in hell it'd be the same as anything else in that database unless you are extremely unlucky.

in reply to TommySoda

So you are suggesting captchas? I used to make a living running a bot farm and whenever my bots would be promoted with a captcha I'd have it solved by a service like 2captcha for the low cost of 0.3cents per captcha
This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Anivia

Kinda, yeah. I was trying to come up with a captcha that's hard for a bot but incredibly easy for a human. The random intervals was to make it harder to automate and that's the idea I had off the top of my head. I just feel like captchas have had wasted potential for years and people kinda gave up on improving them.
in reply to TommySoda

Captchas back in the day were solved by humans in bot farms. Yes they are humans but not the right ones.
in reply to Evotech

That was kinda my idea with the whole random and unexpected checking in. It's easy to get humans to do it for bot farms when you have deterministic times in which you'd have to perform the captcha. Nowadays most simple captchas can be done by bots so I was brainstorming a way you could make it harder for the bots while being minimally intrusive to the user.
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to TommySoda

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to mfed1122

Cool, you don't have to be a dick about it. :P
I already know that I don't know much about but I wanted to make a suggestion because the guy asked.
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to TommySoda

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be a dick, just being honest. I felt it was important to correct your unjustified confidence in the original comment where you claimed many such solutions exist
in reply to mfed1122

But why do you need to talk down to me like I'm an idiot instead of just correct me politely? I'm genuinely curious because it seems to be a very common thing nowadays where percieved confident incorrectness and ignorance is met with distain and anger. I didn't mean to offend anyone when I made this comment and was simply brainstorming while bored at work.
in reply to TommySoda

Because you made a dumb claim with confidence. You were talked down to because you were acting like a fool. Which you're still doing btw.
in reply to chloroken

Yeah well I don't really care for your opinion and I wasn't talking to you. I appreciate the feedback, though. The person above seems like they actually have social skills outside of calling people "chuds" and "neckbeards" as their only respone so I'd much rather talk to them tbh
in reply to TommySoda

Let me first clarify that I think you seem very nice and I'm not mad at you, nor do I have any intent to make you feel bad. I think you're misreading my tone, tbh. That or I'm expressing my tone poorly.

So, I thought I did correct you politely, within the bounds of also needing to make very clear and unambiguous that you needed to adjust your confidence when talking about this subject. I have no issue with someone idly brainstorming ideas, but in the context of your original comment "There are so many ways to do human verification that have worked for years.", which you didn't qualify in any way, you sounded completely authoritative and sure of yourself. Since you yourself even know that you are ignorant on this topic, to me a better phrasing would be to preface that with something like "I think..." Or "It seems like...", or even outright saying "I don't really know about this stuff, but..." Etc.

in reply to mfed1122

This entry was edited (4 days ago)
in reply to TommySoda

How about at a random interval once every couple months it will ask you to draw a picture of a cat in the browser and if it finds your drawing process too similar or the image too similar to one that's already in the database it will flag it without telling you. Three strikes and your out kinda rule. It's like drug tests but for the internet.
in reply to Omer

I wonder if we will actually ever see the true numbers, I have a feeling they will realize that SOOOOOOOOOOO many of the users are bots and be forced to pull a shwitter.

We will see what happens, but I won't hold my breath for actual transparency.

in reply to leoj

I don't think they give a shit about bots, as it inflates their traffic numbers and gives the illusion of a more robust user base. This is about gathering your data. They want to know who you are for marketing and other purposes.
in reply to N0t_5ure

agreed, although my concern is that the proportion of users to bots may be much higher than expected (like shwitter).

How much are advertisers willing to pay to advertise to bots? Not much I'm guessing, I envision lies.

in reply to Omer

What's the problem here? I read his post and couldn't understsnd what lead people here to overreact like that
in reply to CodenameDarlen

Of course Spez won't make it sound like there's a problem. The problem is that they're slowly implementing ID verification. Soon, you'll have to provide your ID to prove you're a human. Spez's just trying to sprinkle in some "We don't want your data, we care about user privacy" BS to make the users feel safe for now. Google's doing the same thing by making it difficult to install apps from outside the Play Store.
This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Omer

I'm still trying to understsnd the logic behind assuming he's mean to say exactly the opposite of what he said
in reply to CodenameDarlen

Not a trustworthy fellow, that guy.

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to chunes

I think he's talking about verification ID as in the platform, not as some service that comply with laws. Because verification ID is already being requested in Brazil, I live here and people from the regional privacy subreddit shared a few screenshot of Reddit asking for ID.

Not sure what he mean with promising Reddit won't ask for verification ID while it's actually already asking for it.

Idk what to think about this, I just know if I need show my ID and there's no way to bypass that Reddit is definitely dead to me.

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Omer

Can someone explain? Isn't removing bots actually a good thing?
in reply to vermaterc

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to sudoer777

Presumably because one needs a phone app or physical hardware (like a Yubikey) to use them.

I dunno. Shrug

in reply to Omer

Isnt everyone using it paying an API cost monthly? It should basically already be verified, otherwise why the fuck should anyone pay shit?
in reply to Omer

There's a lot of blatant LLM bots on Reddit these days so I think it's a good thing they're doing this. It's also only a matter of time before those same bots start landing on Lemmy, even more so than they already have.
in reply to Omer

The part where they don’t need or want Identity information is because they already know who you are from sign up.
in reply to Omer

Should we do some advertising on Reddit for Lemmy? On one hand it's a good exodus wave, but on the other hand it always gets libbed up after a migration wave
in reply to geneva_convenience

Just agitate in communist and other anti-imperialist communities on reddit, not on reddit in general, for now. The liberals usually flock to Lemmy.world anyways, leftists tend to go to left instances like Hexbear.net or Lemmygrad.ml.
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to Omer

Discord did the same thing didn't they?

Also reddit heavily used bots to fill they site with posts for years. They were one of the biggest ones. Kiss my ass reddit

in reply to Omer

Funny how this ties nicely into Meta’s lobbying for age verification and how it’s suddenly a conversation we keep seeing crop up. The pattern recognition tools in my brain see nothing but constant red flags these days.

They flooded the web with bots, advertisers are backing out because of it, and now both Spez and Zuck are panicking.

in reply to orca

I'm totally with you, I would also add that recently meta said that they wanted to add facial recognition to their "smart" glasses.

they said that "We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns"

Source:

techcrunch.com/2026/02/13/meta…

businessinsider.com/meta-ray-b…

in reply to orca

They flooded it with bots, what do you mean?

I think like Bitcoins creation hardwares technological advancement made it inevitable. Google made the tech, basic AI research, which became modern AI when they threw more compute at it.

in reply to maplesaga

Bitcoin was made inevitable by the Great Financial Crisis, not by hardware advancement. Its proof-of-work is based on hashcash from the 1990s. The computing power spent is arbitrary, a consequence of its creator underestimating how quickly Bitcoin would catch on.
in reply to explodicle

Well I think it was the hardware crypto implementation that allowed it, as you could check cryptographic keys far faster, which is what creates the gate.
in reply to maplesaga

But thats the easy part! It's expensive to produce and cheap to verify.
in reply to explodicle

Its cheap to verify due to dedicated cryptographic hardware baked into modern CPU.
in reply to maplesaga

IIRC those weren't widespread until after Bitcoin was invented.
in reply to Omer

You all complain but in 5 years you'll all defend it like its a gold standard
in reply to ParlimentOfDoom

imagine that my comment on a post about an age verification process that's being adopted by multiple sites could exist long after reddit fails. What then?
in reply to Omer

So what's will happen to their existing bot accounts? Erase 75% of their current users?
in reply to Tronn4

if ip.geolocation == "Langley, VA":
    verifyUser()
in reply to Tronn4

Replace with their own bots and paying customers' bots.
in reply to Omer

already happening. In a similar but different post there are already folks saying "that's why i'm here."
in reply to Omer

its kinda funny. theoretically I would love for a system that can identify real humans but realistically im unwilling to submit to the type of trump it would entail.
in reply to Omer

I was waiting for this move, it was the final straw. now I'm here, happily writing a comment in the fediverse through blorp (foss).
in reply to chigga

Blorp dev here. Let me know if there is anything I can do to make the app even better for you!
in reply to moseschrute

This is one of the things I love. Talk about something you like, creator shows up. Wholesome.
in reply to moseschrute

The app is fantastic first off, my only issue is randomly the comments just don't load, despite good connection and posts loading fine, but force stopping and reopening the app fixes it so idk. But def still my fav Lemmy app
in reply to moseschrute

Out of curiosity, why foes F-Droid warn about anti-features?
in reply to versionc

The F-Droid maintainers added that. It’s probably my fault for not explaining my app well. At the time, I just really wanted to get Blorp on F-Droid, so I didn’t make any sort of argument against the anti feature labels. After that, my focus was mainly on improving the app itself, and I never went back to ask them to change it.

But you’re not the first person to mention this. I should probably fix it.

in reply to moseschrute

hey, nice to meet you here! I was wondering if it's a problem that only I have or if it's still in development but I have issues playing videos inside blorp. Could you please help? I really like blorp's UI and I don't want to change.
in reply to chigga

Nice to meet you too! Could you be more specific? Which type of video are you trying to play? If you're unsure, could you send me a link to the post? Either here of via private message.

Video playback could definitely be improved in general, though it's a bit tough because there are like 5 different types of video embeds and they all work a little different.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to moseschrute

for example, I tried to play this video but it didn't work.

not sure if the problem is on my side or not.

threadiverse.link/lemmy.world/…

EDIT: I forgot to thank you for your help and time, it's nice to see devs so dedicated to their projects

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to chigga

Found the issue. Good catch! Will fix in the next release.
in reply to Omer

Every other website:
This entry was edited (4 days ago)
in reply to HiddenLayer555

I'm not sure I understand how cloud flare is supposed to help? It clearly doesn't actually work. My Arr stack has an automated cloud flare bypass that seems to have a decent success rate.
in reply to ParlimentOfDoom

It's best to use something else like Hcaptcha passive or FPJS Pro alongside it.
in reply to betanumerus

Websites should copy VKontakte and make the user line-up several words in Cyrillic. It's the hardest one I've ever had to pass, it has to be exactly in the right place 😂

Like a sliding puzzle from Hell.

in reply to ChristchurchAsshole

Doesn't that make it a bad test? It should be easy for humans and hard for machines.
in reply to explodicle

It's going to get to the point where anything easy for humans will be easy for machines too.
in reply to Omer

While the corpos are stomping on their own feet, it turns out that doing nothing (i.e. just existing) is the best strategy to apply.

Now perhaps we’ll get more (hopefully) good folks onto Lemmy. Sure, Digg may get some too, but I’m not sure of its long-term privacy respectfulness - being subject to the US laws and all that.

in reply to Ashrakal

Lol for those who missed it, the Digg reboot actually failed and shut down, and now they’re planning to reboot it again, this time repositioning it as “Digg for AI agents.”
in reply to Omer

Getting rid of bots on reddit wojld be as easy as image recognition the same chicks every fucking day aross a million subreddits.

Bots suck but so does age verification

in reply to AoxoMoxoA

Do you mean Anubis?

That uses POW which wastes time and CPU, however it does essentially nothing to stop bots, it just makes them slower.

You need to detect the fingerprints of things like Selenium and Multilogin as well as the fingerprint of the whole browser or device to truly stop them.

in reply to Omer

Spez is a spaz that can't spell. Fuck posting anything CEOs say they all suck, take their voice.
in reply to Omer

Without bots their most popular text based subs like AITAH or TwoHotTakes would be empty.
in reply to okcomputer

"Am I The Asshole for doing what I want with my own life?"

99.99% of posts in that sub

in reply to UltraGiGaGigantic

or the overreacting sub: "my husband beat me to a pulp and set our cat on fire, am I overreacting for considering a divorce?"
in reply to okcomputer

Can't forget /r/worldnews which is literally just an israeli bot farm
in reply to okcomputer

They are not actually going to touch these bots. You are just clueless if you think they will remove their own propaganda tools.
in reply to Omer

These waves usually turn out better quality users than the lulls when we're otherwise mostly getting the people who've been permabanned from Reddit. So, hopefully we get some good ones!
in reply to InvalidName2

Hey. I'm high quality and I came from a permaban!

Personally offended !

Jk.

in reply to Omer

I think people should experience smaller communities, they are often much higher quality in terms of the actual social interactions (though, we're starting to get our share of trolls and toxic people).
in reply to FauxLiving

I use user tags pretty heavily, and it is amazing how small Lemmy truly is. I recognize a lot of individual users, and the tag even links back ti whatever post/comment I originally used to tag them.
in reply to mic_check_one_two

Are you getting user tags from a third-party Lemmy app? I don't see that feature in the web interface.
in reply to who

I think they must be - though I can't figure out which one, haha.

I can't figure out how to do it via the website, or Voyager / Mlem on iOS.

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Linken

In Voyager, you need to enable the feature under Settings -> User Tags.

Voyager implements it entirely on the client; it’s not a feature of Lemmy. Therefore it isn’t available via the Lemmy website.

However, PieFed does have backend support for user tagging. On a PieFed account, you can tag users through the website or through Mlem.

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to mic_check_one_two

That's how the OG Internet communities were. There would be like 500 total people maybe and you'd see them randomly throughout the week as they were online. You don't know everyone but you recognize most of the names/pfps.

It cuts down on a lot of toxicity when you can actually know who is a jerk and who is probably just having a bad day. It makes the community a bit more empathic and less reactionary.

in reply to FauxLiving

Indeed!!

As a side tangent, I used to get so mad on old forums when someone would update their avatar lol I didn't recognize names, I recognized their picture. So if they changed they might as well be a new user until I recognized we've spoken before, haha.

in reply to Linken

I know! I paid an artist, from the forums, to draw my avatar and paid them to update it for holidays and stuff so it was consistent.

Also, you gotta have a good signature. Why not a live updating image of what is playing in your media player, that could not possibly end badly.

in reply to FauxLiving

I think there was a big shift for reddit in 2016 after they bought (and then shut down..) AlienBlue and then launch their official app. That moment it felt like when the number of users just exploded, but with that, the quality of posts (and average age of the user) dropped.

Lemmy/the fediverse reminds me of 2010-2015 reddit (which is a good thing!)

in reply to FauxLiving

I remember /r/AskReddit being THE spot, and it was great to read on the go since it was just text. All the novelty accounts were awesome, RamblesOffTopic being a favorite of mine haha.
in reply to Linken

...and r/conspiracy was 80% stuff like birds ain't real and the rest I always assumed was people posting ironically... now I'm not so sure that that was an accurate assessment.

and r/F7U12. It wasn't just a meme it was an entire meme language, kids these days with their gifs and their template sites... smhing my head

in reply to Linken

I remember when Reddit was run out of spez's Somerville apartment on a little PC. No subreddits, just one top page. Terrible performance and no users. Everyone was at either Slashdot or Digg. Even Kuro5hin by then was dead. Reddit beat Digg because Digg got stupid and abused their community. Reddit is a million times worse now than Digg ever was.
This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to Paranoidfactoid

Yup! I was a part of the mass Digg exodus.

I figured that would happen again with reddit, but to my disappointment the internet is a much different place than it used to be.

in reply to Linken

There was a competitor of Digg to flee to. Reddit, and the other social media platforms, solved that problem with anticompetitive practices to prevent a migration they previously benefitted from.
in reply to Paranoidfactoid

Agreed. I remember leaving MySpace for Facebook (shit I even remember Xanga before MySpace).

At some point, it felt like the internet just got smaller, became 5 websites. And on those 5 websites, you'd find something like: a picture of a tweet posted to reddit and the tweet is about an instagram post"

Really disheartening as someone who came up with the "wild west" internet (which definitely had its issues, but it felt like human issues, not corporate issues)

in reply to Paranoidfactoid

What anticompetitive practices? I figure it is more just a matter of userbase inertia: they already have the huge user base, so other forum user bases are small which makes people not want to migrate there.
in reply to FauxLiving

Guy, never forget that internet was built for porn and sarcasm, later renamed trolling, and you're supposed to have higher than room temperature IQ to be here and properly enjoy it.
in reply to Omer

Accounts that are suspected of being bots would be required to verify.
in reply to Innerworld

Hopefully they will stop shadowbans as well, or at least delay disclosure of them to waste time and proxy data of bots without confusing humans.
in reply to Omer

5 more users. I assume that's the number of users still stupid enough to still be using reddit. I profoundly apologize to the stupid community who are not using reddit.
in reply to altphoto

I profoundly apologize to the stupid community who are not using reddit.


apology accepted

in reply to altphoto

I wouldn't say users are stupid to still be using Reddit. There's still alot more activity there and alot of subs still haven't switched over yet. But if they start requiring identity verification, I think we'll see alot more switching. Right now, I do both to get the best of both worlds. If I have to give them my identity, they get cut out.
in reply to Omer

This entry was edited (6 days ago)
in reply to daannii

my little hometown somehow had a subreddit. i don't know how
in reply to daannii

The good news is that if the fediverse gets an influx of Redditors, maybe we'll see some of those niches pop up here too. Reddit's impending identity theft coupled with the insane enforcement of rule 1 they've been doing lately is what got me to make my account here.
in reply to daannii

I miss r/fitness. It was big enough but good enough to learn a lot and get motivation.

I miss the TV episode discussions. Even if I wasn't following live, I could go read the thread and feel the shared excitement and read the theories and there was always something I hadn't noticed that someone else had.

I miss those the most.

in reply to insaneinthemembrane

Same. I admit I circled back recently purely for the hype of Hazbin Season 2.

Fortunately, this season was shit so I didn't spend long on there this time lol

in reply to insaneinthemembrane

Yeah I also liked the show subs where people theorized and discussed details.
in reply to daannii

Exactly. For me it was Cats (all animals, really) and Guitars.

Political discussions are far better on Lemmy.

in reply to daannii

Similar vein to forbidden snacks was don't put your dick in that. Yeah I miss the niche subs too, don't miss the rest of the bullshit tho.

E. Ask historians was also high grade.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to daannii

Same style of stuff I miss. Mainly instrument related subreddits, books, and boutique blu-rays. However I don’t miss Reddit itself at all. Especially with how right wing brain rot it became. It felt like hanging out in a Facebook comments section.
in reply to daannii

Honestly I'm from the time where there used to be forums for these things and I liked forums just fine.


Same. I think it we moved back to forums the internet experience would improve

in reply to bitwolf

Agree. Another benefit is, it's much less productive to use info-warfare bots against a small forum of let's say 500 users, than against a global site with 1B users.
in reply to daannii

I wish there was a more active general gaming community here. I just migrated over from reddit, and haven't found one that isn't a ghost town.
in reply to daannii

In my infant span of figuring out how to get on here, there are some charms here like foodporn being on the main server, and shittyfoodporn being exclusively on the Canadian one.
in reply to Omer

It's really weird to me how literally anything they say or do is immediately interpreted in the worst possible way here, on Lemmy.

Let's get real for a second.

Is there a bot problem on the Internet in general? That's a resounding "yes".

Do we want to do something about it?

According to OP - no, not at all.

I mean, if OP considers malicious everything that Spez listed, the only remaining course of action is inaction and hoping for the best.

in reply to Alaknár

There is a bot problem but ID checks are invasive, and you can stop the bots with things like Hcaptcha Passive and Turnstile which use POW to waste the CPU cycles of bots and look for signs of things like Selenium and Puppeteer controlling the browser.
in reply to FG_3479

Passkeys and hardware attestation are also good as they require a fingerprint or face and bare metal hardware instead of a VM, but Spez also wants to introduce things like the Worldcoin Orb and IDs as well which are too invasive IMO.
in reply to FG_3479

FFS, do you guys just not understand a thing you're reading, or flat out refuse to read anything on Reddit?

Who says anything about ID checks or HCaptchas?

in reply to Alaknár

Well, it looks like they state three options:

  • Passkeys. This won't work over a medium term, period. It's tantamount to saying that SSH keys prove someone is human. If there's enough interest, they'll just make a software passkey solution that can work. Passkey being "human interactive" is purely a client-side construct.
  • Biometric services. Strictly speaking, not an ID but it's not hard to imagine leveraging capturing biometrics to an ID like scenario.
  • Government IDs. Well that's self explanatory.

They do state distancing themselves from the ID by trusting a third party service, but 3rd party ID service is still a thing.

Of course, this seems to be only after someone accuses you of being a bot and Reddit bothering to pay attention. Which may be almost no one.

in reply to jj4211

Precisely. Any of the listed options is better than a captcha. None of the options are perfect, obviously, we're using yesterday's tech to solve a tomorrow's problem, but it's something, and it doesn't immediately mean "privacy online is dead".
in reply to Alaknár

I'd rather put up with a captcha than do any on those other things, especially if it was temporary. Or maybe they could do something like Anubis
in reply to Alaknár

One you prove your not a bot. Hopefully it work that way, but I suppose it may not
in reply to BJ_and_the_bear

Not sure I understand what you mean.

Like, you verify the account and then give it away to a bot? My assumption is that the "proof of human" would be a unique identifier, meaning that once you've attached it to an account, you can't use it to verify another.

in reply to Alaknár

Ironically the only thing that will ever work is identifying a user to a person in one form or another. Otherwise it's just a never ending arms race.
in reply to Alaknár

"We can't let the terrorists win!!"

You'd really hand over your government ID to Spez? Lmao

in reply to FosterMolasses

Did you not read anything from the linked post, or did you fail to understand it?

Who says anything about government ID?

in reply to FosterMolasses

Did you read the announcement? This has nothing to do with identification.
in reply to Alaknár

lemmy.ml/post/45007584/2477956…

You have to read between the lines. This just gives them the option to label anybody they want as a “bot” with virtually no way to challenge them. They can now ban anybody they wish for posting content they don’t agree with (pro-gaza, anti-israel, anti-capitalist, etc).
in reply to Omer

I actually read the announcement, and there's nothing controversial there. They delete 100k bot accounts daily.
in reply to BlackLaZoR

Then why make the announcement?

You described their normal behavior, now they've made this announcement. Something must have changed.

in reply to BarneyPiccolo

**PRESS RELEASE **

I have done some gardening this morning. I now intend to finish my cup of tea, take a shit, and play some computer games. My day off is proceeding normally. Further details to follow.

in reply to Regrettable_incident

That's Facebook, not Reddit.

From the moment I heard about Facebook, I thought "I don't want to expose my stream of consciousness thoughts across the Internet, and I DEFINITELY don't want to follow anyone else's either."

in reply to BlackLaZoR

It actually sounds like they are allowing bots as long as a human can intervene and is willing to verify their identity if their automated activity is detected. They are embracing slop users as long as they give them their data.

I think the main reason for the announcement, though, was to deal with the rumours that everyone will need to verify their identity (which this post seems to assume is still the case).

Personally, I'd rather see reddit remain the mainstream version of this just so that people who want to run bots for whatever reason have more reason to do it there than here. Because the commercial level ones will have more resources than lemmy admins will have to deal with it.

in reply to Omer

If Reddit loses all the bots, they will literally lose more than half of their activity, especially in an election year.
in reply to BarneyPiccolo

Sounds like a statement to say they have a hard-on-bots policy, but in practice it seems they won't care unless there's significant outcry against a particular account.
in reply to jj4211

Remember how each time ANY new dating site and later app would actually gain decent traction, the owners would pump it full of fucking bot accounts on top of ignoring scammers making accounts just to milk male purses? Except dating apps have their predations set unlike these melting pots of doom scrolling excuses for forums.
in reply to Omer

Noooooooooooo

Quickly! Everyone start massposting shit about Hegel, Kierkegaard, and sharing 3-hour breadtube essays about leftism to drive off the impending brainrot lol

in reply to FosterMolasses

Personally, I'd be happy to see more users, particularly in the niche groups which are often dead as a dead thing. I don't want the bots tho, and I'm thinking that gen AI has probably made the fuckers pretty plausible and hard to identify.
in reply to Regrettable_incident

Yeah, the hornyposts have been great for my ability to think about anything other than politics for 5 fucking minutes. I'd like more variety here.
in reply to cub Gucci

Can you explain? I read it and didn't see anything racist.
in reply to Crackhappy

Like fuck AI, but the general vibe is that bots are anthropomorphic and we should exclude them by the same reasons we previously were excluding black folks.
in reply to cub Gucci

LLMs are not people, they do not possess will, they do not possess sapience. Not wanting to deal with LLM output is in no way like excluding a group of people based on arbitrary characteristics.
in reply to jj4211

They do not, but you can still be a racist towards them. It's not about llms, it's about you
in reply to cub Gucci

The general vibe is that LLMs are glorified magic 8 balls that tell you what you want to hear. Honestly I'd rather listen to a magic 8 ball over an AI because it'll actually disagree with you.

You cant be racist towards an object or a piece of tech BECAUSE THEY ARENT SENTIENT NOR ARE THEY A RACE.

in reply to BrickEater

BECAUSE THEY ARENT SENTIENT NOR ARE THEY A RACE.


They are not, but you still can be racist towards them

in reply to cub Gucci

Explain how you can be racist towards something inherently raceless and non-sentient? That's like saying you can be racist towards a fucking furby.
in reply to BrickEater

Racism is never about empirical properties of its object. The object is always constructed and reflects the racist's fantasies
in reply to BrickEater

I think the point they're trying to make is that racism is a state of mind, and opening oneself up to being racist against a non-human or imaginary thing can open the floodgates to more "real" forms of racism against fellow humans.

Basically the difference between anthropomorphizing bots while one expresses their dislike for interacting with them vs. expressing one's dislike of being forced to interact with a machine that is made to feel like interacting with a person but isn't.

I'm not sure how I feel about this sentiment I've described, but it's one I'm open to arguments on since as a white dude I come into it with a mountain of privilege that likely blinds my view of things

in reply to Trainguyrom

I fully understand the slippery slope argument being made here, but it entirely relies on someone not being able to diffentiate between a non sentient machine and a human. Which yes might be an issue if someone isn't smart/ cognizant enough to tell the difference. But at the end of the day yes as a human I am inherently better and worth more than ANY clanker. And I will continue to hold that belief until it can be proven without a reasonable doubt that one of those metal monsters are sentient. And anyone unable to grasp that point IMO is too afraid of Rokos Basilisk to be considered sane. And I will stand by that statement any day of the goddamn week.
in reply to Crackhappy

I find it interesting that, as you point out, his comment makes zero sense but still gets upvotes, and then as he clarifies he's saying it's racist against chatbots, then people are unambiguously "oh hell no"

Some people upvote at a baseless accusation of racism without actually actually seeing racism or getting clarification that they may have missed... That's a bit sad...

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to jj4211

I'm definitely also guilty of sometimes just voting in reaction to a comment without actually reading what they're commenting on.
in reply to Omer

For some reason, most of the responses welcome that decision!?
I guess the others were banned.
in reply to Omer

Let's be honest. The fediverse will also have a huge bot problem soon. We kind of have this right now, but if you look a little bit further in the future, when we maybe come a little bit more relevant, spammers and scammers and all those propagandists will also come here. I suspect that they're already here.

Currently we have no protection at all. You can setup an instance, federate and start with your federated vote manipulation. Our human moderators can't keep up with bots posting spam to their community and we are totally helpless against LLM bots pushing some agenda.

in reply to JensSpahnpasta

Yup. Conspiracy theories aside, the bot problem is an actual hard problem to solve.
in reply to AnotherUsername

Team Fortress 2 players reliving their PTSD trauma with your comment
in reply to AnotherUsername

Agree, hard indeed. Any solution will have problems. False positives. False negatves. Violating privacy.

So far, maybe Lemmy flew under the radar and it's a nice enough place. But I don't see how that can continue longterm.

It is sad to me. Anything nice eventually gets ruined.

in reply to FineCoatMummy

There's a boiling point to almost everything, and lemmy trying to be an umbrella of communities rather than topic-specific, good old forums is the crux. When you narrow completely down and focus on one main, maybe 2 adjacent topics, and the rest is piled into off-topic board - it's stupidly easy to ID bots.
in reply to JensSpahnpasta

we have tools like defederating any instance filled with bots but we definitely need more
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to sakuraba

How would that help? Bots will just move to another instance. Maybe yours.
in reply to ThirdConsul

I mean it literally helps to defederate an instance overrun by bots because that means no one is taking care of banning them and manually review sign-ups, so you defend your instance of that spam/slop.

The best part is that defederation is not final so when that instance is finally healthy again it can be federated.

I think people here are missing the difference between reddit and any instance on the fediverse. Every instance admin has the power to control their federation and it is in their best interest to review sign-ups to a certain degree. Unlike reddit there is no urge to fill the site with 'users' to inflate numbers and sell ads.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to sakuraba

I've actually been wondering about that - if your site is predominantly there to cash in from ads, but you ban the vast majority of real users and then inject 2/3 of the entire population with bots......who is even left to pump those ad views? Google Ads knows when its a fake view and bots dont scroll through.
in reply to Omer

Spez announces they won't tolerate competing astroturfing, only shareholder-approved bots will remain.
in reply to Omer

This is pretty uncontroversial as far as reddit announcements go. They aren't requiring identity verification.
in reply to Omer

Something tells me that won't end well for them.

Will reveal how much their population is bots.

in reply to bitwolf

Do you really think they will out their own astroturfing interests? They will only tell u who is a bit if they didn't want them in the site, not if they paid to be there !
in reply to Omer

You have to read between the lines. This just gives them the option to label anybody they want as a "bot" with virtually no way to challenge them. They can now ban anybody they wish for posting content they don't agree with (pro-gaza, anti-israel, anti-capitalist, etc).
in reply to John

They already ban anybody they wish without recourse or actionable means to challenge them.

-Reddit Refuge banned for life for being critical of the fascist state of Israel.

in reply to EntheoNaut

I got banned after 15 years for being pro-choice.

It's sort of bittersweet (more sweet though, as the past few years the site has just been miserable for me), but I'm sort of proud I went out standing up for women's rights.

in reply to Linken

It was a 14 year account when I got banned, so yeah pretty much same sad boat. I do miss certain specialized specific subreddits.
in reply to John

Just to be clear... you think that the thing they've been actively doing for years, without any indication that there's any motivation to change, is why they're changing policy? 🤔 let's just say I'm not convinced
in reply to Ledivin

They might be wanting to branch out to banning for protected reasons. They would need a handy excuse for that to avoid lawsuits.
in reply to Omer

Keep going /u/spez you fucking sell-out donkey.
in reply to Omer

Hiding unpopular announcements in r/help isn’t enough, he has to post on his own account?
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to Omer

Jesus this Reddit post reeks of bootlickers. The comments sound sooooo artificial, hard to say if bootlickers or ironically bots programmed to praise and upvote this shitstorm.
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to berrodeguarana

I was scrolling down to find the obligatory “Fuck Spez” comments but got disappointed. Probably moderated heavily.
in reply to Omer

Reddit should be rightly called Botdit

I'm glad to have completely weaned myself off of that bot-slop website

in reply to Omer

I think the first time someone had the idea of doing this to verify if you are not a bot is on YouTube 4-5 years ago (I'm not sure)

At least YouTube allows you to verify without giving any sort of data

in reply to Omen777

If you upload on youtube then you need a google account. Which requires a phone number on a real smartphone.
in reply to Skv

Not sure but you can try to make an account if you want but it asks you for a phone number and it pops up a button to send some system request to the phone so it's not even a regular sms message it like sends it through some kind of system api
in reply to /home/pineapplelover

That sounds like a 2 step auth for logins they've been doing for a while. I might have made a new burner email last year and it asked for absolutely no real information.
in reply to /home/pineapplelover

I certainly don't have my phone number associated with my Google account. Maybe grandfathered in, though?
in reply to Omer

I've been thinking of creating a new account through Tor, so that I could reconnect with my former communities who are still active there since, unfortunately, Reddit is still bigger than Lemmy. But with this new stupid identity verification rule from Reddit, I don't think I will come back to the site.

I guess I will recreate the communities I've been missing here in Lemmy instead, which I have been thinking of doing for a long while now.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to TankovayaDiviziya

Let’s go! We can all make Lemmy better.
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to 712

I've been thinking the same thing, but I don't even know how to do that
in reply to TankovayaDiviziya

I've been thinking of creating a new account through Tor, so that I could reconnect with my former communities who are still active there since


Don’t create an account, use (or host) a Redlib instance, subscribe to your favourite subreddits and then bookmark it afterwards, that’s what I do.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to ohshit604

Redlib


Ooo, this is the first I've heard of this but it looks really cool and promising! Get all the info and art without all the bots / bad users. I do miss the NIN commenters, but I'm also in their discord and there's plenty of community to be found there!

in reply to Omer

Get ready for the tankies and other assholes to scare off all the new users again :D
in reply to YetiBeets

Every time this happens we gain new comrades while filtering out the worst of the insufferable reddit stereotypes to the reddit instances, thus keeping the rest of the fediverse clean. We are like mussel colonies filtering out fedora behavior. You're welcome.
This entry was edited (4 days ago)
in reply to YetiBeets

Usually when people leave reddit, many communists do come and find a much better place here. I think it's good that we have a lot of left wing people here, and have little tolerance for right-wing and pro-imperialist views.
in reply to Cowbee [he/they]

That's how practically the entirety of the Internet was before it was monopolized and shoved into apps on smartphones. It was all leftists and hobbyists.
in reply to Cowbee [he/they]

You mean a place where you can have intelligent discourse without somebody smearing shit all over while parroting Fox News talking points?
in reply to fishy

I wouldn't say social media is a good space for intelligent conversations, haha.
in reply to Cowbee [he/they]

Maybe my standards have been lowered by nextdoor. Nobody spelling you "ewe" because they're using voice to text and not proof reading their brain diarrhea.
in reply to YetiBeets

People who are "scared off" by leftwing politics are probably happier elsewhere anyway
in reply to Omer

Though I'm new here, lots of communities rules are copypasta from breddit, so what's honestly different on here?
in reply to Skv

the damage is spread much thinner across the spaces. instead of one major peice of shit, you have many fiefdomes, and only most are smaller peices of shit.

but hey! there is always the next horizon. move to a better instance when needed

in reply to Skv

Less porn. Most of it seems to be from Reddit copy bots. So I guess that's the real effect we are going to notice.

We don't need more people, we need more good content!

in reply to Omer

I heard about this from my monthly stroll to lemmy. Not sure how I feel about this. Did this just get downvoted to the bottom of my feed or did I miss it?
in reply to lnfg

On Reddit? Apparently posts about it get nuked by mods. So of course people reposted even more.
in reply to Omer

If they get rid of the bots, though, there won't be any more posts.
in reply to Omer

verification is just a fancy marketing word for 'Digital Tagging'. We are witnessing the death of the anonymous internet in real-time. First, they track your clicks, then they demand your ID under the 'anti-bot' excuse
By 2026, the digital grid will be so tight that 'Human' and 'User ID' will be inseparable. Glad I jumped ship to the Fediverse before the cage doors locked. This is exactly why I've been documenting this transition from the 90s privacy to the 2026 surveillance grid the 'Exodus' has truly begun
in reply to Nathan_TheAuthor

We are witnessing the death of the anonymous internet in real-time.


Fedi is still here :3

in reply to Karl

yo karl u hit the nail on the head fr... spez is just the beginnin. we r literally watchin the 2026 digital cage being built right now. i actually spent a lot of time writin about this exact 'death of anonymity' in my book final exodus. its crazy how what we thought was fiction is becomin our daily reality. fedi is the last lifeboat left tbh
in reply to Karl

if u want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes regarding the end of anonymous life check out chapter 17 in my book... i’d love to get ur thoughts on it since u clearly see whats comin
play.google.com/store/books/de…
in reply to Omer

Literally why I'm here. Some bullshit in their bot detection flagged me as a bot, and disabled my account, that I had for 7 years.
in reply to Omer

New user here. Just approved and arrived. Greetings and salutations, folks 🙏🏻