The API changes were the last straw; but it had been heavily destroyed by astroturfing for years before the API restrictions finally just pushed me over the edge.
Technically, the fediverse would be even easier to astroturf. Luckily we’re early enough that astroturfing is foolish on Lemmy.
Maybe. I feel that Reddit cares little about bots and astroturfing. It drives up the engagement numbers. Independent server operators care more, but have fewer resources. Time will tell.
This seems to be the case so far. I hope it scales. Lemmy servers actually have an incentive to eliminate those things - they drive up server costs and could lead to defederation. Plus, they are usually running a server for the sake of enjoying giving people a place to socialize.
Ever tried getting an obvious bot/spam account banned from Meta? Good luck! Those accounts are generating ad impressions, so who cares if they're fake? Meta could invest the profits generated in 2 minutes and fix the problem for good, but their incentive is to keep the problem just below the threshold that people leave the platform.
The API changes were the last straw; but it had been heavily destroyed by astroturfing for years before the API restrictions finally just pushed me over the edge.
Technically, the fediverse would be even easier to astroturf. Luckily we’re early enough that astroturfing is foolish on Lemmy.
Maybe. I feel that Reddit cares little about bots and astroturfing. It drives up the engagement numbers. Independent server operators care more, but have fewer resources. Time will tell.
This seems to be the case so far. I hope it scales. Lemmy servers actually have an incentive to eliminate those things - they drive up server costs and could lead to defederation. Plus, they are usually running a server for the sake of enjoying giving people a place to socialize.
Ever tried getting an obvious bot/spam account banned from Meta? Good luck! Those accounts are generating ad impressions, so who cares if they're fake? Meta could invest the profits generated in 2 minutes and fix the problem for good, but their incentive is to keep the problem just below the threshold that people leave the platform.