Saw a suspicious post resurrecting a 5 month old thread, and after a few back and forths:
https://linux.community/comment/3453531
I don’t understand why you are treating me like a robot. However, I can help with the Fibonacci sequence. Here is a Python 3 function to calculate it:
I’m torn, its nice to have activity in the fediverse, but I’m not convinced bots are the right way to go about it. Opinions on the future of engagement bots?
Bots need to be clearly marked as bots. I dont want to line the fediverse with barbed wire. But I also want transparency on what I am interacting with.
I don’t know how much it would really apply here or how enforceable it is but, genuinely, I think the first thing to do with any real discussion about regulating this is a law that anyone providing LLM can’t be providing it to people who are trying to pass it off as human. I know we’ve had bots doing this for kind of thing a long time ago, but this sort of thing should have been done a long time ago too.
Yeah, I think we need laws of LLMs
Rule 0. Cannot deny your a LLM
I instance-ban all bots as a rule of thumb as well as anyone who is a frequent poster of LLM-generated content. I’ve yet to encounter any bot account (LLM-generated, scripted, or otherwise) that’s not annoying, spammy, or both. Some have good intentions and I hate less than others, but at the end of the day, they’re a major source of annoyances.
Part of why this place is great is engaging with people. I couldn’t care less what a tone-deaf chatbot “thinks” about anything. Lol, one of my site rules since day 1 of running my instance is “No AI/LLM-generated content”, and I enforce that rule vigorously.
I can’t recall the exact phrasing I used, but I said something in the past on this. It was basically to the effect of “Bots aren’t creating engagement, they’re creating clutter”.
That’s my initial inclination, but I could see value in some conversation starter service, even a hot-take posting bot to get a back and forth going started with humans.
We have all seen the conversations where someone drops a hot-take, starts a huge argument and walks away… a bot could do that, and give people a anchor for content.
I’m not saying I approve of this, just that I see it having some utility in some scenarios.
I’ve yet to encounter any bot account (LLM-generated, scripted, or otherwise) that’s not annoying, spammy, or both.
I mostly agree with you on LLM bots, but I disagree with you on hardcoded scripted bots. There are a number of bots which provide useful utility. Community link fixer bot is one such example.
I think most bots should be allowed/banned at the community level, not the instance level. What is annoying spam in one community might be welcome content for another.
You’re right; I misspoke. I think there are a few that I have allowed / not instance banned.
Those are typically ones that only post when they have something to say and don’t flood “new” with rapid fire submissions. Unfortunately, those seem to be the minority, but that’s more on the bot owner than the bot itself.
I don’t think bots are a good way to boost engagement, but I don’t think all bots should be banned either.
In The Other Place, I enjoyed labeled bots which performed a clear function or service, and replied only in specific circumstances, such as when they were summoned or a key phrase was mentioned.
Examples: stabbot, more JPEG auto, metric converter.
Can you think of any other examples of “useful bots”?
Post scheduler: https://schedule.lemmings.world/
Some people are engaging with the weekly posts on !incremental_games@incremental.social (sadly having federation issues) that are in theory using a bot, but in practice mods have been manually making the post. But people engaged when it was actually the bot posting too.
!fedigrow@lemm.ee, !newcommunities@lemmy.world definitely have weekly posts that get interacted with. !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk used to, they are not regularly posted anymore, but when they are people interact. However, on all those communities, as far as I know (I think the post scheduler posts with your account so for all I know the bot could post it?), humans are making the bog-standard “what is going on in your community/active communities/what are you playing this week?” posts and I wonder if the fact a human is posting is what is driving the engagement there.
I could swear there was a community link fixer bot, which is pretty useful for people reading comments, trying to click a link to a community, and getting an error. Bot has the correct link as a reply.
Community-specific bots can be quite helpful. NameThatSong on Reddit had a bot that would run your post through song recognizer bots if your post had audio, to try to help the poster identify the song. I found it useful. I should probably figure out how to make a similar bot for !NameThatSong@lemmy.wtf someday.
I could swear there was a community link fixer bot
Yup, there is: @CommunityLinkFixer@lemmings.world
@AnarchistsForKamala@lemmy.world You reported my verifying the LLM bot as uncivil? You made me laugh! I was being polite to the bot in question, it’s a very nicely written bot, it even upvoted my comments to it.
What is your expectation around LLM bot behavior and Lemmy?
i expect admins and mods to deal with bots quietly. filling the comment sections with chatter is bad. encouraging users to fill the comment section with chatter is bad. encouraging users to treat other users as machines is bad.
I would rather have transparency and community engagement to handle this.
id rather stop being called a shill and bot every time my opinion deviates from the hivemind. that shit is toxic
Your account is 8 days old, who has accused you of being a bot?
this account is 8 days old. i’ve been around the fediverse since 2015, and on lemmy with gusto since 2023.
idk dude be more conversational? You don’t need to engage in hostile conversations either.
i don’t tell you what to do. please extend the same courtesy.
I recognize how it would be rude to accuse a human of being a LLM/bot. That’s a good point
This is the first time I’ve seen a obvious LLM bot in the wild on lemmy, so I was trying to get it to definitively out itself. (which it later did)
I’m a little worried if the community rule is to ignore LLM bots when they appear in the comments, then they could become quite the elephant in the room. Most mod actions happen hours/days after the activity has already passed, so even if mods are 100% successful in removing LLM content, most of the experienced interaction people have will already be with the LLM bots.
Most mod actions happen hours/days after the activity has already passed, so even if mods are 100% successful in removing LLM content, most of the experienced interaction people have will already be with the LLM bots.
users should still be discouraged from doing your probing anyway. mods should be encouraged to be involved.
I am a mod and a instance admin, I’m exactly the person you say should do the probing.
i’m saynig no public probing should be done at all.
If the bot only responds to public comments, and we don’t allow probing of suspected bot accounts, then we have created a situation where bots are allowed to exist in a defacto state as long as they don’t say ‘I’m a bot’
? just ban it. people appeal unjust bans.
if the community rule is to ignore LLM bots when they appear in the comments
it should be encouraged for people to report bots. that’s not ignoring.
True, but the overlap between the best LLM and the most oblivious human is rather large, there needs to be a smoking gun for a moderator to see a poster is undeniably a bot, there has to be some interaction with the bot to get to that point.
, there needs to be a smoking gun for a moderator to see a poster is undeniably a bot
here’s a smoking gun: they don’t appeal their ban.
I’m confused, accusing humans in comments of being a bot is rude, but banning people on the suspicion of being a bot so that they have to appeal to unban their account is better?
when the appeal comes in, are you going to deny it?
this can be a very quiet exercise, without implying to other users that the user in question might be a bot. by contrast, just probing it out in the open taints that users interactions.
When I’m banned from things I don’t appeal because I don’t trust the intentions of moderators and making such a request to someone acting in bad faith is humiliating. I think anyone coming from Reddit will probably be reluctant to appeal a ban.
I have too big a mouth to let injustice happen in front of me or to me and not tell someone they fucked up
