• ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      A lot of troll accounts are semi-automated. They run a script that detects certain keywords, and posts premade replies to them (nowadays said premade replies are being finetuned with generative AI to look less uniform), also a human is watching over them to ensure both correct operation and to overtake in case of emergency.

      Source: My father’s ex-girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend was (is) a paid online troll for Fidesz. They also had Discord (later Matrix if I recall) servers for organizing mass reports, downvotes, angry/haha react campaigns, often they also did some “private doxxing”.

    • punkfungus@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Last I checked hexbear had something like 70% more total comments than lemmy.world despite only having a tiny fraction of the users. Sounds like bots to me

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        Hexbear has had an established and more active community for a longer time than Lemmy.world. You can visit Hexbear yourself and check, it’s not illegal or anything.

        Over time Lemmy.world may overtake Hexbear, but not for a while.

        • 𝕾𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖓𝖆@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I have imagined that ever since the Reddit emigration hype ended and things settled down a bit here that the vast majority of world and shit users are mostly lurkers and not terribly vocal, as is the case on a lot of other platforms.

          • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Well Hexbear also had a policy of not showing down votes to encourage users to respond if they disagree instead of just down voting and moving on.

            • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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              5 months ago

              That’s very ironic given that they ban anyone further left than “Capitalist Russia is the best country in the world! Let’s support their invasion of Ukraine for no reason! Ughur genocide fake by the way! Is not so bad that Stalin banned being gay.”

          • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            Yep, I agree, same goes for Lemm.ee and other “generalist” instances. Those attracted the most people from Reddit as they required the least knowledge before-hand of Lemmy and aimed at replicating Reddit in some ways.

            More niche communities tend to be more active per user if they are well established, with Hexbear as a prime example.

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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        5 months ago

        Plus whenever somebody talks ill about the CCP over there they get barraged by copypasta responses. Their posts mirror popular posts on other servers, and generally lack any form of real discussion. The place looks like the bottiest of all instances and nothing can change my mind.