Reddit CEO says facial verification may be introduced. Ostensibly to prevent bots.

But we all know how dangerous this can be. But most likely Reddit users will just accept it.

Although they have a great free analogue right under their noses - Lemmy. Which is many times better than its competitor.

I wish more people would discover Lemmy, but that’s unlikely.

  • MoonMelon@lemmy.mlEnglish
    294·
    10 days ago

    There’s no way they want to eliminate bot traffic, it would kill 2/3rds of their traffic instantly. So this just means, “bots that aren’t paying us.”

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      138·
      10 days ago

      Reddit, very famously, used bot traffic at its inception to create the illusion of a community big enough to compete with Digg.

      It was the OG “fake it till you make it” business.

      As the company implements an increasingly draconian “ban every account that looks at me sideways” admin policy, I’m not sure if “2/3rds of the traiffc” isn’t lowballing it. There are entire threads - from initial post to bullshit bottom comment - that get created by bot traffic on the modern site. It’s a full blown hall of mirrors over there.

      • utopiah@lemmy.ml
        531·
        10 days ago

        OG “fake it till you make it” business.

        Feels like 99% of “social” network startups. The dead Internet theory started before the LLM craze.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          261·
          10 days ago

          Goes back to email. Easier to create a machine that churns out digital messages than find humans to do the work manually. So you get increasing loads of spam and gibberish, attempting to out-shout one another in a digital space with no bureaucratic regulation or material limits.

          That said, one thing that made early social media like Facebook and MySpace and Livejournal appear valuable was the degree of human interaction. What’s more, the interpersonal networks that formed between verified humans gave enormous value to communications across the platform.

          Facebook did a pretty good job, early on, of limiting who could join based on authentication through college admin offices. MySpace had a large cohort of real human artists producing real human music, which attracted a real human following. Livejournal predated a lot of advertisement-by-blogging. After the Dot-Com bubble burst, this is where you could see green shoots of economic value in a digital space.

          We’ve demolished all that chasing fictitious capital. How valuable it was in practice is debatable, of course. But it’s all gone now.

              • sakuraba@lemmy.ml
                5·
                10 days ago

                Take mine too. It’s really funny how tumblr banned porn so all the gooners went to twitter and now tumblr is kinda healthy with a really vocal userbase that WILL backlash at any attempt on enshittifying the platform

                The biggest con with tumblr is the CEO, but he’s too busy making everyone distrust Wordpress.

              • Imaginary_Stand4909@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                4·
                9 days ago

                I’m no heritage Tumblr user, I didn’t have an account until about a year ago, but I used to browse the site every now and then. I’d say the current userbase is a joy to be around, but the bots are everywhere. Every comment section on an artist’s post eventually will get a “Are you open for comms?” post. We still get the porn bots funnily enough. Also the occasional account takeovers and then bots DMming people.

                But like in terms of real people posting? I don’t even know if I’ve ever had a bot post come up on my feed, for both the following feed and “for you” feed. Plus Tumblr does have an option to look at chronological posts and you can actually reach the end of the page eventually!

                We all recently rioted and got the staff to revert a shitty twitter-like update within a day or so, which was nice. I still want wafrn to improve and replace Tumblr so we can escape the PoS CEO, but alas.

          • utopiah@lemmy.ml
            1·
            9 days ago

            Indeed, when I read this parent comment I had in mind a snake oil salesman in Lucky Luke (Doc Doxey’s Elixir, volume 38)

      • krisevol@lemmus.orgEnglish
        18·
        10 days ago

        I read somewhere that it’s estimated that reddit is 90% bots in the comments, and we already know 99% of front page context is from bots accounts.

    • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
      16·
      10 days ago

      If not already, I assume they’ll offer a for-fee API for bots.

    • Prove_your_argument@piefed.socialEnglish
      12·
      10 days ago

      That’s not the point of this.

      The point of this is to remove unpaid/unauthorized bots. They want their engagement figures to look even better, and they don’t want people offering up their advertisements propaganda without paying up.

      Their goal will never be to eliminate bots because undoubtedly that is something they want to sell access to and use themselves.

      By guaranteeing that certain posts are bona fide humans, their data is more valuable to sell for AI data as well… and they probably have a way to dox users with this too.

    • Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      10 days ago

      I mean it’s also trivially easy for ai to make a photorealistic image of a human, i dont see how this could possibly ever work. Whatever test they apply would be by definition cheatable by AI.

    • PhoenixDog@lemmy.world
      5·
      10 days ago

      JUST IN: Reddit CEO says company is considering requiring all bots on the platform to click on ads in order to drive revenue to Reddit.

      • AngryDeuce@lemmy.world
        28·
        10 days ago

        Ditto!

        Well that and they permabanned my 14 year old, 1million karma account for making a post that insinuated Donald is a pedophile that some MAGA got all upset about and they rejected my appeal.

        So…fuck em.

        • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
          9·
          9 days ago

          Mine was for suggesting Biden drone strike SCOTUS justices immediately after they ruled that the president is effectively above the law. I wasn’t advocating for Biden to do anything illegal! 🤣

        • Lucelu2@lemmy.zip
          5·
          10 days ago

          I stand with your 14 year old. Same thing happened to me (well, very similar, my message was more in that clot has just one job category).

        • Taldan@lemmy.world
          2·
          9 days ago

          I had a similar account that got banned for connecting to the wrong VPN endpoint. Clicked a random server from my VPN provider, suddenly my account was permanently banned with no ability to appeal

          Thinking it was just some issue on my end (it was a non-standard looking ban), I logged into another OG account of mine, which also promptly got perma-banned

          Extreme incompetence for them to be issuing perma-bans like that based on IP address

    • PhoenixDog@lemmy.world
      10·
      10 days ago

      Nah, other users won’t know who you are.

      But Reddit can sell your information and send police to your house if you joke about Isreal.

      • 001Guy001@sh.itjust.works
        12·
        10 days ago

        Nah, other users won’t know who you are.

        Well, at least until the database inevitably leaks

        https://www.pcmag.com/news/reddit-could-soon-require-face-id-to-prove-youre-not-a-bot

        Huffman indicated the platform may use decentralized third-party information providers to verify users’ personal details.

        “Part of the promise to users is we don’t want to know your name," he told the hosts. "But we want to know that you’re a person.”

        Sure, “we don’t want to know your name, we just have to know it or have to have another party that we have access to/a deal with know it”

    • PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.spaceEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      Considering how “ban evaders,” even when changing devices, moving to different countries and setting up new accounts, are getting miraculously detected and swiftly banned again, I doubt anybody has even a shred of privacy on Reddit.

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    64·
    10 days ago

    in order to crack down on AI unprofitable bots

    I’m sure they’ll have no issues allowing bots that align with their interests

      • Hominine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        121·
        9 days ago

        You’re probably right and this is the first time I’ve felt kind of glad for the “speed bump” that picking a server on the fediverse has become. We’ll get another influx before too long; maybe a “you need to be this clever to ride the ride” checkpoint isn’t such a bad thing.

        • low@lemmy.today
          6·
          9 days ago

          That’s what I thought when I initially signed up but I’m realizing we lack diversity baaaaaaad. I’d wager 90%+ of users are tech people and we are infamously antisocial, which is rough for a “social media”

      • robocall@lemmy.world
        5·
        9 days ago

        Selecting a server wasn’t an issue for me. The RIF app told me to go to .world and I quickly decided it was the right instance for me to start.

        I moreso had to adjust to the slower pace and less engagement on Lemmy compared to reddit, the lack of niche communities, my favorite subs not having a perfect equivalent here.

        I was super pissed off with reddit and am still salty, so my anger committed me to making the commitment to Lemmy. I was addicted to reddit and they took away the app I was using for over 10 years. I wasn’t ready for the breakup and was scorned. I was highly motivated to make Lemmy work for me.

        Users need that level of anger and outrage to motivate them.

        • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
          4·
          9 days ago

          It’s weird, but that shit intimidates non technical people, and there are a lot of them. It would need better if it says something like ‘Click on the flag of the country closest to where you live’ or something like that.

          Linux seems to have managed to do this - I recently did I mint install on my laptop, it was all GUI, no arcane jargon, no need to use the console, really well optimised for the non-technical folk. You’d be surprised how many people see ‘server’ and think ‘I don’t have one of those, and I don’t think I want one’.

      • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
        5·
        9 days ago

        Most likely, they will. They are not elikely to infect larger instances. Smaller instances will spot them and ban them, I hope.

          • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
            1·
            9 days ago

            They will still infect them but they will be more obvious.

            An unusual comment, you don’t know it’s a bot.

            Hundreds of unusual comments and doesn’t engage with the local community. It’s a bot.

            It’s partly why online discourse is toxic. There is a disconnect with th real world and online and no social stigma. On a small community instances there is.

            The problem though, will be trying to manage which isntances need to be blocked as they are rampant with bota. If the fediverse grows and there are lots of smaller communities,.it will be harder to keep track. Currently it’s small and most instances with active users are familiar.

      • SuspciousCarrot78@lemmy.world
        2·
        9 days ago

        I (mildly) am concerned about that also…but bear in mind…the difference between Lemmy and Reddit is you can…defederate…from known bad instances. If Lemmy goes in that direction - and we undertake the idea I mentioned here - https://lemmy.world/post/44633911/22828600

        then we can basically recreate a blacklist / whitelist (ala AdBlock). Instance-wide crawlers can still scrape public data, but that’s an ActivityPub protocol constraint, not a Lemmy failure.

        Instance crawling with bots? Sorry, no soup for you.

        Spam bots on bad instances? Blocked from your feed.

        Peak “fine, I’ll do it myself” energy? Yes. But if you’re reading this, you’re 1) part of the resistance (lol) and (2) already here, so …

    • Shellofbiomatter@lemmus.orgEnglish
      3·
      9 days ago

      It still is more populated and has a lot higher activity, which suits slightly better for doomscrolling.

      Lemmy needs to get slightly more popular. And maybe a centralized place to find different instances?
      Like i haven’t found any active fitness related ones.

      It’s like coming from a convention Hall full of people and going into a minimally occupied hotel.

      • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        2·
        8 days ago

        Centralisation of power is in the first place why we moved away from Reddit. Fuck that.

        You can find your own fitness sidelemmy. There are actually a few I found.

        • Shellofbiomatter@lemmus.orgEnglish
          1·
          8 days ago

          Completely fair, just the difference and lack of constant flow of content is going to put off many people and without a significant enough drive there’s no point to get used to the new environment.

          Mind pointing me in a the right direction?

      • BlackPenguins@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 days ago

        This is basically all I use for now. Lemmy doesn’t have the infrastructure for every TV episode and movie I watch.

        • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
          4·
          9 days ago

          yeah. and even in the generic tv show communities there are maybe a couple people discussing a new episode, if at all.

          Compared to thousands for a popular show.

          heck, even star trek is barely active compared to reddit. and they did an official migration in the beginning

  • chunes@lemmy.world
    57·
    10 days ago

    Requiring face ID AFTER genAI has become great at generating faces is certainly a decision

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      10 days ago

      Next step will be to require Video with bop-it style live instructions, stick out your tongue, blink one eye, pick your nose, make finger guns, smile, frown. They won’t care that it’s not disability friendly.

      • Lucelu2@lemmy.zip
        5·
        10 days ago

        Facebook tried to make me take a video of myself moving my head around making different facial expressions to prove I was a person. I was like… not even my bank requires that. This was after making a comment that was Trump-negging. So I cancelled it.

      • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        Discord has a similar system in place, people were defeating it with the Photo mode in Death Standing lmao

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
    491·
    10 days ago

    So when is this happening, so we can mentally and logistically prepare for the next influx of new users into the fediverse?

  • Ashrakal@lemmy.ml
    44·
    9 days ago

    I made the switch to Lemmy today, feels old school kind of good.

    Reddit is not only allowing for bots to run rampant, but also it’s managed by the Epstein class and their supporters.

  • NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net
    41·
    9 days ago

    Im sure the website that sold userdata to every single AI company to train their models on wouldn’t ever even think of selling the faces of every one of its users to a company to train its AI face generator on.

    Or that the website which accidentally admitted “the most reddit addicted city” is an air force base that hosts their online counterintelligence teams… Where was I going with this? Hmm must be nothing.

    • python@lemmy.world
      6·
      9 days ago

      selling the faces of every one of its users to a company to train its AI face generator on

      Okay, but wouldn’t it be kind of funny if every AI face generator suddenly started producing faces that look like Redditors?

      • BremboTheFourth@piefed.caEnglish
        7·
        10 days ago

        I’d be cautious about seeing that as good news. I’ll always be suspicious of how many posts here are either partially or entirely automated, whether that means automatically reposting stuff from other sites, fully generated text, or just augmenting a human’s posting.

        I like to think we’re too small for most botters to care about us, but who knows! As far as I’m aware, no one service has any reliable tools for spotting generated posts. No way are federated services prepared to deal with the insane influx of bots that would naturally come with being significantly more popular. Seems like all we have are captchas…

        • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
          5·
          10 days ago

          I can fairly certainly confirm that influnece agents are active on lemmy. Including plenty of US government connected ones ginning up support for the Iran war. Especially on the larger .world accounts it appears.

          • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
            32·
            10 days ago

            .world is no different than reddit and anyone on that instance should expect such skullduggery.

              • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
                1·
                9 days ago

                It’s clear that the leftwing left wing left reddit a while ago; so that leaves behind liberals, conservatives, and moderates that still can’t make up their minds about Trump somehow.

      • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
        4·
        10 days ago

        Maybe we can get more people on the Fediverse

        Once there’s enough people on the Fediverse it will get noticed by the Authorities and when that happens you’ll see instances start shutting down as they are unwilling, or unable, to comply with the Age Verification and Social Media laws that are being passed all over the globe.

        I’m somewhat surprised that the NSFW instances haven’t already been hit by the Age Verification laws that many US States have but as soon as a single state, say Utah, notices the rest of them will pile on and the Fediverse will start to unravel.

        This isn’t just a US problem either, there’s Age Verification and Social Media laws being proposed or already in effect in many Western Nations. Hell the two Australian instances are already afoul of the laws in their country so as soon as their Government notices they are going to have some difficult decisions to make.

        • TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          10 days ago

          Ideally a more critical mass so I can talk about my more niche hobbies. Like looking at video game leaks.

          Or something like /r/3d6 on reddit.