• punkfungus@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      3 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

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 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.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      3 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”.