Pretty sure you legally have to tell me if you’re bots or not.
In all seriousness, is there any way if knowing if we have bots on lemmy or not? Is it just vibes based? Im of course referring to undercover bots pushing agendas, not automation/meme bots finding haikus and shit.
There are bots that openly advertise themselves as such. Less common on Lemmy than Reddit but I’ve seen a few.
Do we have any real evidence these exist? I only see very spurious accusations of being a bot directed towards communists and other left-wingers, particularly towards racialised people and colonised people. I’d be both sceptical of their widespread existence and of their efficacy at effecting any kind of political change even if they did exist.
Political bots- well maybe, but it’s not that far fetched. Astroturfing is very real and has been a thing for a good while now. It’s honestly not difficult to think that the same techniques and practices, enhance by AI now, could be used to shape political will of the people.
If you say, “NO! MY party wouldn’t do that!”. Maybe not, but the other side might. Or even other countries. Honestly, as a boring ass citizen -I- have the ability to VPN into another country and AI shitpost bad ideas onto their political boards. If I was in a foreign country employed in some goverment capacity for counterintelligence operations and I WASN’T employong such tools and actions- I’d just be terrible at my job.
I’m not saying astroturfing doesn’t happen, but I don’t think it’d be worth investing into a bot farm just to leave low-quality social media comments for a political agenda. I’d be surprised if the practice is widespread. There are plenty of things intelligence services do that are more effective at achieving their goals.