Lemmy.world for instance could put the rest of the Lemmy fediverse between a rock and a hard place if they wanted to

beehaw.org is doing great, and they deferated from.world a while ago. Your point is correct though, Mastodon.social for example has half of all Mastodon users.

That said- there is little incentive to having a large instance, it costs a lot more and requires a lot more work.

“The fediverse” has no rules, if an instance wants to allow vote manipulation they have that power.

The best defense is to call them out on it and then walk away

Yes exactly, I try to just simply describe what they are doing “This account is spreading the false narrative _____ for the purposes of ___” then not replying again. They want engagement because the more back-and-forth bickering that goes on, the less likely a third party reader is going to care to read beyond the top comment (the propaganda) and seeing a lot of replies can also give the impression that the debate is legitimate. Getting into a “debate” with someone “debating” in bad faith only helps them flood the zone with shit.

Reddit mods can sniff out astroturfing pretty easily actually, but Reddit inc doesn’t do much to stop it. On the Fediverse, admins can simply ban from the instance, and if an instance does a poor job of removing inauthentic content then they can defederate.

Exactly. Block and move on. Don’t twist yourself into knots appeasing people, focus on keeping the users you want happy.

Not trying to victim blame or anything, but I find it hard to believe that someone operating a low-moderation instance would truly expect people who don’t like moderation to stay away.

Don’t get me wrong I agree with your sentiment and dislike that behavior, but what I’m saying is that asking or expecting users not to go on witch hunts or to behave in a certain way is a fool’s errand that will always lead to burnout. A more sustainable approach for admins and mods is creating space for what they want to host and not trying to control what they don’t.

In the article they quoted the moderator (emphasis mine):

“This whole topic is so sad. It’s unfortunate how many mentally unwell people are attracted to the topic of AI. I can see it getting worse before it gets better. I’ve seen sooo many posts where people link to their github which is pages of rambling pre prompt nonsense that makes their LLM behave like it’s a god or something,” the r/accelerate moderator wrote. “Our policy is to quietly ban those users and not engage with them, because we’re not qualified and it never goes well. They also tend to be a lot more irate and angry about their bans because they don’t understand it.”

It seems pretty clear to me that they view it as a problem. Why ban something if they don’t see it as a problem?

Absolutely. And to be clear, the “researcher” being quoted is just a guy on the internet who self-published an official looking “paper”.

That said- I think that’s partly why it’s so interesting that this particular group of people identified the problem, because this group of people are pretty extreme LLM devotees and already ascribe unrealistic traits to LLMs. So if they are noticing people “taking it too seriously” then you know it must be bad.

Yeeeeah that user doesn’t really understand how these things work. Hopefully stories like this can get out there because the only thing that can stop predatory behavior by corporations is bad press.

What is that from? I didn’t see it in the article.

I will be dead in the cold cold ground before I ever type “/s”

I know it sounds insane but I swear to god BlueSky has astroturfing accounts on Lemmy. Every conversation (including yours here) about BlueSky is met with countless Sealions either saying it “will be federated soon” or asking “Why does federation matter?”

Everything now is rage-bait designed to get more clicks

IMO the greatest strength of the Fediverse is the increased number of mods and admins looking at everything. Don’t want rage bait? Join an instance that has rules against it.

Additional PSA to admins not running a “universal free speech” instance- if you see someone someone being obnoxious it’s probably annoying your users just as much as is is you. Don’t put the onus fully on users to curate their experience. The Fediverse needs our adults in the room!

It doesn’t meet the definition of “developing nation” either.

To be clear- this is just your personal “vibe” and not an actual fact, because the term “third world country” literally means a country that is not aligned with the US or USSR. If you meant “developing nation” that term also has a definition the US does not meet.

Is this just your vibes or do you have a source? Because I just checked the website of the organization this article is referencing and it says no such thing.

First of all, that’s not what “Economic Freedom” means in the context of democracy, but more importantly “economic freedom” is not even a factor in the methodology used by the group this article is citing.

Healthy for Lemmy, totally catastrophic for Pixelfed.