Saturday, October 4, 2025
A risky situation: The critical state of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, explained -- Russian economy latest: Oil, gas September revenues down 25% from last year amid high budget deficit -- Ukrainian drones strike Russia's chemical giant over 1,700km from front lines -- Art after apocalypse — opera spurred by Russia’s ecocide in Ukraine to return to Kyiv ... and morehttps://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/10/saturday-october-4-2025/
Reddit profile privacy feature enables bot farms to conceal spam operations https://ppc.land/reddit-profile-privacy-feature-enables-bot-farms-to-conceal-spam-operations/ #Reddit #Privacy #BotFarms #Spam #Moderators
Reddit profile privacy feature enables bot farms to conceal spam operations: Reddit moderators report increased difficulties tracking bot accounts and spam after platform's introduction of profile privacy controls. https://ppc.land/reddit-profile-privacy-feature-enables-bot-farms-to-conceal-spam-operations/ #Reddit #Privacy #BotFarms #Spam #Moderators
I have a recent project to stop (LLM training) crawlers from copyright-thefting my website. I find these bots with either a hidden-link tarpit or by looking for single access events (no css), which I then ban if they come from a cloud server. So far I have learned:
• Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Chinese telecom companies are pretty easy to block. These were the early heavy hitters.
• Huawei has little cloud server farms all over the world. I seem to still find about one a day.
• Some mysterious entity rents servers all over the world and crawls by sniping one page at a time. The snipes come in clusters, so all these bots are running the same crawler, with some but not complete inter-communication. Popular cloud companies are OVH Cloud, EGI Hosting, Web2Objects, Host Royale, Digital Ocean, Cloud Innovation, ....
Via #CultMTL
#PartiQuébécois leader #PaulStPierrePlamondon commented on the #disinformation trend on #Xitter, in post on the platform yesterday, drawing line between disinformation via hundreds of fake #X accounts in #Quebec, federal #ConservativeParty leader #PierrePoilievre using #BotFarms to generate praise for his rallies & a #Montreal co & Canadian influencers being caught by #US #DoJ after being paid by #Russia to publish pro-Conservative, pro-#Trump #propaganda.
INSANITY REIGNS as Press Continues Biden Attacks and Dems Question: WHAT NOW?! | #ResistanceLive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7HjQHcFp_o
Ignore the noise and stay the course. #BidenHarris2024 Fight back against the disinformation noise.
#PreemptiveObedience #MediaCritique #ConfirmationBias #Disinformation #ManufacturingConsent #BotFarms #AIElectionInterference #2024Election #Biden
EN: I'm dummy. I've just got why on his own platform this silly Elon is using bot farms with blue checks that forces with tweets. LOL
Source: https://twitter.com/med_goblin/status/1708693150997381460
It only costs $400 to make an anti-Russia, anti-China #propaganda bot.
That number approaches $0 when one realises how #tillony works.
#russiaGate #chinaHate #yellowPeril #racism #nazism #xenophobia #botFarms #antiRussia #antiChina
Something worth learning from #China. Entities that are too popular pose a danger.
Look at people that you are thinking of interacting with if they have more than 3000 followers and only been on fedi since #Nov2022 then it is *very* likely they are using or have used #botFarms to game the #ExploreTimeline, for followers.
This #PopularityModel was abuse on #BigSocialMedia. Since #Nov22 its come to #fediverse.
Limit interactions with them especially if they post images a lot.
Judging by the botFarms on fedi that are setup to hate him, his resistance to #BigPharma and #BigAg, and the fact that he doesn't wish to crush all #soundMoney-bitcoin proponents, we think #RFK is going to be a fair, balanced president for the #USA, who will be able to build a vibrant, new era of #degrowth and #convivialSufficiency.
No more war, no more offshored #bioLabs, a reduced #CIA, and perhaps most importantly, less energy going into these self-righteous #botFarms.
Fediverse appears to be replicating the worst elements of #socialMedia now, including enabling and empowering the #botFarms.
It seems to be just replicating the worst elements of the #closedSilo systems, just in a #decentralised way.
We suspect that the way to get to the heart of this issue is to '#followTheMoney'. Where is money pouring into fedi and why? Why has Mastodon not taken long-time software thieves #HellaDoge to task, but jumped on others?
@LionsPhil @nicuveo
When we say #BotFarmTimeline we mean the #ExploreTimeline, of course, designed to favour entities with #botFarms backing them.
Mastodon should also restore their javascript-free interface that was recently dropped.
We really need to see other server types like #Epicyon (named after a type of big wild canine), #GNUSocial, and #FireFish gainmore developer interest.
It's really interesting to see the bots lampoon #JFK.
To cut a long story short #RobertKennedy is not against bitcoin and wants to limit the number of military bases the #USA have around the world for **no** good reason.
When you see the #botFarms go after JFK with their fake, bot followers, just remember that.
@emilygorcenski @jack @witchescauldron
We are pretty sure that when they say "#interoperable", they mean with other bots.
Oh, and let's no forget three-letter-agencies.
The #bot activity on #socialmedia has been off the charts lately. Seeing more of it here at #Mastodon as well. #BotFarms #ugh
I mean we already knew it was going on, but still...
#disinformation #botfarms #trolls #electiontampering #democracy
@douglasmeehan
One thing that we need to be mindful of is some things that we're trained to think are good, like being able to immedialey see how popular a post is by glancing below the post at the Like and Boost amounts, are #toxic for a #community in the long-term.
They encourage both #botFarms and #herdMentality.
That's why for many years #Fediverse softwares would not show such numbers by default. Instead opting for <BLANK>, 1, or 1+.
