Owner and writer of CovertWiki.org. It’s basically a wannabe spy handbook in wiki format. Feel free to leave a bookmark until more content is released, or message me on Discord under the same username to become a contributor.

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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2024

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  • I didn’t read very far up into the thread. Sorry.

    Automated filters will just drive determined botters to play the system and perfect their craft until they can no longer be automatically identified, in my opinion. I’m more of the stance that accounts should be reviewed manually so that a leap into convincing bot accounts will need to be much more dramatic, and therefore difficult. If it’s done the hard way from the start with staff who know how to identify these accounts, it may keep it from growing into an issue to begin with.

    Any threshold to be automatically flagged for review should be relatively low, but the process should also be quick and efficient. Adding more metrics to the flagging process only means botters will have a narrower gaze to avoid. Once they start crunching the numbers and streamline mimicking real user accounts it’s game over.


  • Signup safeguards will never be enough because the people who create these accounts have demonstrated that they are more than willing to do that dirty work themselves.

    Let’s look at the anatomy of the average Reddit bot account:

    1. Rapid points acquisition. These are usually new accounts, but it doesn’t have to be. These posts and comments are often done manually by the seller if the account is being sold at a significant premium.

    2. A sudden shift in contribution style, usually preceded by a gap in activity. The account has now been fully matured to the desired amount of points, and is pending sale or set aside to be “aged”. If the seller hasn’t loaded on any points, the account is much cheaper but the activity gap still exists.

    • When the end buyer receives the account, they probably won’t be posting anything related to what the seller was originally involved in as they set about their own mission unless they’re extremely invested in the account. It becomes much easier to stay active in old forums if the account is now AI-controlled, but the account suddenly ceases making image contributions and mostly sticks to comments instead. Either way, the new account owner is probably accumulating much less points than the account was before.
    • A buyer may attempt to hide this obvious shift in contribution style by deleting all the activity before the account came into their possession, but now they have months of inactivity leading up to the beginning of the accounts contributions and thousands of points unaccounted for.
    1. Limited forum diversity. Fortunately, platforms like this have a major advantage over platforms like Facebook and Twitter because propaganda bots there can post on their own pages and gain exposure with hashtags without having to interact with other users or separate forums. On Lemmy, programming an effective bot means that it has to interact with a separate forum to achieve meaningful outreach, and these forums probably have to be manually programmed in. When a bot has one sole objective with a specific topic in mind, it makes great and telling use of a very narrow swath of forums. This makes Platforms like Reddit and Lemmy less preferred for automated propaganda bot activity, and more preferred for OnlyFans sellers, undercover small business advertisers, and scammers who do most of the legwork of posting and commenting themselves.

    My solution? Implement a weighted visual timeline for a user’s points and posts to make it easier for admins to single out accounts that have already been found to be acting suspiciously. There are other types of malicious accounts that can be troublesome such as self-run engagement farms which express consistent front page contributions featuring their own political or whatever lean, but the type first described is a major player in Reddit’s current shitshow and is much easier to identify.

    Most important is moderator and admin willingness to act. Many subreddit moderators on Reddit already know their subreddit has a bot problem but choose to do nothing because it drives traffic. Others are just burnt out and rarely even lift a finger to answer modmail, doing the bare minimum to keep their subreddit from being banned.




  • It’s a multi-edged sword. It also means someone could be forced to testify against a friend or loved one, and in a slightly removed example, my beliefs also apply to laws that allow individuals to be imprisoned for failing to provide a password to locked electronics, regardless of whether or not they actually remember it.

    Maybe it would be a good middle ground to instead expand the privileges that allow members of a marriage to avoid testifying against one another, to include friends and family. The same reasoning applies, except that the state believes it can determine the strength and meaning of a relationship by its title and type alone.











  • Media Sensationalism@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldMandalorian
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    4 months ago

    I did some digging and it seems like the family’s suit should actually be against the pub that was renting the in-park space from Disney. It’s just unfortunate that the prevalence of corporate propaganda in news media, especially in what would be a critical period for Disney to invest in damage control for their public image, makes it difficult to confidently believe one thing or the other in light of that finding.

    I never cared much for Disney to begin with, so I won’t waste any more time with verification. Regardless, the suit definitely shouldn’t be dismissed on their argument of the arbitration agreement alone because it would set an awful precedent, even if the suit itself happens to be toothless. I wouldn’t put it past Disney to try to take advantage of the situation to that end (They may be hoping the suit will be dismissed for arbitration because the judge already knows the suit is pointless so that future legitimate lawsuits against them for wrongful deaths in their park can be more easily dismissed on the same grounds).