this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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18
bots- is there a solution (programming.dev)
submitted 1 day ago by BrainThinkerMan@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

bots on websites, on apps on forums, has anyone found a real solution to getting rid of bots? and bot accounts? if so id love to know any solutions

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[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yes, on my imaginary forum you have to submit your new account application in the form of a handwritten note - on carbon paper, so I can tell that an actual pen or pencil pressed against the page - along with a $10 processing fee that goes directly to my beer fund. People who don't know what carbon paper is are automatically excluded from my forum.

Once approved, all posts need to be submitted in a similar manner, along with a transcription fee of $15 to compensate for me having to read (a) your god-awful handwriting , and (b) your god-awful post.

I aim to have all posts and comments processed within 20 business days. To this date I have always comfortably beaten that metric, seeing that nobody has posted anything yet.

[–] ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How do you know that you know what carbon paper is? What if it's not about writing it down, but the carbon(friends) we made along the way? And given that we're all made of carbon, does that make you antifriend? And you know who wasn't very friendly? Nazis. So you're basically a Nazi if you think you shouldn't admit people who don't knownwhat carbon paper is.

Checkmate, lib

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 4 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Your Honor, I move to dismiss this entire course of reasoning presented by the prosecution, by the simple fact that it was NOT, presented to me carbon copied in duplicate for review, and as per the terms and conditions of my fictitious forum, all submissions must be expressly submitted via such means, and I shall quote DIRECTLY here, under section 37B of the contract signed by him, it states quite clearly that "all offers shall become null and void if" - and you can read it for yourself in this photostatic copy - "I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained," et cetera, et cetera... "Fax mentis, incendium gloria cultum," et cetera, et cetera... "Memo bis punitor delicatum"!

It's all there! Black and white, clear as crystal! YOU stole Fizzy-Lifting Drinks! YOU bumped into the ceiling, which now has to be washed and sterilized, so you GET... NOTHING! YOU LOSE! GOOD DAY, SIR!

[–] ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

...sir? Have you even checked my gender privilege card yet? It clearly says FEMBOY

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I miss Gene Wilder.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Sure. There isn't anything watertight... But we have Captchas, human moderators, report buttons... Email tries to tackle it with spamfilters... I suppose forcing AI providers to watermark AI generated text would be quite effective against those kinds of bots... There's a few ideas out there. Unfortunately there's also lots of bot activity out there.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 8 hours ago

forcing AI providers to watermark AI generated text would be quite effective

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 12 points 1 day ago

Bots don't just program themselves (... yet?), someone places them here, with intentionality.

Liars and thieves and trolls have existed since the dawn of time (the ideas of antagonism and predatory behaviors have surely even predated cellular lifeforms).

Conversely, a bot that is properly labeled as such can be quite welcome to perform its specific tasks? Someone built it for a reason after all.

PieFed offers quite a number of tools to help detect and label bots when the OP fails to do so. Most are in the mod tools rather than for an individual end-user. In such cases though, it is impossible to tell whether someone simply ran a post through an LLM for refinement or whether the latter wrote the whole damn thing.

TLDR: "bots" are (ostensibly) fine, it's people who suck - particularly liars and non-empathetic ones who feel that their right to speak (or vote or whatever) should trump yours, and use such deceptive practices to try to overwhelm others.

[–] who@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)
  • anonymous
  • available to everyone
  • free of (unwanted) bots

Pick two.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Arguably you could use some digital ID like the EU, that identifies you as a human but not which human, using fancy cryptography. With worldwide rollout this would give you all 3

[–] who@feddit.org 3 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

If anonymous and available to everyone, what would prevent people from acquiring an ID and passing it on to a bot, or from acquiring multiples?

[–] eah@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago

That's probably why the EU is doing the remote attestation thing. You can have software freedom but with bots or you can have no bots but with software bondage.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The government would keep track of whether or not they issued you an ID, so that you can't acquire multiple. You'll probably be responsible for not losing it, or maybe there's ways to revoke lost ones without compromising the privacy of it.

As for humans passing their token to a bot, that's not really solvable by any system. There is always a possibility that a human is just talking to a bot and then typing out the post themselves. But the human is still the one with the authority, and chooses to delegate to the bot.

[–] who@feddit.org 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

As for humans passing their token to a bot, that’s not really solvable by any system.

Indeed. Which is (part of) why I wrote, "pick two".

But the human is still the one with the authority, and chooses to delegate to the bot.

Which is what we already have today.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

Your original "pick two" comment implies that you can pick "anonymous" + "free of bots", or "available to everybody" + "free of bots". I can't think of any system that would satisfy those.

Which is what we already have today.

What we have today is only "available to everybody". The token/ID system adds anonymity

[–] aivoton@sopuli.xyz -1 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Rate-limiting ID acquiring and having them to be short-lived deals with malicious parties. Having for example a token that proofs that you're a legitimate person for 1 day, but your identity is tied to it for the duration means that you can only abuse the system only so for so long. For longer periods e.g. a month, half a year, you can provide pseudoanonymity, and it poses bigger issues with privacy, but a person who is willing to be subjected to be identified for a certain period of time gains certain privileges.

Sounds very dystopian though, but not having ID won't stop the tech giants from profiling you anyways.

[–] who@feddit.org 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

but your identity is tied to it for the duration

This doesn't disprove what I wrote, as it's not anonymous.

you can provide pseudoanonymity,

Pseudoanonymity is not anonymity, regardless of how any given person chooses to define that nebulous term.

My "pick two" stands.

[–] who@feddit.org 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

but your identity is tied to it for the duration

Then it's not anonymous.

[–] aivoton@sopuli.xyz -1 points 22 hours ago

Hence the pseudoanonymity.

[–] arthur@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

How about Anubis? Is It still working?

[–] refalo@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

no

[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

Report and block.

[–] Archimedes@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

The solution is delete your account and never use the platform again.

[–] fork@feddit.online 1 points 1 day ago

Meeting people IRL to talk about stuff is basically the only real solution.

Outside of that, you'd need to be the admin of your own forum where you manually give out credentials to people you trust to have them. Even then, someone might be a lair and spam anyway, or their account might get hacked, or there's a backdoor, or something else.