(Meta) What's up with the recent influx of posts here and on nostupidquestions asking borderline insane questions as if written by people who have never encountered another human before?
I don’t mean this in a rude way. Feels like the past week or so has had some bizarre questions asked.
Just like to say that I really appreciate you apologizing and checking your tone, though I thought it was fine! :) the Lemmyverse needs more kind people like you
I think the questions are from bots, testing topics to farm controversy or outrage points. The greater the number of replies, the more likely the topic will be used in a future marketing or agit-prop campaign.
So you get these really stupid, controversial, psychopathic takes that no one should be taking seriously. The point of the exercise is the emotional reaction, the outrage, not getting a serious answer.
I don't know whether to be flattered that they consider Lemmy a serious enough platform to farm responses or be pissed that they have infected Lemmy like they did with sites like Reddit.
Definitely the pissed one. It costs next to nothing to farm any particular platform via bots, so why not go for anything that might have niche demographics? Destabalizing leftist groups seems to be sort of a goal of certain other groups these days so..
That’s the user that keeps asking why their friends don’t like them when they only respond with one worders or all caps, right? Yes, that is one of the users I was referring to, lol
I’ve noticed it too. I came here because Reddit has become increasingly toxic, with bots of outrage and division thriving there. I really hope Lemmy doesn’t follow the same path, but I suspect efforts will be made to make alternatives to controlled media even more toxic. I’m not sure what the best strategies are to counter this kind of malevolence.
I blocked NSQ because a bot is a mod. I don't see anything particularly odd here. It just seems like people asking general random stuff like real people