this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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Asklemmy
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Yes, there're definitely bots. If Lemmy is "full of" them off harder to tell and more subjective, but I'd say no. It's more of an issue in the larger communities, less so in niche communities. There's fundamentally no solution to this, regardless of the platform.
I know on some fedi platforms there is software that will auto-track if a user is a bot or not.
EX: https://piefed.social/u/circuitai@lemmy.world is banned already on my home instance.
Users can be explicit and identify their account as a bot. Which is for the good of everyone (auto-tagging bot for example)
The community can also tag a user as a bot and it will show up as an icon. The can get it removed but theres usually a process.
I know theres at least one instance where they have some sort of algorithm set up to help detection.
I know piefed has some of the above if I recall. Different fedi platforms have different ways of combating it. Its interesting...because if a bot owner wants to be successful they have to try combating multiple ways of dealing with filters/algorithms like the above.
Its kinda like the Linux community and viruses. Sure viruses CAN run on linux...its just VERY hard to do so without market share, multiple iterations of the kernel/software, and overall more eyes on the source code. I can go in right now and improve piefed for example and have something out in a week(?)s time.
Overall, its not impossible for bots to come to the fediverse, its just much harder to stay undetected and filtered out if your using niche platforms.
Maybe Captchas could help against automated calls or something?
Bots can solve captchas more accurately and more efficiently than humans. For example, I use the browser extension Captcha Buster to solve Google Captchas for me. Nowadays websites instead use proof-of-work "captchas", which require the visitors' devices to solve cryptographic challenges (similar to bitcoin mining). This is why they sometimes takes a few seconds to complete (even more on low end smartphone / battery saving mode). But even those only slow down, not prevent bot access.
Yup short of some insane surveillance of all users, there's just no way to prevent bots. So the only action we can take is stay vigilant and report any bot activities and clean up as much as we can.
As a human being, I failed at most Captchas (blurry images with bikes, buses...)