Botfarms.

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 21:08:40 -0400 last edited: Mon, 01 Sep 2025 17:58:35 -0400 from ArrCay

Here's just another reason why we shouldn't be using these so-called 'free' platforms that willingly allow fake/bot accounts [which they do because more accounts (even fakes) = more ad revenue].

The couple vids about botfarms that I've seen posted elsewhere were from one of the bigtechs which I refuse to link to - I even block access to utube from my own network so unless it's embedded and replayed through some other server I won't even see utube videos, just the could not connect error in a little window. Anyway, I couldn't find a similar vid from a quick PeerTube search, so this one is from Rumble. I'll have to add the embed code for Rumble videos to be watched directly here, til then it'll redirect to Rumble's site to watch.
Botfarms that inject their influence upon an unsuspecting Public is Rising to catastrophic levels...

Botfarms that inject their influence upon an unsuspecting Public is Rising to catastrophic levels...

It's been possible for everyone to have their own platform and connect with each other as if they were all on the same huge platform for at least a decade now.

Of course not everyone has the tech skills or time/desire to run their own social media server, but the technology is available, over a dozen such softwares have been in use for years, and most communities (small business, church, etc.) have at least someone capable of being the admin/managing a website such as this one, if not actually hosting their own server to run it on.

Which they should be doing anyway rather than pointing everyone to a dozen different bigtech social accounts, where some poor soul has to deal with managing all that insane copy/paste-a-salad nonsense. That poor soul is most likely tech savvy enough to Admin this software - that part is really not all that complicated. Even if they don't have someone for the more complicated backend server stuff and hosting there's always someone like me. And in such a case they should be using someone like me for their website/domain anyway, instead of paying godaddy, wix, amazon, whatever other bigtech (or, God forbid, using one of their "free" options). It's time to bring "Buy Local" [back?] to 'cloud' and other IT services.

If a small business, church or any other sort of social group is going to have a website and a "social media presence", why not incorporate their own social media platform into their website?

Other than the million or so (mostly censor-happy loonie leftists) that went from Twitter to Mastodon (Twitter-Mastodon liberals, political theories, and Cluster B pandemic), it seems everyone is stuck believing that the bigtech exclusive/closed-off model with a different account to connect to every different platform is just the way it is. The whole "but everyone's on Fecesbook..." or this/that platform line of thinking; so it doesn't matter what the benefits are, that there are better technical features, or the fact that decentralized platforms (like ArrCay here) can connect with each other while the bigtechmegacorp platforms are all isolated monoliths, etc.

One of those better technical features that exists on this platform (and currently only a few others) is Nomadic Identity. Which means I can clone and/or move my channel to any other platform/server running the same/similar software. The 'identity' of this channel (profile) is not permanently bound to an account on ArrCay.com. It so happens this channel was created on another server before the arrcay.com domain existed. It was cloned to arrcay.com and it still exists on the original server which I now use for testing software updates/new features. As seen in the screenshot below from the "Manage Locations" settings page, the addresses are different. However it's the same channel - the content, connections, permissions, etc. will be the same.

Well, it looks like I have a duplicate entry issue there - thought I had fixed that...
This feature would be like having your various bigtech accounts all linked and mirrored - where logging into one and creating a post shows up on all of them. Of course it's not necessary to have an ArrCay channel cloned to multiple servers/platforms in order to communicate with others on those servers/platforms. The cloning feature can be useful as a censorship/cancel protection or backup. Though the primary benefit is the ability to change the 'home' server where your channel 'lives'. Every bigtech modeled social media account is stuck on whichever platform it's on - you can't take it to any other one, you have to start from scratch, making connections, copy/paste or create new content/posts, etc. Whereas, an account at ArrCay provides a portable identity (channel) that is truly yours - it (along with content/connections/etc.) can be moved to another compatible public server, your company's or even your own personal server at will.

Gab and Truth social (both built on Mastodon) are actually capable of connecting to each other (and thousands of other servers), but they have disabled that feature in favor of the old bigtech model of social media platforms. Technically, I should be able to connect to either one of those platforms from my own account on my own platform (which is not Mastodon-based BTW) and not need to use a separate account on their platforms.

Back to botfarms... I have no tolerance for bot accounts. ArrCay here is up to ~200 registration attempts by bots/fakes per week that slip past my known scam/spam ip and email addr blacklists. Most of these are using some gmail or yahoo email address. If there weren't so many people that still use such bigtechs as their primary email I'd just block them all. Come to think of it, that may not be such a bad idea really - restrict registration to only email addresses on providers which don't allow fake/bot/scam or compromised/hacked email accounts to remain on their servers. Hmmm... I just might consider blocking gmail, yahoo, aol... IDK. This is a valid option for certain groups with their own domains to leave the registration open yet restricted to only those with an email address in that domain (or group of domains).

It's really not all that difficult to keep bot/scam/spam/fake accounts off a platform - doing so just goes against the "free"-for-all ad-revenue model of bigtech and similar platforms. Using blacklists and requiring admin approval (human intelligence) of new accounts takes care of preventing almost all bot/fake accounts. The only ones that might make it through to getting an account registered would be using a process as the girl in the video describes - a real person posing as a valid average real user. Though if such an account were created, it likely would not survive very long. The bot accounts will rarely, if ever, spend much time making intelligent 'poser' content. PSA: RE: "Please rate my work" posts Another problem that bots would encounter on a permissions-based platform like ArrCay here specifically is that the stalker/stalking (aka follower/following) model is not the default and users can choose whether to approve or deny connections, who can make comments on their posts, etc. They kinda rely on that model to fake legitimacy.

One way of eliminating the existence of fake accounts would be to require a payment/subscription. It's not a complete guarantee, but pretty close since there aren't many that would be willing to go that far to create fake/bot accounts. Though I'm sure there probably are some of the more determined, well funded botfarm ops that will pay for a subscription to be 'verified' on X or others.

Since ArrCay is open to public registration there are subscription tiers in addition to the free tier, similar to X. If I removed the free tier/open registration option and changed the registration process to require a payment for all registrations that would basically take care of all fake registration attempts.

Another way to virtually eliminate the bot problem is make registration by 'invitation only'. Most servers run for a particular community (SMB, Church, Non-profit org, family group, etc.) are likely to use a closed registration method such as this.

Point being that the botfarms depend on the "free"-for-all bigtech model - and the bigtechs depend on the botfarms. Well... at the very least, they tolerate them because it inflates userbase numbers and generally results in increased 'engagement' which both equal more ad revenue. The bigtechs typically also have their own bots, as I elude to in Why the legacy social media model of bigtech is destined for the dumpster, for various purposes which more often now includes soliciting free AI training data - How you can fix AI problems

Stats show an average of ~1 billion fake accounts that Fecesbook removes every year. Actually they've removed over 1 billion within certain 6 month periods. That's easily 30-50% of the accounts on the platform. The average claim of platforms is that ~10% or less of their accounts are fakes. It's safe to say that their reported claims are generally understated since the motivation is to not lose advertising dollars. So there is likely a process of mass removal of fake accounts, create the report, let the fake/spam/scam/bots create new accounts and resume doing their thing, record inflated advert impression stats, ad infinitum. The real percentage of fake accounts is much higher on average than some measly 10%.

So the solution to botfarm influence, being used for AI training, etc.??

The same things I've said for years:

stop using bigtechs for everything/anything
self-host as much as possible
use local independents or small businesses for any IT support, 'cloud' or other tech resources that aren't in-house
use decentralized social media platforms

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