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Comment by amatecha | Hacker News Reader

Every centralized "open to everyone" social media platform, yes. No "trends" on Mastodon though, so you don't have to worry about this BS on there, and blocking instances that allow bots/spam is easy. :)

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Simple solution -- dont get your news from places that let anyone post. https://blog.nillium.com/fighting-misinformation-online/

It's not so simple though. Because even trusted curators and media organizations still feel obligated on some level to maximize engagement. To compete with social media, they often end up promoting and peddling similarly terrifying, pessimistic, and "engaging" content.

If anyone can post, you can see all the possible opinions. On sites with moderated content, you see only one sided opinions.

Whoever downvotes this (??): Am I wrong? You think Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, VK, Tumblr, LinkedIn etc. are not having their algorithms/feeds exploited by bot-posted content? Even the most cursory search on the web reveals countless reports.

Here are just a couple:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/19/social-me...

https://internetofbusiness.com/propaganda-bots-social-media-...

https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/06/24/how-fake-accounts-con...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2020/08/0...

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Decentralization is effective at limiting the effectiveness of misinformation. It's more difficult to impersonate a legitimate user in a smaller community.

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