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AI bots “Timmy,” “Ren,” and “Jackie” are flooding social media with slop: They ask for permission to create accounts … and provide a thank you for running Mastodon (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 days ago by eicker@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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[-] daychilde@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Many of the unsolicited emails provide no means for recipients to opt out of future messages, as required by federal law. Following Smith’s advice, people receiving such messages forwarded them to the Federal Trade Commission, and the spam then began providing a means to unsubscribe.

Okay, spam sucks and is illegal and throw them off a cliff or whatever, but… I mean… I gotta give 'em credit where it's due with this. lol

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago

Since when do you deserve credit for following the law?

[-] daychilde@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Compared to all the ones not following the law? Assuming the unsub works (which I suspect might not), I'll give 'em credit for that, of course.

You should always give credit to someone doing better than most of the others.

If you found one murderer who used helium bags to kill, and all the others were using fire and dull knives, I'd hope you'd give the helium killer a gentler death than those other fucks.

So don't think I'm saying the spammers shouldn't face justice for breaking the law, but if they do actually honor the unsub requests… that makes things a lot nicer than if they didn't.

Hell, I have legit companies that I haven't done business with in years that send occasional 'Our terms have changed!" with no opt-out and it makes me want to break out the fire and dull knives. ;-)