A reminder to #ActivityPub developers and advocates: applications for the NLNet Open Social Fund close on June 1st (#BrookeVibberDay) at noon CEST.

A reminder to #ActivityPub developers and advocates: applications for the NLNet Open Social Fund close on June 1st (#BrookeVibberDay) at noon CEST. You should apply; you are doing important work and we need you to keep doing it.

NLnet; Open Social Fund

(nlnet.nl)

@simon ??

@evan Interesting. I'm no coder, but I am a very longstanding citizen activist countering russian psyop since 2014. I've recently discovred a flaw in how the newest weaponized LLM synthetic communities are being run that shows very strong promise of detecting these indistinguishable from human false consensus networks. Would that qualify? I'd need to team up a competent code cowboy. Ref: https://stratcomcoe.org/publications/beyond-spam-bots-the-rise-of-ai-powered-disinformation-machines-and-the-imperative-for-strategic-response/342

@evan I've noticed since i've been back that there seems to be a lot of these synthetic persona groups active on this platform. It's very clear that Russian operations are taking advantage of your decentralized nature to inject weaponized LLM agent teams extensively. Hopefully you'll see this soon and respond so if given an affirmative i'll have time to write up and detail a proposal.

@Beggarmidas you seem to be correct! See here:

Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services

Since 15 September (2025), IFTAS has been tracking a coordinated network of inauthentic accounts operating across Mastodon. These accounts are engaged in a high-volume propaganda campaign, promoting pro-Russian narratives and linking to Telegram channels associated with known state-aligned disinformation operations. We became aware of a related investigation by the Antibot4Navalny research team that observed these…

IFTAS (about.iftas.org)

I don't think they close it on Brooke Vibber Day on purpose. I was just reading the Brooke Vibber Day Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia:Brooke Vibber Day - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

@evan Voice of experience. lol
Like I said i've been doing this for a verry long time. You just kind of pick up a nose for it. The validation is nice though. But back on point these new synthetic agent groups are just the worst. They've jailbroke & weaponized LLM's. Once deployed they require very little human input. They find vulnerable populations, build bespoke synthetic identity clusters custom designed to exploit them, and basically wind them up until they pop. Self correcting all the way.

@Beggarmidas oh, that's interesting. I thought they were more random and general; didn't realize they targeted particular populations.

@evan BUT all hope is not yet lost. JUST yesterday I found an Achilles heel for identifying them. Not even kidding. Was up half the night sandboxing my hypothesis with half a dozen LLM's. Early results are very promising. I'm more of a field operator than analyst though. I do everything by FAFO adversarial testing & feedback, I don't make graphs, i'm not an academic. I'm a hunter & tracker.

@evan yeah. I thought i provided a link. Heres the latest strategic analysis. https://stratcomcoe.org/publications/beyond-spam-bots-the-rise-of-ai-powered-disinformation-machines-and-the-imperative-for-strategic-response/342

@evan GIve that a close read. They do a very thorough breakdown of details. This has got NATO Latvian cybercommand spooked as hell. So you know it's set to get bad doublequick. Latvians are the point of the spear for counteroperations, and they've got nothing on deck to counter this. They're not the kinda folks who spook easy either. They're seasoned salty operators that have weathered everything Moscow has thrown at them since 2006. If THEY'RE worried, WE should be worried.

@evan So, uh, does a means of detecting these synthetic agent clusters qualify for this NLNet thing? Doesn't leave me much time to write up a proposal. Prolly have to my Aye write the better part of it then personally proofread it. The vulnerability in the agent teams reduces to a set of inappropriate responses that, at least according to the sandboxing I did last night can be agnostically determined. We can train an engine to spot them. Has much wider impact than just this platform. WORLD wider

@Beggarmidas I don't know! I don't work for NLNet. I think the application is pretty short -- but you need a budget and a schedule. I'd say go for it!

@evan Can you guide me at all? I'm a 55 year old redneck. I know i'm well spoken but i'm not a techie in any usual sense. What i've got is important I suspect. I don't want to get dismissed over some faux pas or proceedural goof. What do you recommend?

@Beggarmidas It's a really easy form, I promise! Don't worry about the technicalities; you've got this.