As bots and sponsored content crowd the internet, Reddit is often seen as a more reliable source of information, and its popularity has exploded in the past couple of years.
Lmfao reading articles like this makes me feel like I’m living in the upside down. The entire site is bots posting content for bots to updoot and comment. Yet here they are getting glazed as “the last site for authentic connection”. Give me a fucking break.
I mean, before LLMs there were people trying to do the mass influence thing… but the only entities that could be effective were the ones that could hire a few hundred people to shitpost in the same direction.
Now any nerd with a graphics card and a python interpreter can operate hundreds of accounts. Large operations are probably creating multiple synthetic high ‘subscriber’ subreddits or buying mod accounts on large subreddits.
russian troll farms can just create large amounts of bot accounts, have them comment and then it either gets deleted or ban, rinse and repeat. since t hey can change thier IP, or device anyways, you cant really stop a troll farm, they are probably using the same methods as the of and link farming accounts to hide thier accounts from being tied altogether, but they dont care about warming up the accounts. just post -delete or ban account repeat again.
I keep telling them about the Fediverse. I’m certain that because there’s more people on Reddit, they have a higher shot of engagement and attention. So they stick around.
I’d go even further back, with hindsight. During the us elections 2016 it became basically transparent the platform was being manipulated, and it wasn’t very sophisticated at that time. It’s really only evolved since then - but there used to be real people to call out the BS.
All before we even get to the corporate fiefdom spez has decided he’d like reddit to be.
Remember in 2013 when reddit made a blog post about reddit meetup day with some statistics and they accidentally left in Eglin Air Force Base as the “most addicted city?”
Of course, can’t have the plebs knowing that the site is manipulated by the US military, so they hid the truth, but archive.org remembers.
It’s just as likely there’s no conspiracy there. It’s reasonable that Reddit was just big at that one particular place, more than other place (per capita), which can make sense given that those people actually talk to each other more than a typical city would.
I do think the US government was pretty good about not propagandizing its own people from within the government. There was a long period of time where non-partisan roles were expected to remain non-partisan. That’s part of why the Biden admin didn’t go after Trump like they should have. They didn’t even want the potential appearance of partisan government. In hindsight, yeah, that may have been foolish. They were fighting a five alarm fire with dollar store plastic squirt guns.
2016 is when russian troll farms started to realize reddit was ripe for the taking, started taking off in 2017, and by 2018, political based bans were in fact, even misconstrued posts. plus r/conspiracy was started to be taking over by conservatives. after reddit banned many “donald trump” subs they went looking for next best one to take over.
also the same time i was calling out ragebaiting around the same time articles.
At least from particular subs, those users would get banned and their comment removed within seconds. 24/7. The response times is what convinced me it wasn’t just volunteer mods handling that.
I noticed that r/technology bans some keywords, like if your comment says “PieFed” and you try to open it Incognito/Private then it won’t show up, I have to say “Pie-Fed (without the hyphen)”
I think they also ban some mentions of Lemmy instances but I forget which ones, maybe lemmy.world
Reddit was like Lemmy at one point, a little gem of a website that you only knew about if you participated in online culture (which, before smartphones was not a lot of people). Then the masses learn about it and it gets destroyed because the system that made it good can’t scale to hundreds of millions of people.
So, now people ‘in the know’ move to the niche alternative. As the Fediverse continues to develop and gain users it will eventually undergo a similar phase transition when the population gets too high. You can already see it in popular communities on large instances, it’s nearly indistinguishable from Reddit’s comment section.
Smaller communities where you can actually recognize people from other conversations are better, in my experience, and even the current Lemmy population satisfies my need to scroll random content and I don’t have to suffer through the advertisements and political outrage content being inserted into everything.
50% are bots, the rest are just on the verged of getting banned, or responding to misinformation/disinformation.polotics to keep the site going. eliminating actual users like us, seems to have a effect on reddit as of recently, no ORGANIC posts anymore.
It’s INSANE. The bot flooding started to become notably - and noticeably - bad around the time the API exodus happened. And it’s only accelerated. And most people seem to just be pretending it’s not even happening.
Which is my implied point. I started coming across services offering LLM posts designed to push grassroots engagement on Reddit around the same time too - pretty obvious writing on the wall
i always like to tell people to look up something they’re really an expert at on these sites (or any kind of “news”/ad-mill shit, notice how wrong they are on the entire thing…then see if they put 2 and 2 together with regards to all the shit they’re not experts on.
anything remotely mainstream and not behind a paywall is just ads and spin
there are 3 types of bots, propaganda bots, OF bots, and link farming bots. the prop ones are the trouble some, reddit has been going after the other 2 since the ban waves occured.
Lmfao reading articles like this makes me feel like I’m living in the upside down. The entire site is bots posting content for bots to updoot and comment. Yet here they are getting glazed as “the last site for authentic connection”. Give me a fucking break.
They’re about a decade and a half out of date.
I mean, before LLMs there were people trying to do the mass influence thing… but the only entities that could be effective were the ones that could hire a few hundred people to shitpost in the same direction.
Now any nerd with a graphics card and a python interpreter can operate hundreds of accounts. Large operations are probably creating multiple synthetic high ‘subscriber’ subreddits or buying mod accounts on large subreddits.
russian troll farms can just create large amounts of bot accounts, have them comment and then it either gets deleted or ban, rinse and repeat. since t hey can change thier IP, or device anyways, you cant really stop a troll farm, they are probably using the same methods as the of and link farming accounts to hide thier accounts from being tied altogether, but they dont care about warming up the accounts. just post -delete or ban account repeat again.
It’s Forbes. One does not have high standards for Forbes content… They seem to write what they are told, not look very deep into issues.
https://andreazurini-it.medium.com/forbes-covers-and-scandals-a-match-made-in-capitalist-heaven-59dae8d2a5b3
In the same article posted on Reddit one of the top posts is “BuT WhEn ReDdiT aLtErNaTiVe”? Who gonna tell them?
Anyway Reddit was cool up to 5 years ago. Now it’s either bots, AI slop, Trump stuff or furries/hentai stuff.
Reddit’s dead.
I keep telling them about the Fediverse. I’m certain that because there’s more people on Reddit, they have a higher shot of engagement and attention. So they stick around.
I’d go even further back, with hindsight. During the us elections 2016 it became basically transparent the platform was being manipulated, and it wasn’t very sophisticated at that time. It’s really only evolved since then - but there used to be real people to call out the BS.
All before we even get to the corporate fiefdom spez has decided he’d like reddit to be.
Remember in 2013 when reddit made a blog post about reddit meetup day with some statistics and they accidentally left in Eglin Air Force Base as the “most addicted city?”
Of course, can’t have the plebs knowing that the site is manipulated by the US military, so they hid the truth, but archive.org remembers.
It’s just as likely there’s no conspiracy there. It’s reasonable that Reddit was just big at that one particular place, more than other place (per capita), which can make sense given that those people actually talk to each other more than a typical city would.
I do think the US government was pretty good about not propagandizing its own people from within the government. There was a long period of time where non-partisan roles were expected to remain non-partisan. That’s part of why the Biden admin didn’t go after Trump like they should have. They didn’t even want the potential appearance of partisan government. In hindsight, yeah, that may have been foolish. They were fighting a five alarm fire with dollar store plastic squirt guns.
Addicted to what? Reddit?
2016 is when russian troll farms started to realize reddit was ripe for the taking, started taking off in 2017, and by 2018, political based bans were in fact, even misconstrued posts. plus r/conspiracy was started to be taking over by conservatives. after reddit banned many “donald trump” subs they went looking for next best one to take over.
also the same time i was calling out ragebaiting around the same time articles.
At least from particular subs, those users would get banned and their comment removed within seconds. 24/7. The response times is what convinced me it wasn’t just volunteer mods handling that.
There have basically always been automods of varying capabilities and complexity. Without those no sub ever would have enough moderation capability.
This wasn’t automod.
recently its done by REDDIT;s AI, removing comments or post automatically , not even the mods knew it happened.
I noticed that r/technology bans some keywords, like if your comment says “PieFed” and you try to open it Incognito/Private then it won’t show up, I have to say “Pie-Fed (without the hyphen)”
I think they also ban some mentions of Lemmy instances but I forget which ones, maybe lemmy.world
This is always the cycle.
Reddit was like Lemmy at one point, a little gem of a website that you only knew about if you participated in online culture (which, before smartphones was not a lot of people). Then the masses learn about it and it gets destroyed because the system that made it good can’t scale to hundreds of millions of people.
So, now people ‘in the know’ move to the niche alternative. As the Fediverse continues to develop and gain users it will eventually undergo a similar phase transition when the population gets too high. You can already see it in popular communities on large instances, it’s nearly indistinguishable from Reddit’s comment section.
I think the Fediverse has the ability to branch out and grow in a more healthy way, but it’s yet to be seen
Im hoping this. I hope people learned and choose the better option instead of showboating for internet points. There’s other places to do that.
its too small a nd scattered to grow like reddit, i dont think it will reach the same as reddit anytime soon.
That’s fine with me.
Smaller communities where you can actually recognize people from other conversations are better, in my experience, and even the current Lemmy population satisfies my need to scroll random content and I don’t have to suffer through the advertisements and political outrage content being inserted into everything.
Agreed! 🙂
50% are bots, the rest are just on the verged of getting banned, or responding to misinformation/disinformation.polotics to keep the site going. eliminating actual users like us, seems to have a effect on reddit as of recently, no ORGANIC posts anymore.
Voat exodus imminent
It’s INSANE. The bot flooding started to become notably - and noticeably - bad around the time the API exodus happened. And it’s only accelerated. And most people seem to just be pretending it’s not even happening.
The most prolific posters left and/or came here.
I used to comment 20+ times a day and was always looking for the best time to post my OC to get the most traction.
13 year account. Gone.
Couldn’t give 2 shits, Lemmy is way better.
shittymorph when
I heard r/lemmee was shut down funny as how threatened they feel.
Well, the humans anyway.
thats when AI’s started to make thier appearance around the same time.
Which is my implied point. I started coming across services offering LLM posts designed to push grassroots engagement on Reddit around the same time too - pretty obvious writing on the wall
i always like to tell people to look up something they’re really an expert at on these sites (or any kind of “news”/ad-mill shit, notice how wrong they are on the entire thing…then see if they put 2 and 2 together with regards to all the shit they’re not experts on.
anything remotely mainstream and not behind a paywall is just ads and spin
Maybe the article was written by a bot.
Almost certainly. The future is a line of megaphones screaming “It’s never been better!” on autopilot while the world burns
happy studio ghibli AI characters dancing on a projector on a scorched earth with no living creatures and no oxygen
To be fair, it probably looks a lot more human than all the microblogging socialmedias that are stuffed to the brim
You raise a good point.
Dammit.
there are 3 types of bots, propaganda bots, OF bots, and link farming bots. the prop ones are the trouble some, reddit has been going after the other 2 since the ban waves occured.
Lmao what a joke. Glad I left that cesspool when I did.