this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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I dont have any direct experience with reddit any longer.
What I can say, is that I think a verrrrrrry significant portion of comments and commenters are actually reddit run bots. My source for this is my experience in the daily thread of a certain degenerate gambling forum. There were maybe like 12-30 posters who would reply, engage, etc... in the daily and day after threads. However, there was a yyyyyuuuuugggge number of accounts that would just comment with no real further engagement. Like you would respond to them, but they wouldnt respond back.
I truly believe that reddits internal business model is predicted on the use of reddit run bots to create synthetic engagement in certain audiences around marketing targets that a selective group of advertisers (read, not buying reddit ads) are given access to. The basics is that reddit astroturfs synthetic engagement until organic engagement takes over. I have no way of proving this and its pure speculation.
This is why I don't even worry about considering the user numbers on lemmy. Relying on my anectdotal experience, we've got about the usership/ engagement numbers from around the 2009-2011 time period, which is actually pretty amazing. Also, the overall lemmy experience is far superior, for example, just the ability to sort by a couple of different 'hot' options is a major improvement. I really think if the devs just keep vibing on their plan, lemmy will be more than strong enough to survive and continue for decades to come.
The fact is that reddit stole from us our faith in a 'good internet'. The users of reddit built reddit, not the company that owns it (they suck). The users of reddit paid for the server time and made the system work. That good faith was utterly exploited by the leadership of reddit and we should never forget how they stole from and exploited their community.
It's not just speculation on your part.
How it started:
https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/
How it's going:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/13p889x/reddit_admins_were_just_caught_using_bots_or_fake/
They also started handing out usernames to companies over "trademark infringement." Someone with the username "FoodNetwork" is losing the username to the real Food Network.
I was on reddit long enough to remember how people used to run corporate stooges out with pitchforks.
"These are fan run forums," they would say. The idea that you could have your username taken by a corporation was unheard of, because originally, it was considered really bad form to have anyone from the business running the subreddit, because then it wouldn't be a neutral source of information.
Nope, now they can steal usernames and it's totes okay for subreddits to be completely controlled by their corporate namesake.
Pretty sure corporations running their own subreddits has been.a thing for awhile now. Fairly certain Costco's subreddit is fully modded by their advertising department. Threads written by employees during COVID were getting nuked constantly.
Reading what happened to the german subs, that also happened with newly created spanish subs, many got thousands of subscribers but no engagement, only one or two comments per thread and little content but a lot of subscribers.
You're absolutely right about most of it. My only criticism is the first paragraph as I am notorious for just commenting and not responding. Literally if you reply I won't respond lol but I can't imagine I'm the only one. A better way to sniff them out would be profiling them and finding things like hobby subs where they would be significantly more likely to comment vs addiction subs where they may feel some shame in interacting or engaging in their addiction.
I'm pretty stupid so I could be talking out my ass but I figured input for data collection and such.
That's what caught my eye too. I rarely, if ever, respond to someone who's responded to a comment I've made, especially if they're arguing or trying to correct me. And that's if I've even bothered to go back and check it.
Not that you'll ever see my reply to your comment...
I am not saying you are wrong, but when I was active on Reddit I rarely checked my mail. I still have like 12k unread messages.
That's quite a weird way to use...any account.
You'd be surprised. Lots of people live like this, with all their devices and accounts. Ever piling up never read messages, whether emails, texts, or DMs. I don't know if they're just fine with it or if its something psychological making that many messages seem to big to approach, or because they don't want to hear everyone's cruel responses to what they said or I don't know. But people do use accounts like that, for sure.
It makes more sense if it's something like email, where you likely know most of it is junk mail advertisements.
But how can people not be curious why they have several unread messages where it's very likely they are responses from humans who specifically responded to things they said?
It's pretty simple:
Because a lot of those comments will be filled with abuse, and some will be garbage not worth reading.
After a certain point, you get tired of opening the inbox and sorting through it.
What makes you think there isn't just as much junk in your comment replies inbox? Not advertising, but just overall junk.
You'd stop checking your email, too, if there wasn't a spam filter. Well, comment replies don't have a filter for quality or tone or politeness. People get tired of reading trash.
I don't read my inbox. Instead I use the same strategy I developed long ago on the forums of old: I check in later to see the responses to certain comments. After the karma system has hopefully moved the shitty or worthless ones down, and I only check the comments where I genuinely care what the responses will be.
I've been around the Internet for a long time, just over 30 years now. That curiosity is long dead. I've seen enough and participated in enough discussions to have a fair idea what the replies to most things will be like on the whole. Some of them I'm interested, some of them, meh
You're saying all this like I haven't been on the Internet long. I'm over the two decade mark myself. I base my question on this fact actually.
My experience with the Internet all these years...
I'm still waiting for @[email protected]'s response..
Yo you might've dropped this, King 👑. This post is the best way of putting into words my thoughts on the matter that I'm too smoothbrained to formulate into creation. Especially the last paragraph, the theft of "good Internet". Fuckin A, m8