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New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion (medium.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Cross posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9762996

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Well, the article (at least in the free part.. I'm not making an account just to fact check this site) mentions two studies right off the bat and claims that they shed light on the impact of corporate trolls on Reddit.

"Two significant studies, the Pew Research Center study conducted in 2018 and the Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020, have shed light on the prevalence and impact of corporate trolls on Reddit."

If you look up these studies, the Pew Research Center has a survey they conduct and although the article claims they interviewed 2500 americans who use reddit the actual study had only 2,002 adults. It was also a study about what sites they used. It had nothing to do with Reddit. In fact, if you switch over to the Detailed Table, Reddit wasn't even mentioned as a response. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/03/01/social-media-use-2018-methodology/

I could not find a "Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020" that matched the article's description. I did find a study published by them in 2020 about selfies and body image and especially snapchat. Once again, no reddit. But I can't say I found the article mentioned.

Then again, I can't say the articles mentioned exist at all. ChatGPT almost certainly hallucinated this.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Time to add medium.com to the trash list

[–] [email protected] 64 points 11 months ago (1 children)

medium.com is a blogging site, not entirely unlike Blogger or Wordpress.

Treat it with as much of a pinch of salt as you would any other blogging site.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I’m surprised there’s still people that don’t know what medium is tbh

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Yup, just because it's easy to style to look professional doesn't mean it isn't just the same as a longer reddit comment

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

A study on astroturfing on Reddit, written in the style of Reddit by an astroturfer - oh the delicious irony? :-P