The ebike subreddit is modded by the owners of Lunacycle. They actively remove posts about bad customer service/other issues from Lunacycle. I witnessed them name and shame some random redditor and accuse them of fraud because they posted screenshots of email correspondence that pointed out shady dealings on Luna’s part.
They use the general subreddit for electric bikes to funnel everyone into ordering from them.
during the massive purge of rebellious mods, there was a huge opening for corporate shills to move into places where previous mods had kept them out. this phenomenon was widespread in many fan and specialty subs. Reddit admins were more than happy to let this happen, as corporate shills were also more than happy to be cooperative with Reddit admins.
Everything about Reddit’s most recent changes has been openly about cracking the place wide open for corporate marketing. Everything good about it was because of how genuine it was, and it was genuine because for a very long time, the attitude was to shield it against corporate influence.
That’s the only reason it became such a valuable place for search results: as the forums and blogs around the Internet went silent and corporations ravaged individual websites, reddit was a bubble of genuine interaction. It’s not just Google’s shitty algorithm, it’s also because the Internet itself got injected with shit, and reddit was a safe haven. A deeply flawed one, but still, notably less fake and corporate than the web pages around it.
That’s what gave it value.
Spez knows this. The admins have known this the whole damn time. That’s why there used to be rules against self-posting content. That’s why celebrities were only allowed to promote things in AMAS. To head off attention seeking, marketing, and corporate influence.
But the time came to make money, and they’re burning it all down to accomplish that.
I will never not share this blog because it hits the nail so cleanly on the head it sails straight down to the core of the earth:
Stop talking to each other and start buying things
The death of social media is when someone tries to start making money off it at the expense of its genuine human interaction, which can not exist in that environment unmolested, and will cascade into the platform’s collapse over time. it’s enshitification, yes, but it’s also something else: “dehumanation”. The drowning of the human element of your social platform through profit seeking.
I’ve been through too many exodus, this post hits hard and true. Been using the net since 95 and have been a community refuge too many times. I’m really hoping federation takes off because I’m tired of rebuilding. Not sure I’ll try again if this doesn’t pan out.
Hate to break it to you but it will likely happen again. Meta is already encroaching on our new corner of the web, they’ll either eat it or it’ll die out on its own as funding doesn’t really exist here
Informational tragedy. Really is.
This hurts us as consumers, patients, thinkers, feelers. :(
I’m calling 1 year on the over/under for the introduction of blue check marks.
You mean Reddit gold check marks
You mean narwhal bacon badges.
I’m not used to seeing this with so many pixels.
I find it has a nice understated impact
And they said the bears were the ones posting obnoxious huge images!
Member-only story
Medium wants me to pay them to read a story from “Homeless Romantic” who is listed as a “Ph.D. Rocket Surgeon & Aspiring Troglodyte”?
Are they fucking high?
well, whomever describes themselves in such a manner clearly is.
It’s been a wonder that site ever got traction as something credible to get info from and not just a weird mesh of editorial, blogging, and long winded shitposts…
edit: That being said, fuck reddit.
I’ve always seen it as a site for random people to shitpost. Who takes Medium seriously as a credible source?
Are they fucking high?>
Yeah, probably
Is all bad online behavior “trolling” now? Isn’t “shill” a better word for someone who is paid to surreptitiously promote something?
Back in my day trolling meant something. It meant you cared enough to actually form a real argument that withstands scrutiny, just to setup for the rug pull. The better your polemic, the more engagement as people debated if you were for real or not.
Shitposting controversial hot takes or dog whistle memes is mid af, do better
From my understanding trolling meant exactly what it says it is: Trolling. I think people for some reason get this mixed up with trolls - as in the fantasy type monster. But I think it actually has to do with the fishing termtrolling where you cast out your line, and see if you can get somebody to take the bait. Once they take the bait, you take em for a ride.
mid
No, all bad online behavior now is “bots.”
At least that’s how people in the comments on lemmy and Reddit label them.
Not just bad behavior, if anyone disagrees with someone on Reddit now they accuse the other person of being a bot.
Even for opinions you would hear people say in person frequently, the only explanation for seeing it online is “bot” now.
It seems to correlate with the rise in general awareness of LLMs like ChatGPT. It seems like just the threat/possibility of ChatGPT being used has already distorted discourse online.
I always saw it as someone who only repeats talking points verbatim is essentially a robot. If I can’t tell if you are a human posting, or an automated response is there a meaningful difference?
Shut up, bot!
Edit: Shitty typo
He’d probably need a strong sphincter muscle to manage that.
Lol, how did I miss that
Shill is a banned word on reddit still right?
No idea!
it is not “now”. It is exactly as it was being used in 2020, when the article was written, by the mass media. They were calling “troll” everyone they were disagreeing with.
I popped over to Reddit for the first time since third party apps were cruelly shut down. It’s clear that Reddit has sunk to new lows. Obviously trolling and a marked decrease in the quality of content
what I noticed is that posts have huge amounts of upvotes, even from small communities, and often no comments or when it does have comments its often very basic stuff, almost AI like
They aren’t even trying with those usernames, lazy.
Yeah, looks like the default “word_wordnumbers” usernames that reddit gives you if don’t change them.
I wonder if that would be an easy way to detect botting by not filling in that field for them.
Yeah, looks like the default “word_wordnumbers” usernames that reddit gives you if don’t change them.
This change is when I knew Reddit was going down the shitter. Automatically handing out default usernames instead of requiring you to pick your own. The only people that could possibly help are a) people with absolutely no imagination whatsoever, b) bots, and c) people making a dozen alts to puff up their main.
Had no idea they were generating names, joke of a site.
Well, if you’re going to defraud investors by pumping up your numbers before your IPO, you might as well go all out.
Is that recent? I haven’t used Reddit since a few months and that phenomena was previously only on promoted posts (read, ads)
I think it was there for a while, it’s just gone full mask off mode and become particularly noticeable now
The results were alarming, with 15% of the top 100 subreddits found to have content that was likely posted by bots or corporate trolls, specifically aimed at promoting certain companies or organizations.
The study found some (likely) bot/corporate troll content in 15% of the top 100 subreddits. That’s completely different from what the article’s headline claims.
Edit: Also, the “New Study” as the headline calls it is apparently from 2020.
(here’s a link to the article without paywall if you want to read it for yourself)
FYI there is also scribe qnd 12ft.io for medium links
The study found some (likely) bot/corporate troll content in 15% of the top 100 subreddits.
Now I’m surprised it’s that low. Feels like a big part of /r/all is bot posts, with the top comments being from bots too
And a significant part of the remainder are repost bots recycling old popular posts and comments in order to farm karma, which will eventually be sold to OnlyFans spammers, political ops, and corporate shills.
I’ll see the same post on 2 or 3 subs and it will just be something I saw a year or more ago.
Corpreddit.
Lemmy feels very much like the old, old Reddit. When it was mostly IT folk and tech savvy people (talking about 2005-2010).
I think reddit peaked around 2015 or so. A much broader audience had found it. There was interesting content from a lot of people.
Now, it still has a lot of good content. But it is definitely past its peak
Maybe it’ll be good and healthy to start again from fresh, get the old feeling again. We just gotta build up that initial content now to grow the appeal to newcomers
Reddit feels less genuine for sure, than it would have even as far back as 3 years ago. The mod purge probably accelerated things greatly but in general it’s felt like Reddit was going corporate astroturfing route for a while. Real discussions are very sparse compared to the amount of people telling you “to solve problem, buy this expensive thing!”
At this point the only thing Reddit has is a numbers advantage. The videos are no huge loss because at this point since you’re forced to use their (god awful) mobile app they either autoplay obnoxiously or automatically popup obscuring the comments (discussion is 90% of why I go to a forum why make it harder to see comments?).
The desktop experience is still okay but the constant pushing to get you to enable notifications is very irritating.
Man. I zapped all my cookies the other day, and when I re-loaded reddit, it forced me into a new new version of the mobile site.
Now almost every single comment that isn’t top level is hidden behind the ‘more comments’ button. When I click it, the whole page reloads, with the top comment and the one response. And a button for the next reply. And so on.
I’ve noticed since this change, almost no posts have any discussion any more at all. Which honestly. Why would you bother?
Reddit is clearly trying to make its mobile site as user-unfriendly and goddamn terrible as possible to direct people to use the official app instead. There’s no other explanation for a top 10 in the world site
Actually, looking at the rest of the top 10 sites, the only two with good mobile interfaces are the ones without apps: Google and pornhub lol
Just the other day I thought about my old porn account and remembered the password! So I thought I’d check out the official app since I wouldn’t be giving them ad revenue. Holy cow, it really is as terrible as everyone says! The app and the site! Every third post on the scroll is an ad, until you show NSFW posts, then every third post is a random post from a random sub. The three times I’ve been there I get a notification from some random comment on a random sub. And some banana thing that pops up and won’t go away. All of it is so terrible, including the porn. It’s like going back to your hometown and seeing they bulldozed your old school and turned it into a meat rendering plant.
The pop-iver video player is an infuriating choice. I watched the video, scroll down and the fucking thing follows me?! Wtf?! Why?? Am I going to forget that I just watched that video two seconds ago?! Argh!
And people want Meta involved in the Fediverse, like reddit wasn’t bad enough.
If the fediverse gets a lot of traction, this sort of “spam” will be difficult to moderate and every instance will need to have sophisticated systems to prevent it.
It’s okay Meta is totally great at removing spam and fake accounts.
Well, I see your point. All I’m saying is spam is difficult when you are a large target.
Which is why I WANT lemmy to stay “small to medium”
The studies are from 2018 and 2020, “new study” in the post title is a complete lie
Corporate trolls at it again!
This part was written about a study from a 2020 study:
The results were alarming, with 15% of the top 100 subreddits found to have content that was likely posted by bots or corporate trolls, specifically aimed at promoting certain companies or organizations. One of the most concerning findings of the study was that corporate trolls were not only promoting products and services, but they were also strategically leveraging positive news articles to influence public opinion.
IMO, I left at the great exodus and I thought it was at least double that before I left. We are not free from the shills here though. I don’t know how you get around it tbh.
Vigilance and blocking
Vigilance and reporting. Blocking only hides bad actors from you; it doesn’t remove them from the platform.
And defederating from them.
Removed by mod
It is incredibly cheap and easy to artificially bump a post to the top of a decent sized subreddit. I’ve seen it done before and the cost per impression/click puts most advertising to shame. And this was being done unsophisticatedly by some dude and a cheap bot. Now imagine what major corporations can do with all the resources to burn.
The study found that 11% of the respondents had been contacted by a bot or troll attempting to promote a product or service. Even more concerning was the discovery that 13% of the respondents had witnessed a company manipulate public opinion on the platform.
Self reported garbage. Asking a user to self identify manipulation is ripe for abuse.
I have 2 accounts in the top 1% of reddit and neither was contacted for manipulation. Spammed? Oh, sure, ALL the time! But never the whole “Hey… can I buy your account?” kind of way.
The percentage is that low?
the impact those accounts have is much higher than a normal 15% slice of the comments… what they produce is generally non-random, so it’s all going toward whatever set of ideas they need to bombard with bullshit… they intentionally shut down and/or control discussion…
