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sudo42 , in Permabanned over a mistake on reddit, feeling really upset over it.

Got a message saying I was banned from a sub I wasn't even subscribed to and hadn't posted to. I replied to the message telling them to get stuffed. They reported me and got me banned from Reddit for 3 days.

So instead, I banned Reddit and haven't looked back. F-'em.

Veraxus , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

"At least..."

I feel like the 15% number is very, very low.

11111one11111 ,

According to backlink.com there is 265,500,000 active users per week so 15% of those weekly users means there is 39,825,000 corporate whores per week. To have the corporate whores filled with real people you would need the entire population of the following cities to even come close:

New York, NY 8,258,035

Los Angeles, CA 3,820,914

Chicago, IL 2,664,452

Houston, TX 2,314,157

Phoenix, AZ 1,650,070

Philadelphia, PA 1,550,542

San Antonio TX 1,495,295

San Diego, CA 1,388,320

Dallas, TX 1,302,868

Jacksonville, FL 985,843

Austin, TX 979,882

Fort Worth, TX 978,468

San Jose, CA 969,655

Columbus, OH 913,175

Charlotte, NC 911,311

Indianapolis, IN 879,293

San Francisco, CA 808,988

Seattle, WA 755,078

Denver, CO 716,577

Oklahoma City, OK 702,767

Nashville, TN 687,788

Washington, DC 678,972

El Paso, TX 678,958

Las Vegas, NV 660,929

Boston, MA 653,833

Detroit, MI 633,218

Portland, OR 630,498

Louisville, KY 622,981

Memphis, TN 618,639

TooManyGames ,

15% of content can easily come from under 1% of users.

11111one11111 ,

Lol I shit the bed. Totally read 15% of users.

VantaBrandon ,

I have like 30 reddit accounts and I'm just trolling not-for-profit, so... maybe ~1,000,000? Seems legit

11111one11111 ,

Yeah as I stated in the other reply I totally shit the bed and misread/mistook content as users. My b.

Sludgehammer , in Reddit puts AI scrapers on notice
@Sludgehammer@lemmy.world avatar

Reddit has a warning for AI companies and other scrapers: play by our rules pay us for the content our users generated or get blocked

Fixed.

rms1990 , in It's been around a year since a lot of us quit Reddit, myself included. I'm happy with Lemmy, but I still feel a bit lost online since leaving the old site. Discussion?

Werid, I brought up the notion that I don't agree with transgenderism and was permabanned from Reddit admins. I didn't said hate or kill or die or insult them, just don't agree with it.

cumskin_genocide , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

I'm not surprised. I get paid good money to troll online

Bertuccio , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

Why is Medium conflating trolls and shills?

People who are paid propagandists are shills, not trolls.

Mubelotix ,
@Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

Agreed. Trolls don't conceal themselves

UltraGiGaGigantic ,
Mubelotix ,
@Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

You got me. Sometimes revanced not having ads isn't a good thing

AhismaMiasma ,

Nice, glad to see concise and clear counterpoints!

trolololol ,

True. For example I'm here for pleasure not for business.

SOB_Van_Owen , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

My first realization about this problem with reddit came about a decade ago when it became undeniable that shills flooded the discourse the moment Monsanto was mentioned.

Illuminostro ,

Or the NRA. Or Exon/Mobile. Or ..

Nicoleism101 , (edited ) in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

People are literally defenceless vs propaganda. Me too. It takes extraordinary effort to decipher the fake from true and whether the true is a full truth or some small piece on silver platter.

At this point I gave up and I just try to find out motives of every… player and align myself with these that best serve my interests.

I don’t read much news because it’s all leftist or alt right propaganda drivel and while I align myself with the left because it serves my interests the best I won’t waste my time listening to their whatever narrative they crafted last week…

Just observe their actions and try to find out the motives and then ask if their motives align with yours. Their words or narrative are worthless drivel at this point, mostly.

Alt right drivel however is especially toxic and insulting but that is specifically done to evoke emotions. Anti gay propaganda crafted by closeted bisexual priests that want a piece from the table. It’s a bit like these email scammers who filter out less naive by making lots of grammar errors on purpose. You are supposed to be enraged either way.

UltraGiGaGigantic ,

Have you ever seen Adam Curtis's "Century of the Self"? Super long, but it goes on about how marketing and politics intertwined.

I think it's on YouTube for free

afraid_of_zombies , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

I feel like when I run into an old friend and they tell me my ex is in rehab.

enleeten , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

Only going up

dejected_warp_core , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

That's alarmingly low - it suggests that it doesn't take much for any given influencing campaign. If there are fifteen discrete such campaigns in play, that's just 1/100 of everyone. Now imagine that there's tens of such campaigns, and the numbers look even more reasonable. Also, it's probably cost-effective at this scale since this has been with us a while, which is terrifying.

What I want to know is: what percentage are human users that ate the onion metaphorical tequila worm^1^ and are now parroting these trolls?

1. Follow me here: drink a bottle and eat the worm inside. You're not thinking straight and did something you wouldn't do if you had your wits about you, or maybe a friend nearby that is thinking clearly. Propaganda has a way of forcing you into a phantasm by emotional manipulation, making it easy to jam all kinds of nonsense into your head. Extending the metaphor, said propaganda also lays out how to defend your worm eating habit as though it's totally normal to do.

drev , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

I remember writing a comment about invasive advertising by Instagram. Just shared some anecdotes about how a few extremely specific conversation topics soon became the topic for the ads I was seeing on Instagram, and pointed out that if they were in fact using background conversation to target ads, it would be extremely easy to automate with the voice recognition technology available at the time, so why would they ignore the opportunity if targeted ads are their main source of revenue?

It became one of my most down voted comments at the time, and I had about twice as many replies as downvotes, claiming all kinds of wild or easily disproven shit to disprove the idea that Instagram used such tactics. Was very fishy

IzzyScissor ,

And remember, if THEY have thousands of bots that each 'think independently' but still end up downvoting your post en masse, then that's totally fine. But if YOU try to upvote your post with one of your alts so it doesn't get buried, that's bannable.

afraid_of_zombies ,

To be fair mods did try to take action against that and they did have tools. How well they worked is not something I will pretend to even guess at.

johannesvanderwhales , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

Devil's advocate here. Does not pretty much any post on the subject of politics that is not simply reporting constitute an attempt to manipulate public opinion? Are they specifically referencing nation states trying to influence public opinion?

SkyezOpen ,

Astroturfing. Ads disguised as user content.

You see an ad, you recognize it as an ad. Your opinion is probably unchanged.

You see a user saying "Hey this product is actually pretty good," it's more likely to sway your feelings on the product, or at least your perception of the general sentiment to the product.

johannesvanderwhales ,

I'm mostly just wondering how they're distinguishing between astroturfing and legit posts.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Yeah sure but it's the scale and sincerity.

Me telling you my opinion on something is just that. I am just some guy. I don't have access, or even want access, to a billion bots spamming my opinion.

Also my opinion even if applied really doesn't mean much practically. Generally speaking I am pro infrastructure so if somehow the government spent more money on infrastructure that only translates, at best, to a small raise on my part. Not the same as say a major corp.

You see a community board where people can put up ads. What you expect to see are piano lessons, apartment for rent, tutoring etc. little things that really only matter to one person. You don't expect some megacorp to rip every sign down and turn it into a billboard that blasts from speakers each time someone walks past.

Basically it's a question of degree not of kind. It might be that it is all the same kind but the degree is so vastly different.

StaySquared , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

And 80% of Reddit is filled with degenerates of every kind. It's a total cesspool of excrement.

UltraGiGaGigantic ,

Crusty jugglers

Snapz , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

Uh, this post is a bummer and I don't even know if I actually believe the premise... Whatever I guess, lett's all actually just get out of here and go get some Sprite® brand family products, you guys.

derpgon ,

But 7up™ is made with natural ingredients, less sugar and is more limey!

harrys_balzac ,

My family prefers Brawndo. It has what plants crave.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/841fcbdf-055f-487d-a88e-fa6f572f5faf.webp

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