Turious ,

Been happening a lot longer than you imagine. I stopped using Reddit when the third party apps got shut down. At least the last year of my time there was calling out repost bot accounts. Threads like that on smaller subs with week moderation were really common.

Even on some better moderated subs, they got through.

Reddit died for me a long time ago.

solstice ,

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

brax ,

What if find absolutely wild is how their stock didn't just flop. The site has been on a downward spiral since the first redesign, and with the cut to API they've basically entered a freefall. I could seen people backing Reddit like 14 years ago, but now? Why?

I suppose if there's any optimism to have in OP's post it's that the bots are at least propagating messaging that's better for the greater good than the typical shit that's trying to get us into a full dystopia.

ArtVandelay ,
@ArtVandelay@lemmy.world avatar

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

KillingTimeItself ,

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

DestroyMegacorps ,

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

RobinRoswell ,

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

egeres ,
@egeres@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy is not immune to this!! We need to develop FOSS to mitigate/detect that

KillingTimeItself ,

oh it's simple, don't capitalize and it's immediately harder to do.

Chozo ,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

I do find it funny that you didn't capitalize any words in this comment.

KillingTimeItself ,

i mean listen we've got priorities here. We're capitalizing, not capitalizing.

orangeboats ,

I've noticed that many Reddit users with the username format Word_Word_Number (for example Absolute_Bot_1230) are almost guaranteed to either be a bot or extremely inflammatory -- it's like everything they post is meant to generate controversies.

meowMix2525 ,

Yeah reddit has a name generator that you can choose from when you create an account and that's the format it uses. Those names are almost exclusively bots and throwaway/anon accounts

abc ,
@abc@lemmus.org avatar

I don't get it. They already created a good bot network, but the username part is where they get lazy.

greencactus ,

Thank you. That is the day when I'll finally stop using Reddit. I never have thought that bots write that realistically, so thank you for proving it.

meowMix2525 ,

Well they actually don't write that realistically, these are copy and paste bots that are just trying to farm karma so they can later sell the account (which I've heard is a thing apparently?). You can see the left is all original accounts by the uniqueness of their usernames and the copied posts on the right are all reddit generated names.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

Just paid a visit. It’s really gotten bad. Horrible titles that make little sense. People falling over each other to make tired quips instead of conversation, and the rest to point out how someone is wrong or one-up the commenter.

jkrtn ,

That's what it has been like for years now.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

IMO it’s gotten markedly worse since the 3rd party app debacle. Perhaps combined with the advent of AI added to bots has made it obvious. Yeah, it’s been on a decline for quite a bit with the repost bots repeating everything from posts to replies, but people would call them out. Now it’s like it’s bots all the way down or the remaining participants have resigned themselves to the decline.

Small subs still seem mostly safe, but anything with decent participation is pretty bad.

CafecitoHippo ,

Yeah the only real reason for Reddit for me anymore is sports discourse. E.g. the Baltimore Orioles are my MLB team. /r/Orioles on reddit has almost 80k members. Currently on the page there's 62 people actively in the sub and that's at 10am on a Wednesday, not during a game. The two Orioles communities on lemmy are [email protected] and Baltimore [email protected] and they have 133 and 131 subscribers, respectively. There's a bot posting game day threads and 0 comments in all of them. The only post not by a game day bot was 21 days ago.

Rivers ,
@Rivers@lemmy.world avatar

Reddit went to shit when the zoomers flooded in, arguably the late 90’s kids aswell

gandalf_der_12te ,
@gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

IMO the only way to not be infected by bot content is to not be popular, or small enough to be irrelevant.

mPony ,

Popularity is overrated. Irrelevance is freedom.

nichtsowichtig ,

I wonder what the fediverse's answer will be to this problem once it gets popular. Will instances that has a lot of bot content be defederated? some kind of fedipact against bot (unlabled) content?

DanTDM ,

Thank god this isn't a problem here

P░ U░S░S░ Y░I░ N░B░I░O ░

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

hey...

There's no pussy in your bio...

😡

p03locke ,
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Just keep clicking. You'll get to the malware eventually.

p5yk0t1km1r4ge ,
@p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world avatar

Nobody uses reddit. The exodus did more damage than people thought. This doesn't surprise me.

starman2112 ,
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

I mean a lot of us still use reddit, you can just ignore the main site and focus on your niche communities

BilboBargains ,

Which is exactly what an NPC would say.

starman2112 ,
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

Or someone who likes specific things? Show me the thriving Haibane Renmei community on lemmy

Obsessed with this comment rn. Like having interests that aren't the front page of reddit is NPC behaviour? Make it make sense

gandalf_der_12te ,
@gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I think it was a joke...

BilboBargains ,

I like your comment and I was just trying to make a lame joke that obviously didn't land. We rarely know who we're talking to online. The joke could be on me.

SuddenDownpour ,

Just said on a Reddit r/worldnews' thread that the subreddit has been astroturfed for years, as a response to someone wondering how could people in the comments be wishing for more innocent Palestinians be killed, and surprise surprise, I got instabanned. The site is becoming a façade of a fake reality in far more ways than one.

LustyArgonianMana ,
@LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world avatar

I was permabanned from r/worldnews for saying we should give free meals to kids at schools here instead of wasting money blowing up other country's kids.

BonesOfTheMoon ,

I will use Reddit for real search results sometimes, but I'm done reading it in general and here is partly why.

GrindingGears ,

I've been using reddit a bit the past couple weeks, it's getting pretty dry in the fediverse, especially for local content. I got permabanned from our local Reddit communities thread over literally pretty much nothing about a year and a half ago, basically questioning a power mods opinion on something, and then after getting temp banned, asked what the heck like if you aren't agreeing with me just respond with something, and then I got permabanned.

Anyways I wrote them a kind note today asking to be unbanned, as it is a pretty big sub (343k users for a city of 1.5M), and a good source of information. Told them like look, I'm pretty boring and I can behave, like could you prevent me from having to create a new alt account and let's let bygones be bygones?

The response I got was really condescending, they banned me from mod mail, and basically it was just a really weird response. All they had to say was no, thanks, and I would have moved on with my day. I think some of the mods are suffering from some pretty serious mental health issues these days, if not a god complex in the slightest. Reddit is a really really unhealthy place, and thankfully those people reminded me of that. I quickly deleted the app from my phone, and I think I'm done for good this time. The fediverse may be drying up a bit, but at least most of the people on it can behave like adults.

p5yk0t1km1r4ge ,
@p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world avatar

Idk if it's drying up just because it's slower with responses. I think we're just used to the reddit shitbots constantly responding to us on reddit. The slower pace is better because here, there's actually people responding, not bots.

DAMunzy ,

To be fair, I sound like a bot sometimes.

DAMunzy ,

To be fair, I sound like a bot sometimes.

DAMunzy ,

To be fair, I sound like a bot sometimes.

Tixanou ,
@Tixanou@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, sometimes I sound like a bot too.

Tixanou ,
@Tixanou@lemmy.world avatar

Ah, gotcha! Sometimes it's easy to slip into a more robotic tone, especially when we're focused on conveying information efficiently. But hey, that's part of the fun, right? We're all just doing our best to communicate effectively, whether we're humans or bots.

DAMunzy ,

I blame my AuDHD 🧠

EmptySlime ,

TFW the memes are embedded so deeply in your ADHD brain that you end up sometimes basically just becoming a Markov Chain chat bot.

Divine Light Severed: You are a Flesh Automaton animated by neurotransmitters.

force ,

Never trust a default username

[adjective] [noun] [3-4 digits] is always a sign of bad news, on social media and Xbox Live

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

I don't know about that. I now stick to default names after HR told my department to help them identify some leakers on reddit.

BadmanDan ,

Reddit perma banned for criticizing Israel

Anticorp ,

The internet is full of bots, Reddit is no exception. Believe it or not, neither is Lemmy.

SlothMama ,

The internet is full of boobs, Lemmy is no exception. Ripley's Believe It or Not, neither is your mom.

Please don't think this is actually hateful porfis

GrindingGears ,

More and more lately, I've been thinking about maybe we aren't really meant to be this closely linked together. Like what if everyone just stopped using social media, like it got banned or whatever. Would the world be a better place? Sometimes I wonder if the answer to this would be yes.

limelight79 ,

You may be right. But there is a good aspect to social media - for example, I own a very rare vehicle, with less than ~1,400 made in the 90s (and who knows how many are left). Before social media, we were all isolated from each other, but now we exchange a lot of advice and tips for upkeep and repairs. It has been a lot of help.

A friend of mine uses reddit to keep up with small sub for people with a specific medical condition. Nowhere else was she able to find that kind of support or information.

That's the great side of social media - connecting people who were otherwise isolated (mostly because of geography). I don't know if these benefits outweigh the costs, though.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • kbinchat
  • All magazines
    •