Comment on [deleted]
dhork@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Plot twist: this is just corporate shilling, too, trying to convince us it’s only 15%…
It probably WAS only 15% back when they started the study.
The 2020 study published in Computers in Human Behavior analyzed the top 100 subreddits — the most influential communities on the entire platform. Their finding? 15% of these subreddits contained content likely posted by bots or corporate trolls specifically designed to promote companies or organizations.
15% of these subreddits contained content likely posted by bots or corporate trolls
That’s very different from 15% of all reddit content being that.
That is an excellent catch. I missed it completely.
2020
This is before LLMs (2022 is the Internet LLMpocalypse) so I imagine this number has increased significantly.
Search Engines have been nearly completely obliterated by AI SEO, I find it hard to believe that social media manipulation hasn’t exploded just as much. It’s just more subtle.
its 50% in 2023, and its most likely more now. i remember there was a reddit post a few years ago, saying it was 50% already.
Nice one!
As the study that the author refers to does not seem to exist and he links to a study that does not justify any of the statistical claims of the article, the number is likely fake.
Just noting that the links inside the article seem to be wrong: lemmy.world/post/38174729/20270142
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
I know you are kidding but “15% are corporate shills” is verrrry generous to reddit in my experience. Reddit is a dead husk.
db2@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’d be genuinely shocked if it was less than 50%.
Openopenopenopen@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Considering the research is from 2020 I think we can assume it’s gotten much worse since the.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 day ago
2018, is when massive uptick of russian misinformation, and astroturfing began on the politics, subs. one of my now old defunct deleted accounts recieved the first bans there.
njordomir@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I wouldn’t be shocked if it was only 15% that isn’t corporate swill. Even the reasonable sounding comments can just be a bot karma farming by reposting previously popular stuff. At it’s peak, Reddit was a chaotic bazaar of experts and wannabees building actual good communities. You could find the kind of researched, in-depth info no Google search would ever unearth again. Now Reddit is clearly riding in the same boat as MySpace and others, just in it’s own stupid extra-Spezy way.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 day ago
wonder how much of the bots are OF spammers, or link farmers. i know they use a ton of accounts to spam, after they mostly warmed up those accounts, i was on another forum how they were doing it to earn money. the propaganda bot farms dont care about evading reddits filter, so they spam, dump the account and create a new one, rinse and repeat.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 day ago
the other 35% is russian troll farm bots.
sauerkrautsaul@lemmus.org 1 day ago
I hate reddit like any warm blooded fediverse fan but I cannot deny that if you wanna talk about, say, some obscure punk band’s third record released in 2003 thats where you gotta go
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
In some pockets yes, but travelling through reddit to find those pockets is like wandering through a sandcastle falling into the sea to find the handful of luxurious dry pristine rooms left.
The nicer the rooms are the sadder it makes you to know it is all for naught and is being washed away in front of your very eyes.
njordomir@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Some of those good fan subs got captured by industry insiders in the meantime too and are as bad as the flyers and search results. Companies excel at making the online as shit as the IRL.
dil@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Those pages never hit the front page anymore and get less activity over time, app wants you to not look at the communities you are subed to.c shows you anything else, custom feeds works but its a hassle, there isn’t really an alternative
TheBat@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I had to make one to prepare for upcoming trip. Fediverse doesn’t have enough volume for such things.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Same exact jokes made by ~30 day old accounts, that have been copy and pasted from older reposts.
Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Eh, people over at Reddit have some serious hair triggers on accusing someone of being a shill. I’ve been accused dozens of times.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
True, but to me that indicates the people enshittifying Reddit to pump and dump it for short term profit did a good job of sowing enough confusion and distrust that it obscured all the bots pouring in. They leaned into a culture of fakeness in developing reddit as a for-profit entity.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 day ago
its a death knell ever since SPEZ made reddit public.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 day ago
i wouldnt be surprised if it was bots doing it, they often “argue” with other bots to drum up drama.
phonics@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You are the reason I have a sludge hammer collection though.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Idk, reddit has always had a fairly strong libertarian undercurrent. Wouldn’t surprise me in the corporate glazing is genuine.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
True but way to make me nauseous with that thought.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 day ago
it seems some of the subs, is finally NOTICING reddits been deleting, banning people in such large numbers they are complaining about. it seems reddits new tactic is unilaterally deleting a comment with out mod consent.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 day ago
remember all those legal gray area subs, that were banned.(shoplifting,etc)