Reddit updates look after rough 6 months and ahead of reported IPO::“Edit: Obligatory ‘F— Spez’ for karma.”

  • @[email protected]
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    1361 year ago

    I dont have any direct experience with reddit any longer.

    What I can say, is that I think a verrrrrrry significant portion of comments and commenters are actually reddit run bots. My source for this is my experience in the daily thread of a certain degenerate gambling forum. There were maybe like 12-30 posters who would reply, engage, etc… in the daily and day after threads. However, there was a yyyyyuuuuugggge number of accounts that would just comment with no real further engagement. Like you would respond to them, but they wouldnt respond back.

    I truly believe that reddits internal business model is predicted on the use of reddit run bots to create synthetic engagement in certain audiences around marketing targets that a selective group of advertisers (read, not buying reddit ads) are given access to. The basics is that reddit astroturfs synthetic engagement until organic engagement takes over. I have no way of proving this and its pure speculation.

    This is why I don’t even worry about considering the user numbers on lemmy. Relying on my anectdotal experience, we’ve got about the usership/ engagement numbers from around the 2009-2011 time period, which is actually pretty amazing. Also, the overall lemmy experience is far superior, for example, just the ability to sort by a couple of different ‘hot’ options is a major improvement. I really think if the devs just keep vibing on their plan, lemmy will be more than strong enough to survive and continue for decades to come.

    The fact is that reddit stole from us our faith in a ‘good internet’. The users of reddit built reddit, not the company that owns it (they suck). The users of reddit paid for the server time and made the system work. That good faith was utterly exploited by the leadership of reddit and we should never forget how they stole from and exploited their community.

        • @[email protected]
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          161 year ago

          Pretty sure corporations running their own subreddits has been.a thing for awhile now. Fairly certain Costco’s subreddit is fully modded by their advertising department. Threads written by employees during COVID were getting nuked constantly.

      • @[email protected]
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        81 year ago

        Reading what happened to the german subs, that also happened with newly created spanish subs, many got thousands of subscribers but no engagement, only one or two comments per thread and little content but a lot of subscribers.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 year ago

      You’re absolutely right about most of it. My only criticism is the first paragraph as I am notorious for just commenting and not responding. Literally if you reply I won’t respond lol but I can’t imagine I’m the only one. A better way to sniff them out would be profiling them and finding things like hobby subs where they would be significantly more likely to comment vs addiction subs where they may feel some shame in interacting or engaging in their addiction.

      I’m pretty stupid so I could be talking out my ass but I figured input for data collection and such.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 year ago

        That’s what caught my eye too. I rarely, if ever, respond to someone who’s responded to a comment I’ve made, especially if they’re arguing or trying to correct me. And that’s if I’ve even bothered to go back and check it.

        Not that you’ll ever see my reply to your comment…

    • @[email protected]
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      141 year ago

      I am not saying you are wrong, but when I was active on Reddit I rarely checked my mail. I still have like 12k unread messages.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 year ago

            It makes more sense if it’s something like email, where you likely know most of it is junk mail advertisements.

            But how can people not be curious why they have several unread messages where it’s very likely they are responses from humans who specifically responded to things they said?

            • @[email protected]
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              21 year ago

              But how can people not be curious why they have several unread messages where it’s very likely they are responses from humans who specifically responded to things they said?

              I’m still waiting for @[email protected]’s response…

            • deweydecibel
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              1 year ago

              It’s pretty simple:

              Because a lot of those comments will be filled with abuse, and some will be garbage not worth reading.

              After a certain point, you get tired of opening the inbox and sorting through it.

              It makes more sense if it’s something like email, where you likely know most of it is junk mail advertisements.

              What makes you think there isn’t just as much junk in your comment replies inbox? Not advertising, but just overall junk.

              You’d stop checking your email, too, if there wasn’t a spam filter. Well, comment replies don’t have a filter for quality or tone or politeness. People get tired of reading trash.

              I don’t read my inbox. Instead I use the same strategy I developed long ago on the forums of old: I check in later to see the responses to certain comments. After the karma system has hopefully moved the shitty or worthless ones down, and I only check the comments where I genuinely care what the responses will be.

              But how can people not be curious why they have several unread messages where it’s very likely they are responses from humans who specifically responded to things they said?

              I’ve been around the Internet for a long time, just over 30 years now. That curiosity is long dead. I’ve seen enough and participated in enough discussions to have a fair idea what the replies to most things will be like on the whole. Some of them I’m interested, some of them, meh

              • @[email protected]
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                21 year ago

                You’re saying all this like I haven’t been on the Internet long. I’m over the two decade mark myself. I base my question on this fact actually.

                What makes you think there isn’t just as much junk in your comment replies inbox?

                My experience with the Internet all these years…

    • sarcasticsunrise
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      41 year ago

      Yo you might’ve dropped this, King 👑. This post is the best way of putting into words my thoughts on the matter that I’m too smoothbrained to formulate into creation. Especially the last paragraph, the theft of “good Internet”. Fuckin A, m8