every single sub no matter how niche is infested with bots or spam/schill accounts.
every single parenting/mom sub is inundated by formula companies.
every fan niche like comicbooks is full of bot accounts in training (building up karma with low effort posts and repeat copy posts from previous days from other posters).
People say things like this, but the subs I frequent largely seem fine. I'm sure there are bad actors somewhere in there, but they don't seem prominent to me.
> every single parenting/mom sub is inundated by formula companies.
Okay, if it's every single one, show me all the formula company inundation in r/daddit. Should be easy if they're absolutely everywhere, like you say, right?
I felt that way until the other day. There was a post that got upvoted, seemed wholesome and innocuous, and then eventually someone pointed out it was borrowing material from an earlier post. So I go to check, and sure enough, the pattern of posts by the parent poster is very inhuman, to put it one way. Strings of reposts of the same thing to many many subs in a short period of time, over and over and over again.
I wouldn't go so far as to say reddit has been taken over by bots but I've started to wonder more and more about it.
I generally feel like things have subtly but noticably changed for the worse since the exodus but I can't name a replacement in general except for some topic specific forums here and there.
On the bright side I do think the new UI has improved noticably. I still revert to the old site often but the new site is better than it used to be.
This is an irrelevant tangent, but bots reposting content which previously was highly upvoted reminds me of exponential backoff in networking. The reposting serves as an automated way to maximally spread popular content to the widest range of website visitors, until the value of additional reposts diminishes and the bots reduce their reposting frequency on that item because it's no longer hitting the highs.
It probably doesn't work out that way in practice since the karma farming bots may not be that sophisticated, but I think it's a cool idea at least.
Quite often the bots just look like contributors until you realize they've never had an original comment in their posting history. More often it seems they are involved in creating consensus and nudging votes up and down and in general making it more painful karma wise for those that don't toe the line.
Not a daddit visitor, but it appears that formula is an uncommon discussion on that sub. Either it's not a popular topic, or it's being banned when it's too obvious.
> every fan niche like comicbooks is full of bot accounts in training (building up karma with low effort posts and repeat copy posts from previous days from other posters)
If such things exist in subs I visit, I don't see it. Either the reposts are downvoted so I don't see them, the repost is the first time I'm seeing it making it a good post from my perspective, or they aren't reposts and the bots are making good contributions.
I definitely notice the astroturfing accounts in the subs that are marketing profitable (usually lifestyle subs like fitness, fashion, cooking, investing, etc), but not every sub is profitable or even open to product endorsement. At least, I very rarely ever see such things in the video games subs I visit. I'm not even sure how you could mix in such posts into a sub like /r/rimworld.
Unless you actually have a reason to have good idea of who you're interacting with you should probably assume they are trolls, shills, or children. Those are BY FAR the most common Internet activity.
For example - I'm a normal human. I'll post a few comments on HN once in a while. Maybe a few up votes from time-to-time. Sometimes I don't think about HN for days. I don't post on other social media/forums. My father-in-law is a troll, he spends 10+ hours a day every day commenting and voting on various articles with his hundreds of sock puppet accounts. Which one are you more likely to see? Myself or my FIL?
that was like, 17 years ago? and imho not an unreasonable thing to get a social site off the ground that had no users. Seems pretty irrelevant to the problems of today.
At this point especially considering the article we’re commenting on, it would be amazing if there weren’t spam shills and bots - they go where eyeballs go
There is an enormous vested interest to not let this become public and should make you question the concept that conspiracy can’t exist somehow
Nobody is saying bot/shill accounts don't exist. Just that they aren't literally everywhere and in insane numbers. Also, it's about the distribution of the bots between the subs: are they mostly on the huge main subs, or do they also expand to the 10,000 person niche subs?
If 1 formula company has 1 reddit bot that posts 1 post every month in every parenting subreddit, is that considered a bot infestation? How many bot posts is necessary to be considered endemic?
Thank you, this is what I meant. I am well aware they exist but anytime I mention maybe I use reddit to do research before a purchase - everyone acts like not a single human even exists on there.
If there's a better source for general purpose product recommendations than Reddit, I haven't found it.
I'd say the only real weakness is that sometimes the recommendations lean too hard on being for enthusiasts, and don't always fit what a casual user of a thing cares about. But other than that they're pretty great.
every single parenting/mom sub is inundated by formula companies.
every fan niche like comicbooks is full of bot accounts in training (building up karma with low effort posts and repeat copy posts from previous days from other posters).
everything, everywhere.