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.
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.
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…
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
English
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.
It’s not just speculation on your part.
How it started:
https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/
How it’s going:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/13p889x/reddit_admins_were_just_caught_using_bots_or_fake/
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.
removed by mod
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.
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…