Used Reddit for years. There’s no way the percentage is that low.
That is probably correct. 15% of total content, but probably 70% of the content you see. Reddit has a tonne of content posted that almost nobody sees
15% of content and then fake upvoted to heaven. Could work
You don’t need much content or many comments to achieve the goal when you have thousands of votes behind it for the good placement.
Looking for office equipment recommendations on Reddit recently, every single thread had fake suggestions that were clearly advertiser accounts. They sounded incredibly fake like bots that pulled descriptions from Amazon, all had similar links with tracking, and all were upvoted to the top.
Right!? At least on Lemmy I can drink my Pepsi® in peace. Like for real, there’s nothing better than scrolling through some funny memes with a delicious can of ice cold Pepsi®, my fellow [insert slang term; plural]!
A chronic compulsive content-stealer creature like gallowboob might have encompassed that 15% all by himself.
We have our own version of him here on lemmy as well
We do? I see a few common posters, but no one acting like a content creator who is actually just ripping off stuff that didn’t get traction.
I’ve seen at least 2 usernames that submit A LOT, and if you search your feed i’m sure you’ll be able to spot them easily. They also comment on rising posts quite a lot and personally mod a few communities.
Yeah the squid and Picard but they are not bots I think just ppl with no social life whatsoever or sacrificing it so we have shit to browse o7
I won’t ever post a thing cause Reddit convinced me that it is never a super good idea. There are roving human freaks out there
A chronic compulsive content-stealer creature
Green___Cat?
Lemmy wouldn’t have that problem because we’re all too busy enjoying an ice cold Coca-Cola.
Please drink verification can now.
Omg the amount of sneaky coke ads I saw on that site was insane
Absolutely disgusting that someone would sell out that. Not me, my integrity is strong like like the legal protection I get from litigatenow.com, where you can sign up for a free consultation today, if you use my referral code #loveads2024
Ha, I’ve discovered your hidden advertising like I discovered the great taste of a crunchy Big Kahuna Burger.
Let’s check out some random customer opinions:
Jules W.: “Mm-hmm! This is a tasty burger!”
Marvin: “Mind-blowing!”
Ad comment in reality:
^453 u/DrJamieSmith34:
Actually fast food isn’t that bad for you. A Big Mac for example has everything you need nutrition wise. Carbs, veggies, protein.
Pepsi, the choice of a new generation.
Shit you can get paid?
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that in terms of marketing, reddit has a disproportionately high level of return in interaction relative to its size, while Twitter has traditionally had a low level of return relative to its size.
For some reason, comments on reddit has always been viewed as more trustworthy relative to other social media platform, despite reddit or’s general reputation for being confidently incorrect on many subjects.
There are certain people whose entire career was made by their reddit posts, yet, it was always odd to me that reddit never managed to effectively capitalize on this other than making their platform worse with every update.
Testing out this theory has been interesting.
Reddit’s strategy is genuinely brain dead. Just think of the shit they’ve been up to:
- Jacking up API prices to unreasonable levels and killing off third party apps that brought millions of users on to your platform
- Continuously make the UI shittier and shittier to the point where it’s unusable
- Do the same with the app
- Kill off old Reddit which is the sole reason millions of users still use the site
- Add awards and expand the feature to basically become paid reaction emojis
- Remove awards even though they were one of the biggest revenue streams
- Announce it was a mistake and add the awards again
- Add avatars that nobody asked for and make some of them paid
- Add a premium subscription that does nothing and do absolutely nothing to improve it
- Add a bunch of useless features that nobody uses like Reddit live
Truly the works of geniuses.
Old Reddit still works.
I worked at startups and I’m not going to deny that I was absolutely horking my company as a solution for years on Reddit. Especially with niche products.
This was from 2014-2018, and then I left startups and worked in corps.
When Google has plans to slurp reddit comments, I bet I could gamify reddit even more.
the rest are just regular trolls
Dead internet here we come!
Makes me miss the wild west days of the internet. Everything felt more… human. Now it feels like a soulless corporate husk. It’s wild that covid babies won’t know what those days were like.
For me, it was AIM chatrooms and ebaums forums, maybe the super early days of Skype (before being sold to Microsoft obviously). Shit did feel more real, and while content maybe didn’t come out at the same frequency, and there sure was shit, you just knew you were talking about it with other people. Made some good friends back then, would’ve been cool to stay in touch, but 20+ years is a long time.
Agreed, but Lemmy feels like the old Internet for the most part. I suspect that 90% ish of comments here are actual humans. The remaining 10% is pushing some kind of agenda.
I agree. There’s also a pervasive feeling that lemmy is unaffected by manipulation and misinformation.
If Lemmy continues to grow sooner or later it will become a large enough target for manipulation, and I wonder how federation will fare at that time.
Idk, hexbear content comes up in my feed and I feel that’s all manipulation and misinformation
Alright. I been afraid to ask for fear of getting banned from other communities hosted on their instance, but what is the deal with hexbear? The chat community seems like satire, but it gives off the same kind of vibes as the_donald, just far-left instead of far right. Like, I consider myself a lefty, but their community just seems self-destructive and toxic. Maybe that’s the point, though? Honestly unsure, and afraid to ask on their instance cuz I don’t wanna get accused of “just asking questions” and banned.
It’s a bunch lonely people who got hypnotized by a podcast and now that podcast informs all their opinions.
It really does feel like the_donald doesn’t it? I have no idea what they’re about. They claim to far left but when you look at what they’re actually saying it’s all hate for any position on the left. Even the word “left” is a dirty word there. They’re probably trolls trying to muddy the water. Maybe it’s some astroturfing or a space to experiment and generate new misinformation content. Idk, it sucks though, it feels all so toxic.
Yeah, I feel the same, but I don’t really know enough about it to make that assertion.
That’s why I’m glad, that my instance defederated from those. I saw some of that content from another instance and I don’t miss it.
Definitely more than 10%. The only really unbiased info I’m finding here is related to obscure coding stuff, or Linux tips.
Reddit has a lot of shills, but that’s their business model and they guard access cuz they want to get paid. Lemmy has no moat, and no filter outside of individual mods
You’re right in that it will never be like it was, but there are still fringes and niche communities that have that human feel. The thing is they’re much less engaging without algorithms and UX driving engagement, we’re not drawn to them in the same way.
Nostalgia fallacy
A two word rebuttal naming the argument type someone is using, does not constitute a valid argument.
Yes it does.
People are certainly susceptible to Rosy Retrospection, but let’s not forget that 2023’s word of the year was enshittification for a reason!
Check out https://wiby.me/
The Internet gained steam through hobbyists and is now that corporate shell as described. In my opinion it absolutely was a better place 25 years ago. Today the internet is filled with social engineering everyone’s trying to influence something and it’s terrible.
The Internet started as this kinda long-haired hippy fella who thought it would be great if everyone could share knowledge and have conversations with everyone else regardless of where they are geographically. Then the corpos made him cut his hair, put on a suit and tie and get a damn job! And 25 years later, he’s a yuppie corpo slave. I want my hippy back!
Lol. I guess it’s hard to tell when you haven’t seen the site change over time but… yeah?
It uses to be “argumentless” discussions on esoteric tech and philosophy issues… then a few years later it was people commenting the same 9 memes for 9,000 comments… then a few years later suddenly everyone’s anecdotes are praising China, or capitalism, or offhandedly mentioning some product or influencer.
Tbh tho, most of Reddit now just reads like Subreddit Simulator.
What’s damning is how the most harmless subreddits is now full of astroturfing. Television subreddit? Suddenly the top article is praising some show you never heard of. Meme subreddit? Here’s a meme about some music video or hot new product. Game subreddit? Here’s some random cosplay girl that’s only here to advertise her social media.
I don’t remember who said it but there’s a general rule that if your subreddit has over 500k subscribers, it’s already full of bots and dying. Any mainstream sub is insanely astroturfed.
And don’t get me fucking started on social media twitter accounts. HAHA GUYS CHECK OUT THIS FUNNY MEME SHARED BY #WENDY’S!!
then a few years later suddenly everyone’s anecdotes are praising China, or capitalism, or offhandedly mentioning some product or influencer.
There used to be a satire sub called Church of the Current Thing that made fun of this phenomenon. It eventually got banned around 2022 thanks to a cohort of bad faith actors mass-filing dubious reports of subs they didn’t like.
(I believe there was also a sub devoted to cataloging all such subs that got paved over in the name of le brand safetyTM, but it too got gulaged.)
The same thing that happened to Digg
A few very niche subs appear unaffected, but mostly the questions are all like someone shook a magic 8 ball and the same crap pops up over and over and over.
You know how your brain feels after being assaulted by a commercial? Reddit feels more like that now.
That’s the part that people don’t get and is intentionally hard to find numbers on. The entire appeal was on it not being an influencer centric space. The entire value was always at odds with monetizing that value beyond it’s upkeep and paying the people (who apparently aren’t that many) a reasonable salary. It is the worst growth case you could have ever had.
I watched it happen while drinking a refreshing Coca Cola. I’ve never felt so sad and refreshed at the same time.
Maybe they’ll do a Behind the Bastards podcasts on the corporate influences that ruined the internet. I look forward to that listen while enjoying some delicious Cool Ranch Doritos.
Lol, that’d be awesome. I can enjoy it while watching my girlfriend spend time on her OnlyFans (link in bio).
As a strong believer in online privacy I’ll be using Nord VPN to view your girlfriend’s content. Nord lets me browse securely with peace of mind I won’t be tracked. Plus I can stream region locked content. I started using it recently and let me tell you Nord has really changed my online experience for the better
Is your girlfriend single?
Reddit is going to end up just being trolls arguing with bots and corporate shills… if it isn’t already. I haven’t been there in a long time, but I’m fairly confident in that assessment.
What i really wonder about is how long a site can profit off of the majority of activity coming from bots. I’m not tech savvy enough to know if the analytics can tell the difference between a bot posting and a person. How long can that go on before the site stops being profitable via ads? Will companies pay to advertise to bots? Would they even know? It’s kinda funny to think about honestly.
It’ll be really interesting to see how reddit’s downfall comes to be though.
I just hope that the next new study doesn’t end up being “New Study: At Least 15% of All Lemmy Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion”, otherwise I would be wondering WTF is going on, is Lemmy on the way of being enshittified by Corporate Morons?
Hey, good to see you around! How is your koala community going?
Seen this post over and over. This is not a new study at that point
New study: 15% of Lemmy posts are studies about 15% of all Reddit content
:D
15% only? Not bad I’d say. I was expecting more like 30%+
“at least” 15%
Fair point.
Glad they included “at least” because there’s no way it’s that low.
Key word: At least
And this is why I use lemmy
What makes you think lemmy is immune?
Is there a chance that Lemmy admins might have more incentive to combat this than Reddit admins did?
I worry that if/when Lemmy becomes popular enough the larger communities will be targeted in the same way…
I’m confused. So this is a study that shows that significant less content on reddit is bots and trolls than it seems? Like ONLY 15%?
I feel like 15% would have been a realistic number a few years ago, but nowadays you have a hard time comunicating with a real human. A bit like online customer service.
I was also surprised, then I read how this is based on two studies, one four and and the other six years old. Now it makes sense: this was during the good old days!
This 15% isn’t inclusive of ALL bots and trolls. Just the corporate sponsored ones.
You regularly see posts with 10k+ upvotes and about 5 comments. Even the users say it’s scummy as hell.
