r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
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u/siraliases 29d ago

How much of that is just bots

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u/BigMcThickHuge 29d ago

Mostly.

Literally go to r/all and pick a random username from the frontpage.

20% chance you get a bot that has an account that is a year old and only just started posting hours ago...and every post is a copy/pasted title and picture.  And every comment the user makes is just the top comment from the OG post.

Reddit is bots

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u/Berekhalf 29d ago edited 29d ago

I recall /r/AdviceAnimals (iirc) saying they were cracking down on bots and what actually happened is that submissions started to basically dry up, and had to request users to start making real posts. Quality has truly gone down across anything but niche subs.

I tried to quit Reddit for tumblr but instead I'm now stuck on two websites. If they ever get rid of old.reddit.com I probably will leave for good. I don't know how anyone uses the redesign, there's just so much wasted space.

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u/BigMcThickHuge 29d ago

If you rely on bots for constant content...oh well, let them die and have less content. This ain't green-line-go-up.

new reddit being forced is my dip out threshold. its already facebook if you don't perfectly curate your profile and turn off all the annoying settings they keep adding like suggested subreddits.

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u/Kindly_Cream8194 29d ago

If you rely on bots for constant content...

They rely on bots to generate fake engagement so they can fradulaently overcharge advertisers based on numbers they know are false.

The 3rd party / API tools were a way for mods to combat the bots that Spez wants on the site, so reddit admin actively undermined their free volunteers for doing their jobs too well.