The Astro turfing on Reddit is pretty unsettling. Especially when you understand just how much the front page is curated
If I had to give them any credit, at least on Reddit this would be an article, and not a shitty YT vid
A 26 minute video nonetheless. With enough content to be read in 2-4 minutes, tops.
“Administrative privileges on a centralized platform.” I shortened it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=ikhGvUpdu40
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
They “crushed the protest” in the same way the captain of the Titanic solved the iceberg issue. Silencing the people who point out the ship is going to crash and trying to ignore the passengers leaving in droves is not going to make the iceberg disappear, but it keeps the people at the buffet entertained and clueless up until everything goes down.
There’s a lot of people in this thread that are either slightly delusional or utterly gaslighting themselves.
Reddit is not going to die over this. Reddit was always full of bots and shills astroturfing, none of that was new. And while many great contributors have left the site for good, the traffic to the site hasn’t really dropped. The vast majority of (actual) Reddit users were using the main site and app, despite how terrible both are.
Sure the quality of content has objectively dropped, but do you think Reddit cares as long as traffic doesn’t?
We’re all here talking about Reddit and saying how shit it is now, how spez can go fuck himself, having ourselves a great little circle jerk, but Reddit gives no fucks.
It’s time to get over our ex. She’s moved on, she doesn’t miss us and it’s time we moved on too.
Lemmy’s specific communities for games is also non-existant. People didn’t come here, they went to Discord.
TBH I still use reddit sometimes. The level of debate may be trash, but it’s useful for niche stuff.
Eg. still haven’t found a fediverse alternative for /r/panelshows.
You say that but reddit shadow bans any accounts mentioning Lemmy .
Clearly they care
I probably shouldn’t say this, but 10 years ago I worked for a company and my boss and I discussed and prototyped a bot to shill for our clients on reddit automatically, including finding optimal posting times by karma and using their search to find best subreddits to post in.
We didn’t do it because if reditors found out and got mad our clients would dump us.
Around that time /r/Ineedit and a bunch of other shill subs came out that were just totally AstroTurf.
Bots have been on reddit for a long long time.
deleted by creator
Exactly, content is and always will be king. For better or worse, that “highly curated” front page of Reddit will be curated to draw as many people in as possible. We don’t have the luxury of algorithms or a full moderation team to weed out the spam ana the chaff, we only have ourselves. Its our Greatest superpower and we should leverage it where we can.
It reminds me of Netflix’s habit of cancelling great shows and imstead making more and more trash TV because that’s what is getting more views. It’s what the masses who don’t care that much want. Reddit, like Netflix, are chasing the broadest possible user base as possible. I used to go to Reddit for neat conversations about niche topics. Then it became an echo chamber of one liners and memes, which while fun, is antithetical to what I originally was there for.
Precisely. I’ve stopped being sore over corp social media, because there’s no point: it’s never going to change. Before I was on the fedi, I mostly lurked and consumed, but in here I feel like I’m putting down real roots and contributing to a living culture.
I don’t know what the future of the internet is, but I know the bad path is further corporate capture and centralisation. If it’s going to be something I want to participate in, it’s going to be those parts which are decentralised.
PS this is my phone account with Sync so I can’t post from this one yet.
I definitely have more fun here than I did on reddit in years.
I miss my local subreddit and my niche interest subreddits, but we’re getting there in terms of content.
Same.
Thanks for reminding me to delete my account
