this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Is all bad online behavior "trolling" now? Isn't "shill" a better word for someone who is paid to surreptitiously promote something?
Back in my day trolling meant something. It meant you cared enough to actually form a real argument that withstands scrutiny, just to setup for the rug pull. The better your polemic, the more engagement as people debated if you were for real or not.
Shitposting controversial hot takes or dog whistle memes is mid af, do better
From my understanding trolling meant exactly what it says it is: Trolling. I think people for some reason get this mixed up with trolls - as in the fantasy type monster. But I think it actually has to do with the fishing termtrolling where you cast out your line, and see if you can get somebody to take the bait. Once they take the bait, you take em for a ride.
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No, all bad online behavior now is “bots.”
At least that’s how people in the comments on lemmy and Reddit label them.
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I popped over to Reddit for the first time since third party apps were cruelly shut down. It’s clear that Reddit has sunk to new lows. Obviously trolling and a marked decrease in the quality of content
what I noticed is that posts have huge amounts of upvotes, even from small communities, and often no comments or when it does have comments its often very basic stuff, almost AI like
They aren't even trying with those usernames, lazy.
Yeah, looks like the default "word_wordnumbers" usernames that reddit gives you if don't change them.
I wonder if that would be an easy way to detect botting by not filling in that field for them.
Yeah, looks like the default “word_wordnumbers” usernames that reddit gives you if don’t change them.
This change is when I knew Reddit was going down the shitter. Automatically handing out default usernames instead of requiring you to pick your own. The only people that could possibly help are a) people with absolutely no imagination whatsoever, b) bots, and c) people making a dozen alts to puff up their main.
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Well, if you're going to defraud investors by pumping up your numbers before your IPO, you might as well go all out.
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Fellow lemmings, I, for one, am glad that there are no corporate trolls trying to manipulate public opinions on Lemmy, it is the same warm, fuzzy feeling I get when I was watching multiple time Golden Globe nominated summer blockbuster, Barbie, now available on Blu-Ray and select streaming services.
I don't know about you, but I sure hope Barbie sweeps the Golden Globes next month (and then the Oscars next year.)
That title is clickbait.
From the article:
In 2020, the Computers in Human Behavior study provided additional insights into the tactics employed by corporate trolls on Reddit. The study focused on the top 100 subreddits, analyzing the content posted within these influential communities. The results were alarming, with 15% of the top 100 subreddits found to have content that was likely posted by bots or corporate trolls, specifically aimed at promoting certain companies or organizations.
That's 15% of the top 100 subreddits contained some content that was likely posted by bots or corporate trolls.
This title is one of the 15%
It's not like one of the six biggest power janitors of Reddit has been caught multiple times wrongfully deleting posts, using bot armies to manipulate votes and accepting money from marketing agencies for "consultancy" in social media guerilla marketing.
It's almost like the company doesn't give a fuck what their unpaid help does to the userbase or content because they still gets investments regardless.
Fuck spez, fuck GallowBoob, fuck awkwardtheturtle and fuck Sam Altman.
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Corpreddit.
Lemmy feels very much like the old, old Reddit. When it was mostly IT folk and tech savvy people (talking about 2005-2010).
I think reddit peaked around 2015 or so. A much broader audience had found it. There was interesting content from a lot of people.
Now, it still has a lot of good content. But it is definitely past its peak
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Reddit feels less genuine for sure, than it would have even as far back as 3 years ago. The mod purge probably accelerated things greatly but in general it’s felt like Reddit was going corporate astroturfing route for a while. Real discussions are very sparse compared to the amount of people telling you “to solve problem, buy this expensive thing!”
At this point the only thing Reddit has is a numbers advantage. The videos are no huge loss because at this point since you’re forced to use their (god awful) mobile app they either autoplay obnoxiously or automatically popup obscuring the comments (discussion is 90% of why I go to a forum why make it harder to see comments?).
The desktop experience is still okay but the constant pushing to get you to enable notifications is very irritating.
Man. I zapped all my cookies the other day, and when I re-loaded reddit, it forced me into a new new version of the mobile site.
Now almost every single comment that isn't top level is hidden behind the 'more comments' button. When I click it, the whole page reloads, with the top comment and the one response. And a button for the next reply. And so on.
I've noticed since this change, almost no posts have any discussion any more at all. Which honestly. Why would you bother?
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And people want Meta involved in the Fediverse, like reddit wasn’t bad enough.
If the fediverse gets a lot of traction, this sort of “spam” will be difficult to moderate and every instance will need to have sophisticated systems to prevent it.
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Downvoted for medium article.
I shouldn't have to make an account to view news.
If it's on Medium it's almost certainly repackaged news anyway.
Am I blind? I don't even see where it names the study. It just says Pew, who publishes many studies. Does medium expect me to search for their sources?
TBH I'm surprised it's not higher than that. Even back before the API changes it certainly felt like a lot of front page content was paid for.
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"New Study"
"Two significant studies, the Pew Research Center study conducted in 2018 and the Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020"
So you're saying it's almost certainly a significantly larger percentage now.
Sounds about right.
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And another 50% is trolls working probono to be try and convince people that racism is the only way forward
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IT IS WAY MORE The spez exodus made me realize the difference, you can tell the content/comments are from regular people here. Sadly that too can change once those actors see Lemmy as their new platform for propaganda.
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You mean that wasn't some random wrestling fan or music fan I was chatting with? Fuck reddit.
In all seriousness, it was awesome 2 years ago, but the mods are fucking it up really bad. Lemmy FTW.
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They've taken over moderation too. I criticized a local restaurant that got passed down from father to son, and got banned. I did call the son a trump loving shitstain so that might've had something to do with it.
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It is incredibly cheap and easy to artificially bump a post to the top of a decent sized subreddit. I’ve seen it done before and the cost per impression/click puts most advertising to shame. And this was being done unsophisticatedly by some dude and a cheap bot. Now imagine what major corporations can do with all the resources to burn.
Ya think? I noticed when all top comments on /r/worldnews were the exact same thing just said in slightly different ways.
It's a science at this point.
Isn't that just astroturfing and they've been doing it forever there?
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