So I checked out reddit after a long time and was going through the top of r/videogames subreddit and I could clearly see a pattern in most of the posts there. Posts were mostly like “what game ______ for you?” or “what game _____ like this?” Now I could be wrong but it doesn’t feel ‘organic’ (if that’s correct way to put it). It’s like these are put up intentionally. Thoughts?
These are engagement farming posts. Both reddit and Twitter are full of them, because both sites are now offering money to accounts whose posts get lots of upvotes/comments.
It feels gross and inauthentic.
Something similar happened to Quora when they started offering to pay people just to produce questions, not good questions, not answers, just questions. Quora was already kinda tenuous and growing its tolerance for fascists, but that move dropped a cinder block on the enshittification gas pedal. Quota’s basically been completely unusable since then and it’s only gotten worse.
Edit: wrote Quota instead of Quora, but I like the typo’s energy, so I’m leaving it.
Some of them read like content farming posts-get a bunch of people to talk about a given topic with a specific direction, then “write” an article that is basically “video games are crazy, aren’t they? Here’s some really crazy video game stories!
[five word intro] [full text of a Reddit comment] [repeat ad nauseam]”
I don’t even know how much of a role the monetary aspect has. I feel like a lot of Reddit is naturally gross and inauthentic but also soulless and elitist in a way. People still post content because they want the Reddit karma and rehash the same prompts that gives the same predictable answers that seem to appease the crowd. Other times when things are reposted comments will act harshly and and redirect them to a post or wiki from years ago.
Reddit, to me, seems to lack genuine human interactions.
This would check out. Perhaps significantly more users left because of their bullshit than they want the public knowing. Could explain a lot actually.
Next question is whether they actually care or are just happy that the bots can now produce clicks without all that pesky moderation and interaction with actual humans.
Brother, I vote the latter. Reddit has time and time again proved they hate their users and only want engagement. The rampant mod abuse, the admins that shrug it off, the way they killed 3rd parties, hell, how spez the ped talked about the people protesting, he doesn’t give a fuck at all, and neither does anyone else in a position of power.
My thoughts exactly. Kinda like how some tiktoks/reels/shorts are specifically crafted to make you watch them over and over again to drive up viewing time.
Weren’t there at least rumors during the protests that reddit is actively looking for engagement posters? Ever since then discussions seem partly artificial (or maybe it just coincides with the rise of AI garbage).
Yup, I remember this. It wasn’t a rumor. Spez wanted to “drive more engagement” shortly after the exodus. He then downplayed it like it wasn’t a big deal but he clearly felt the sting. I don’t think anyone even put two and two together about that at the time. I sure as hell didn’t at first. Looking back, though…
Hmm that makes sense.
Reddit isn’t the only place this is happening.
Nice to know there are other monkeys on this planet that can open their fucking eyes.
Anyone notice the amount of memes used as free advertising? Disney has been doing it for a while, and crushed it with the mini Yoda in that shit TV show.
Fuck Disney.
I’m 100% sure Baby Yoda was specifically created to sell merchandise.
The original Star Wars would never have specifically created a character just to sell merchandise…
Space balls the lunch box!
The Ewoks say hi.
I think they were missing an /s
anyone who types /s lacks courage
The … is good enough tbh
Yeah and that’s when star wars started to turn to shit.
So Return of the Jedi is shit? Because Han Solo was supposed to die in this movie. But because of Toy sales George Lucas didn’t kill him.
For sure that’s the case. This has been a strategy since at least the 70s
*50s
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Who needs lore when you make the company millions!
I really liked mini Yoda. I don’t get why you hate Disney so much.
So much great content. Really is the golden age of television now that the companies like Disney and Netflix are all trying to compete with each other.
I always enjoying pirating their shows and movies.
bazinga
They deleted the Expanded Universe as canon so they could bastardize what was left.
Nothing star wars related since disney bought out lucasarts has been worth spending any time on.
I cant wait for them to fuck up KOTOR like they did with the og battlefront.
The expanded universe never was canon though. At least not movie-level canon. That means it’s still just as much canon as it used to be. If you haven’t, give Andor a try. That show is genius.
I don’t know, I feel like advertisements CAN be entertaining content, much like how people for decades have only wanted to watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. The problem, and the reason I have ad blockers all over the place, is that they don’t design the commercials to be entertaining. They want to drill it in to you with endless repetition, or banner ads every 2 paragraphs on a news article.
It is these problems that cause me to want to block ads, not ads in general.
Im of the opinion we should reject all advertising and change the dynamic
If someone wants to sell me something they have to pay for my time.
Instead of paying Jake Paul $10,000,000 to sell me something. They just have to pay me the bandwidth or time their commercial just ate up of my free time.
I work all fucking day and barely get 6 hours before bed. 3 of those hours is running into ads fuck that.
I drive home and have to look at fifteen rusted ass giant metal billboards barely holding together instead of cool ass trees and birds.
I turn on the radio to get a song, 3 minute DJ giving me gossip about celebrities I should purchase from, 2 minute commercials and another song.
I turn on Spotify i pay for and get ad reads all podcast long along with the host sneakily promoting their new chewing tobacco or liquor.
I get home and kids are watching prime, with commercials. Shit doesn’t stop. It keeps encroaching into our free time. Its like an Edgar Alan Poe story but written by Edward Louis Bernays
I hate advertisements
I think there is a distinction of PUSH advertising where you see billboards everywhere, ads stuck into youtube videos, spam emails, whatever that is just sent out to the general public and see what sticks. Compare that with PULL advertising where a consumer goes out and looks for something. When I am shopping for a new TV or something that needs a bit of research, I have no problem being sold to.
It’s kinda like going out of your way to watch movie trailers. Or watching a lets’s play of a video game you are interested in. It can be a fun way to spend some time and they can be entertaining in their own right.
That’s pretty insightful and puts some things into better perspective for me. I like the way you described it.
I agree. There are very few places I will tolerate ads. On my PC, I block them all. If a website manages to sneak one through, I usually close the tab immediately.
When I visit my family, they watch live TV and it’s so jarring to see how much advertising they sit through.
On public transit, I can’t really avoid ads either, unfortunately. I can ignore them, but I can’t not see them.
When I see ads in public or at a friends house, I feel like they are sucking my soul away.
It is very jarring. Also the fact they compress the ever living fuck out of them and the volume is 30% louder than the show
When I am shopping for a new TV or something that needs a bit of research, I have no problem being sold to.
I have a problem with it- if I’m shopping, I want to know the technical differences between stuff, all advertising tells you is “ours is better because {indecipherable technobabble}” that can’t be verified because it’s essentially non-existent outside of that company’s marketing materials.
Yep that’s why I’ve always thought it was weird people dislike targeted ads. I prefer watching a well made gaming or weeb ad vs feminine hygiene or car ads.
I don’t mind the targeted ads but I do hate the pushy ads that are unavoidable and that’s why I use unblock etc. Banner ads didn’t bother me much, the tiny strip of ad at the bottom of my lemmy app doesn’t bother me cause it supports the creator. The unskipable video ads and pop ups when I’m browsing do annoy me.
I agree with all your other statements, but offer you this one counterpoint: you’re getting the interesting ones.
Some program out there calculated once that *I* have a low to moderate chance of being female, but very little of anything else I look up could be considered advertiser friendly. Their only option remaining was to make all my targeted ads dumbass sweatshop clothes and feminine hygiene products forever.
Yea it’s unfortunate how that works. I rarely see ads anyways at home since I have unlock and the full suite of privacy apps.
I do enjoy watching cartoon network and their ads when I’m at a hotel on vacation. It’s nostalgic.
FUCK ADVERTISEMENTS!
Why have us idiots been conditioned to PAY FOR A FUCKING SERVICE that has ads? Cable TV, satellite, xm radio isn’t as bad but the bitrate they use is criminal. And now streaming services offer higher priced subscriptions in order to bypass ads. Its madness!
The ads ins Spotify podcasts do suck, but if the pod is on YouTube, just use youtube revanced. DM me if you want a link to set it up.
More people need to wake the fuck up and realize time=money. You are letting corporations use you, and get nothing out of it except stupid jingles getting stuck in the far reaches of your brain.
If i want to voluntarily watch ads, I’ll look at ad compilatios on YouTube.
These damn kids these days… Back in my day, youtube used to not have ads! They have been conditioned to accept it, its crazy.
And hey man, be thankful for your 6 hrs, I get about 4 after I get home, before I have to sleep and wake up and do it again…
God, I fucking love paying 4 dollars a gallon for gas and having EXTREMELY HIGH VOLUME ads shoved down my throat like an erect cock.
Guess its time to start gettoblasting music at the pumps like I did when I was 19 again…
PSA YOU CAN PRESS ONE OF THE BUTTONS AROUND THE SCREEN TO MUTE THE ADS, USUALLY ITS 2ND FROM THE TOP ON THE RIGHT SIDE
My favorite are the YouTube videos with the voice overs that go will narrate a guy skiing off like 3 jumps and the narration will be like
“Watch what happens when this guy goes off of this ramp, but then you’ll never believe what happens when he turns quickly and launches off of another jump again. That’s not all though, watch closely as he goes up in the air, flips around twice and rides away.”
Like, impressive that it is describing the video and all but the comment section is full of seemingly organic traffic that seems oblivious
When it’s obvious its so funny and then depressing. Hanging out in r/marvel is a good example.
Then there is other subs and online places like those r/AITHA and relationship advice places where mods or someone is generating content multiple times a day that people will call out as being made up but still engage with.
Its too bad culture jamming fizzled out because we could all really fuck with this stuff if we organized a bit. Its why I lover sub reddits like r/fighterandthekid and r/joerogan or r/opieandanthony because how they turned on the product they were trying to sell. It took a handful of random people producing legit funny content to steam roll the advertisers. A couple guys with free time can super fuck these companies if they organized. They have to get paid we don’t.
/r/AITA doesn’t even hide their karma farming bullshit. 95% of that dogshit is like “Hey guys, I kissed my boyfriend and made him a five course meal. Then I rubbed his feet and bought him 5 ps5s to let him know I love him. Today, he ruthlessly beat the shit out of me, hit me with his car, punched me in the throat and then shit on my face. I refused to be treated like this, so I left him. He’s now begging for me to come back, and I feel bad. AITA for leaving him over this?” And then karma flows like gold in El dorado.
Yeah baby Yoda was shit, but I think the first season of that show was very good. (After that I think they realized and cut budget and pushed baby Yoda though)
Well sure, baby Yoda was obviously designed for marketing purposes, but at least the result was a cute, likable character. They could have just as easily shoehorned in a hot bimbo for the same purpose.
I remember thinking all those doorbell camera footage with the brand logo on display being suspicious.
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Dead Internet Theory at work.
The internet has a grim future and it doesn’t involve you and I interacting if they get their way.
That part of the Internet can die and rot…
Ah, I think “this” part is also included in ded internet theory
I hadn’t heard of this before, interesting. Here’s the link to wiki if anyone else is interested in learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
In a way we’ve already had our first war with bots. We got our asses kicked so bad we didn’t even realise we were fighting.
You can blame bots, but having also worked as a soul crushing social media manager for a few months, you make shit like this to get karma (or on other media, interactions.) Humans deserve some blame!
That said the greatest irony is a toooon of the votes and comments are also bots and/or shills. The weirdest thing I found success on with Twitter, for instance, was wishing people a good morning, using a company account. Weirdly drove profile traffic and follows. >.>
Yeah, there’s a reason why Youtube thumbnails have all that weird shit. It works.
Karma bots making low effort shitposts because our dumb monkey brains will upvote it. it happened before but you ignored it because you cared enough about the organic engagement on the community and mods did enough to try to stop that behavior
Now that Reddit removed mods that actually did their jobs and you’re one of us, it’s all you can think about
You are not the only one noticing it. Probably trying to maximize the user provided content they can sell to language model creators
Looks like they got 60m from google for that:
https://fortune.com/2024/02/23/reddit-60m-deal-google-search-giant-train-ai-models-on-posts/
Indeed, thanks for the link!
NP! I didnt know about it until recently too. It was eye opening on why im seeing so many “safe” posts make it to the top and why so many google search results now include reddit posts recently.
Recently? Reddit was always the answer to questions in google searches…
Nope, I have projects that used to pull top x on Google searches based on some seo work I did back in 2016-2017. It’s significantly more. Granted the dataset is super old by now and you would have to trust a random on the internet (aka me) in order to believe, but it hasn’t been always been reddit.
The GenX sub is the same now. It’s just a bunch of questions now like “what’s your favorite song from the 80’s?”. It used to be a sub with substance and now it’s lame.
from the '80s*
Why are you using r/videogames as an example to make this claim?
There are at least two more subs that are wildly more popular and have much more activity and substantial posts and commenting.
- videogames - 293k subscribers
- Games - 3.3m subscribers
- gaming - 40m subscribers
I am subbed to both of those last two and didn’t even know the first one existed because it’s offshoot trash.
/r/SteamDeck
/r/Funny
/r/Videos
Are other solid examples. There’s a ton like these over there, subs of various topics. It’s not just related to gaming stuff.
I still use reddit for some of the niche and sports communities that just aren’t really present on Lemmy (or not yet at least). I only use old reddit, and I only use my front page or the multis I curated myself. One thing I’ve noticed a lot lately is posts with zero upvotes and usually zero comments appearing in hot, top, and best filters. Most of these are absolute trash posts that were clearly posted by a bot.
I do not understand what benefit they’re seeking by shoving bad posts with no positive feedback into these sorting options but it’s fuckin weird.
They don’t care what the users see, they want to push metrics on their investors and hope they’re not going to do a deep dive into their traffic.
What metric do posts with no user engagement push though? From an analytics standpoint I don’t see the value prop
It could just be to push “X unique contributors to y number of subreddits”
Just using this comment to advertise for our college football community, definitely one of the small niche sports communities you mentioned: !cfb@fanaticus.social.
It’s because of bots, in the past there was enough moderation to deal with them plus a larger amount of natural engagement.
Now after the exodus there is significantly less real engagement and much poorer moderation. Those combined allow bots and low effort posting to thrive.
My guess is with the protests that some of the top content creators moved away and never came back.
I remember sorting by hot once gave a wide variety of things and now it seems to be more drama posts like AITA posts.
Although it feels like I’m still following an ex, There was one place over there I used to visit a lot and I believe if you took a snapshot of the top ten posts of a random day few years ago and today, they’d be very different. Today’s seems to be a group picking up a trend and running with it and before it was more original content. I remember going there because I knew there’d be something new I’d likely laugh at or be amused by and now it feels heavily recycled.
The subscriber count is still way up, but I’d you look at the online/active user count, it feels like its around 10% it was off recent highs.
It felt like the sub had a ship of thecleus moment where it seemed to just be growing, but was also losing people until the group changed but the name was the same.
Someone else said the new reddit gold allows people to receive real money* if people gild their posts (by spending real money) * receiver must be in certain countries.
I saw a post recently on a wholesome memes page where someone tagged repost sleuth bot and someone else commented that todays post was literally a copy of the third top voted post of all time. It was.
I also remember that bot support got affected and this led to a spam detector bot being moved from active development to sunset mode where it was still supported but not actively enhanced.
The subscriber count is still way up, but I’d you look at the online/active user count, it feels like its around 10% it was off recent highs.
Same here. Subs with hundred of thousands of subscribers, but barely any activity.
Been like that for a while.
For example, /r/videos supposedly has 30 million subscribers, but you can sometimes hit the front page of that sub with 50 upvotes.
Subs like that have been decimated by tiktok, so it’s safe to assume most of the subscribers have left. It simply doesn’t make sense.
On that note, anyone feel like YouTube comments have recently turned “too nice”? Like if you go to any yt let’s play, usually the first 10 top comments won’t be talking about the video contents, just “I love that we’re getting regular videos 🤗!” Endlessly. It feels so weird to me compared to the actual discourse that could happen there, and obviously yt comments are infamous for being a cesspool so that’s even more of a jarring change
Might be bots, might be youtube pushing these more to make everything feel more friendly… and then bots jump onto that again for ads and scams…
Might be bots, might be youtube pushing these more to make everything feel more friendly…
I wouldn’t be surprised. A lot of YouTubers I follow have talked about how you can get a thousand positive comments but the one negative one will make you second guess everything. Maybe it’s their way of fighting that encouraging more content to be produced
It is working!!!
I feel like a lot of comments are just for easy likes :/
“Who still listening to this in 2024”
"I also used to build PCs with my poor father… ;_; "Thank you for your comment.
(Sorry)
Please don’t apologize! I love that we’re having an open dialog. Isn’t that just like this website, though, fostering communication!? 🤗
Who’s watching this in Year of The Linux Desktop?
You WILL consume the slop
Reddit green is made of bots?
I didn’t expect it to reach this level…it doesn’t feel appealing.
Do they have some AI chatting in comment ? :)
One more thing to notice here is that despite it being top of all time, none of the posts are even a year old
Reddit’s site traffic has just gone up that much. Especially if you include bots posting constantly in their SEO subreddits that admins are aware of and indifferent to.
