this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
164 points (92.7% liked)

Reddit

17686 readers
13 users here now

News and Discussions about Reddit

Welcome to !reddit. This is a community for all news and discussions about Reddit.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules


Rule 1- No brigading.

**You may not encourage brigading any communities or subreddits in any way. **

YSKs are about self-improvement on how to do things.



Rule 2- No illegal or NSFW or gore content.

**No illegal or NSFW or gore content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-Reddit posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



:::spoiler Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 196 points 7 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

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]”

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This would check out. Perhaps significantly more users left because of their bullshit than they want the public knowing. Could explain a lot actually.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Hmm that makes sense.