this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
41 points (72.5% liked)

Asklemmy

44260 readers
1516 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It probably seems weird asking this on Lemmy, but of course posting this on Reddit would get banned or taken down. Reddit doesn’t like being critical of Reddit. Anyways….

Over the last 10 years as a Reddit user I’ve believe the amount of accounts that are bots or foreign bad actors has tipped past 50%. I have no statistics to speak of, but would love if somebody did and could share.

Based purely on some of the conversations, posts, rage bait, strong ideologies, etc… I’m pretty convinced that a reasonable sample of humans could not or would not act the way they do on that platform. So often now I see posts that I feel are specifically attempting to sow discord and disagreement.

Does anyone else agree? What percent of users do you think are bots? Foreign bad actors?

Sadly, I think Reddit has no desire to find out or do anything about it. There would be no upside to them correcting their advertising numbers.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] tht@social.pwned.page 1 points 3 days ago

Probably a big chunk, thats why i left

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

There would be tons of downside if they revealed the bot count. Their website would probably crash and burn. I think it's well past 50% now. Well past.

[–] bokherif@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah posts getting easily 100K+ upvotes in hours, I’ll say over 70%

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Pointless drivel too, stuff like "what's your favorite color, and why?".

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago

foreign bad actors

[–] static_slabs@feddit.rocks 0 points 6 days ago

Oh nice! More shitstirring. 😃👍

[–] Majestic@lemmy.ml 42 points 1 week ago (9 children)

"Foreign bad actors" Sigh. This is propaganda framing.

The fact that reddit is astroturfed by the US government, US actors like Hillary's campaign in 2016, etc is very well known. Reddit even did an oopsie many years ago admitting that the most active reddit city was a US air force base with influence operations located there, aka psyops, aka propaganda bots.

If it has foreign "bad actors" they don't control the narrative, they don't control the main big subs, they don't have an in with the admin team, they don't run even a large minority of bots.

If these mythical creatures people like you believe in (as a result of the US policy of always accuse your enemies of what you're doing to hide it better) to pretend that the problems are all those evil foreigners do exist they exist as grains of sand caught in a mighty torrential river of US propaganda machines and influence operations. They exist hopeless. Helpless. With no friends on the admin team unlike the US propagandists, fighting a pointless fight where they are almost certainly subject to frequent, near immediate bans after mass downvotes by controlled moderators and/or mods who just are that happy to prevent any viewpoint but the US one from existing.

Even framing your question like this is a massive pushing of US propaganda. This isn't so much a question as a weaponized trojan horse that starts from the point of view of the people who control the most bots and the narrative totally on reddit.

The only thing approaching foreign, non-US "bad actor" astroturfing and botting would have to be the zionist bot effort which is admin and main subs moderation team backed and also backed by the US government by the way who doesn't care to get upset about it or raise it as an issue and demand it stop because they're supplying weapons to that genocide.

I mean the way you state it is literally the line being pushed by US government censorship proponents who are angry any foreign voices, any voices but their own are getting through.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] stembolts@programming.dev 41 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Just an opinion from someone who has been around the internet for a long while. It wouldn't surprise me if most of the comments are bots. I remember what it was like to interact with humans, even dumb humans, and they aren't nearly as blatantly agenda-driven as commenters on what I'd call "visible social media".

There are plenty of people who have a vested interest in disrupting means of communication and organization and they are investing a great deal in "false idea proliferation".

My 0.02¢.

Oh, you asked for a percentage, in the popular subs? 80+%. In niche subs that don't affect the Overton Window? 5-30%. And yes, these numbers are favricated outward from my butt hole.

[–] The_Che_Banana@beehaw.org 10 points 1 week ago

Probably on the nose.

Source: former forum user that moved to Facebook during the consolidation that moved to reddit during the monitization that moved to the fediverse during the enshitification.

I have no nostalgia about leaving sites that turn to shit or become rage bait click holes. It's just stupid time wasting media.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] VHS@hexbear.net 33 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Why "foreign" bad actors? Reddit is a US company and has "former" CIA in high-up positions. The site is heavily astroturfed by US military and intelligence. The prevailing opinions seen on the site are extremely pro-NATO and pro-"Israel". If foreign actors are trying to influence the site, they're in the extreme minority.

The site is of course also heavily botted to fake engagement, similar to how twitter is, but i think a lot of the unpleasant people on there are real. The site caters to their hostile, antisocial behavior.

[–] Zoift@hexbear.net 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In 2013 Reddit accidentally revealed the most "Reddit Addicted City" was Eglin Air Force Base. A city with a pop of 2.8k getting +100k visits. Neat.

The 2nd most popular city from that list, Oak Brook Il, is the HQ of Elsevier, a data analytics company & DOD subcontractor.

The Research Lab at Eglin AFB was cited in a 2014 paper on how to influence social groups to converge to a "common desired state"

It's been a decade since. How far do you think they've come?

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

By now the Eglin AFB & other fed bots ought to know to use VPNs.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Why “foreign” bad actors? Reddit is a US company and has “former” CIA in high-up positions. The site is heavily astroturfed by US military and intelligence.

i had this same thought and it's clear that posts like these are meant to frame the conversations so that it we only talk about the foreign bad actors and not the american or western bad actors.

seeing these bots and shills expand into lemmy; especially throughout .world is bone chililng to me sometimes because it makes it clear how thoroughly well this slop sells to the american people.

It was not my intention to suggest there are not "domestic bad actors". I live in America, and yes, that is a blanket term that we use to generalize countries that are antagonistic to "American values". We have plenty of domestic bad actors. I was painting with too broad of a brush and that was my bad.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] jrs100000@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I would bet the actual number of active bot accounts is probably lower than many people think. Maybe 20-30%. Those accounts are more active than humans though, maybe accounting for half of all the posts. Many of these bots arnt even proper LLMs, they are just scripts recycling generic comments, catch phrases and old memes and upvoting each other endlessly.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] fool@programming.dev 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Everyone's speculating so I'll put in something concrete:

About 3 months ago, r/wholesomememes mods clamped down on karma-farm bots as hard as they could...

causing no new posts to appear for two entire days.

Hey there friends! It’s only been a few days since we started cracking down on the spam bots and excessive reposts that have been plaguing r/WholesomeMemes - and now there is nothing left! --mod

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] MargotRobbie@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm a foreign good actor (to non-Australians), does that count?

Not to brag or anything, but I was nominated for a couple of acting awards in recent years.

[–] Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Are you Bluey? That's exciting!

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] ZWQbpkzl@hexbear.net 16 points 1 week ago

Bots on reddit are absolutely a thing. Ever since reddit's API went private it became exclusively a for-profit venture for manufacturing consent.

If anything the foreign bots have gone down recently but national bots have gotten out of control. Given our political climate I suspect kumbaya posts of being bots more than anyone being polarizing.

[–] Orcocracy@hexbear.net 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I-was-saying

I’m a foreign bad actor.

[–] Ibex@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (9 children)

It’s probably higher than that. Every time I comment on there it feels like a play with the way people act and respond. Like it’s not real, or they have a script to follow. No real person would act the way most Redditors operate.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] plinky@hexbear.net 11 points 1 week ago

Reddit is default "human advice" on what to buy, if you don't think it's crawling with companies bots as well shrug-outta-hecks

(but feely wise, it's sub dependent, no one will go to small sub to influence 10 people, conversely big subs are shaped both via allowed topics and first-to-post, first-to-downvote races)

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] sirboozebum@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It has basically been taken over by the IDF

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] m532@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 week ago

All redditors are bad actors and 99% dont live in my country, so...

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago (9 children)
load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›