Reddit updates look after rough 6 months and ahead of reported IPO::“Edit: Obligatory ‘F— Spez’ for karma.”

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I dont have any direct experience with reddit any longer.

    What I can say, is that I think a verrrrrrry significant portion of comments and commenters are actually reddit run bots. My source for this is my experience in the daily thread of a certain degenerate gambling forum. There were maybe like 12-30 posters who would reply, engage, etc… in the daily and day after threads. However, there was a yyyyyuuuuugggge number of accounts that would just comment with no real further engagement. Like you would respond to them, but they wouldnt respond back.

    I truly believe that reddits internal business model is predicted on the use of reddit run bots to create synthetic engagement in certain audiences around marketing targets that a selective group of advertisers (read, not buying reddit ads) are given access to. The basics is that reddit astroturfs synthetic engagement until organic engagement takes over. I have no way of proving this and its pure speculation.

    This is why I don’t even worry about considering the user numbers on lemmy. Relying on my anectdotal experience, we’ve got about the usership/ engagement numbers from around the 2009-2011 time period, which is actually pretty amazing. Also, the overall lemmy experience is far superior, for example, just the ability to sort by a couple of different ‘hot’ options is a major improvement. I really think if the devs just keep vibing on their plan, lemmy will be more than strong enough to survive and continue for decades to come.

    The fact is that reddit stole from us our faith in a ‘good internet’. The users of reddit built reddit, not the company that owns it (they suck). The users of reddit paid for the server time and made the system work. That good faith was utterly exploited by the leadership of reddit and we should never forget how they stole from and exploited their community.

    • TenderfootGungi@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I am not saying you are wrong, but when I was active on Reddit I rarely checked my mail. I still have like 12k unread messages.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          7 months ago

          You’d be surprised. Lots of people live like this, with all their devices and accounts. Ever piling up never read messages, whether emails, texts, or DMs. I don’t know if they’re just fine with it or if its something psychological making that many messages seem to big to approach, or because they don’t want to hear everyone’s cruel responses to what they said or I don’t know. But people do use accounts like that, for sure.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            It makes more sense if it’s something like email, where you likely know most of it is junk mail advertisements.

            But how can people not be curious why they have several unread messages where it’s very likely they are responses from humans who specifically responded to things they said?