this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Technology

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[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am sure some of it is spam bots. But also - a big value of Reddit is indeed in the long tail of niche communities. Many did not join the protest.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Using bots to replace users-lost-to-protest has always been the goal. All that matters is that the numbers go up.

This is good for the sale (IPO).

Twitter had the same plan--keep counting bots. Elon (or some advisor on his team), rightfully argued this point and eventually it lead to a lawsuit, that was then settled out of court.

Google and facebook have been selling "ad impressions" of questionable human-ness for decades. None of these sites have any real incentive to find out how many bots are on their platform.