▲ 459 ▼ As Reddit Crushes Protests, Its User Traffic Returns to Normal (www.pcmag.com) submitted 3 years ago by ardi60@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml 322 comments fedilink hide all child comments
[–] what_is_a_name@lemmy.world 21 points 3 years ago (1 child) 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. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] s_s@lemmy.one 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years 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. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] s_s@lemmy.one 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years 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. permalink fedilink source parent