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What percentage of Reddit users are bots or foreign bad actors? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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.

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[–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

The problem is I dont think many of the accounts really care if their total account activity appears organic. They are mostly there to create volume, sometimes to puff up activity metrics, to amplify specific points and narratives, or simply to shut down conversation if it strays into the wrong topic. They know Reddit doesnt actually want to stop them, and the individual accounts rarely say anything interesting enough to justify human users taking the time to evaluate their post history.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    You make a good point.. In general, no one cares enough to track all this down. That is true. So that makes me wonder.. who does/would care? So in a capitalist system, until the day the flow of money is impacted, generally nothing changes.

    So if Reddit really is all (or vastly) bots, then aren't advertisers paying to advertise to bots? And if that is true, at a certain point some metrics will show the yield on their investments is bunk.

    Maybe that is how it collapses. I can hope.

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