this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
25 points (96.3% liked)

Technology

59143 readers
3012 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 47 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

One bot's review is referring to Reddit as Tripomate. Lol oh reddit...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Lol that's hilarious!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This reminds to give reddit 1 star on Playstore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lmao I saw a 5 star review that said the official app was "better than any 3rd party app", that it had "non-intrusive ads", and asking for an ads toggle for premium users to be able to support reddit. I can't even tell if it's some sort of elaborate sarcasm. Wild.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Currently 2.4/5.0 on the Play Store. Wasn't that long ago when it was around 4.0. Their rating has taken a beating over the last few weeks.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Before the API pricing change, the Reddit app could be considered an internal hobby project made by a handful of employees on their spare time.

Now that this one is mandatory, it can be rated for what it is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I for sure helped with the beating.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're also definitely doing some sort of keyword manipulation, cause the official Reddit App is fairly high in the result list when searching for Lemmy.

On another note: hi, I just came here today after RIF stopped working 👋

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm here full time too since I got connect.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I gave it a 1 star review. I'm doing my part o7

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Just left mine. Fuck u/spez

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like I must be crazy but these reviews do not read like 5 star reviews. Seems super suspect.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re right. One specifically mentions ‘would rate this 0 if I could’ so in lieu of that option, they selected a…5?

Have they gone through and scraped the text from a bunch of real reviews and are reposting them with 5 star ratings to make them look organic?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That honestly sounds to be the likely scenario. If someone saw the review they might shrug it off as an error or mistake.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

After seeing this, I thought I'd go over to the Play Store to leave a 1 star review. Then discovered I had already left a 1 star review (complaining about their shitty interface) a few months ago, which I'd totally forgotten about ;-)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That was exactly what I did too

"Oh...I already gave it 1 star...good"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Past-self high-five.

(my first lemmy comment let's gooo)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Reddit is completely astroturfed now. Nothing but bots and humans that act like bots.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

it's not just that reddit turned into a huge greedy corpo-clusterfuck when they went public, it was kinda bad before that too and held bad practices. Lemmy has a lot of the same features that made reddit shit on a fundamental level.

The up-vote downvote system itself is a both a curse and blessing. it's sorts things decently but it encourages mediocrity and bot like behaviour in people, if one likes to put it that way. It makes discussing anything controversial and where the issue isn't black or white, impossible. Good for cat pics and tits, but really bad for politics and the like, because everything eventually floats towards some status quo and everybody and everything else is sidelined and encouraged to shut up or go with the flow or face downvote barrage.

Also the bots are here, not yet, but they will be. Bots are easy to make here too. If this place ever gets even decently popular this place will get astroturfed and up-vote manipulated just like reddit. it's too easy to manipulated community opinion or shill for issues or things in site like this. Federated structure might help or make it worse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They're not even public yet lmao. And reddit got started by using bots to post content from RSS feeds to make it look busier than it was.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I hear that instances can disable downvoting in Lemmy's configuration. Maybe this is some solution to this issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

what i fear is that reddit will take completely unnecessary but effective potshots at the fediverse and take down instances or fill them with bots just to punish those who made a point of leaving.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I expect it from reddit, Twitter and Facebook. This is a competitive service, and it's not backed by a rich person that can swing money around to discover their behavior and sue them. They'll likely be doing some shady stuff to make sure this either doesn't work, or is under their control.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ironic that the FTC is going to likely make these illegal soon. Anyone want to save screenshots?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Just leave my first 1 star to reddit app

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

No. It’s the new bot users rating their new favorite app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

just left a 1 star review, because it honestly deserves it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't buying reviews/fake users something a struggling new startup does, not something that has been around for > 10 years. This is kinda sad (if indeed these are bought reviews).

Is this screenshot from Apple or Google stores (I don't know what either look like to be honest). I wonder if the same thing is happening on the other store now too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Older than that, my account is 16 years old…I came from the Digg exodus and it existed for a short while before that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The last time it was posted I investigated the reviews on Google play, and every rating was made by a real person, or a bot impersonating the real person. There is no way to tell appart except by contacting the person.
Avoid falling into a circle jerk, we are better than this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that second one not what you would do if you were trying to generate reviews that would pass automated checks? The hard part is deciding if the fake reviews were requested/bought/generated by Reddit or if they're an independent bot network trying to establish legitimacy or mask directed action.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or just when there is a movement a protests there is always a bunch of people against the protest.
Bunch of redditors are pissed off that we ruin their addiction.
In the account I checked, somes had a selfie of themselves that werent indexed on google yet. To me it point out it's more likely a genuine account

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The real people I'm not commenting on, I'm commenting on the bots. The question is why they're reviewing the Reddit app, and that's basically unknowable without an investigation well beyond my skill level and pay grade. They could be a bot network trying to build credibility or a bot network cashing out and leaving paid reviews.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You seems to miss my point from the very beginning: I'm saying it's maybe not bots. Don't fall into confirmation bias.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're the one who said some of the reviews were copies of legitimate reviews! What else would that be besides bots? I'm not making any definite conclusions about why those bots are there, in fact I was trying to be explicit about the fact that we can't assume intent, but the bots are there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did not said that. I said it was legit reviews OR bot impersonating users, and there is no easy way to tell.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

AH, I misunderstood what this meant, then:

The last time it was posted I investigated the reviews on Google play, and every rating was made by a real person, or a bot impersonating the real person. There is no way to tell appart except by contacting the person.

I read this to mean that you were finding duplicate reviews where one set seemed to be bots impersonating the other set. But, your comment clarifies what you meant. My bad.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can't say I'm even remotely surprised. It's unfortunate that even user reviews have become all but useless on most platforms due to corpo bullshit like this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (6 children)

good things corporations are people too so their votes they paid for count right?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.

load more comments
view more: next ›