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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I personally think reddit these days is 80% bots and "call centres" making comments. So there's no need to censor the site directly, just put backroom restrictions on what the call centres and bots are allowed to push.

I doubt this. Reddit is very easy to manipulate so you don't need a ton of "bots".

That said, it's so funny to go in to like corporate subs whenever they release a shit product, like Google with the Pixel 6, and look at the shill threads and comments. It's is so incredibly transparent.

You may not need it, but it seems highly unlikely to me that various actors wouldn't be out there trying to insure their voice wins out. Look at Twitter: the bot count seems to be higher than previously thought.

I'm not saying that there aren't bots, I'm saying that you don't need a ton on Reddit because the website's design makes manipulation easy and requires far less engagement than sites like Twitter.

Blended automated/real user accounts (shares, upmodding/downmodding, low effort dunks automated, while a real user or users adapts a script in more complicated posts) are apparently the current meta in this kind of thing. And it jives with how you'll see some seemingly canned longpost response on a topic like Covid or Ukraine from an account whose entire history is football subreddits.

/r/stadia comes to mind. It’s very creepy how almost everyone on there is so emotionally invested over a unremarkable service that lets you play a small selection of video games on your chrome device. Sort by top to see the sub constantly fluctuate between wailing and gnashing of teeth over dwindling user base to euphoric highs when Google pushes a update (rare).

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