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The theory of the empty internet is looming. ;)
Using this low of a contrast (dark red on dark background) is criminal. Maybe my eyes are just that bad but good lord those notes are hard to read
This just proves that OP is not a bot, he is a dumb human like us
It’s not even mine, I put the source in the post.
But I agree with the poor colour choice
After this comment I am exactly 27.3% more suspicious of OP being a bot after all.
Yeah it’s awful. My vision is pretty good but this literally hurts to look at
News flash: it’s not just ask Reddit. It’s Reddit entirely. That place is a shithole of bots.
The only good answers I find to things are 3+ years old.
Yeah. That or niche subreddits that just aren’t popular enough to warrant bots. Like specific game communities. But even some of the big ones are full of bots.
Beep, boop! I am a bot, and this action was performed naturally.
Am I really a bot though?
Ok this red on black contrast is awful on the eyes.
A lot of the site feels like it’s been overrun by bots. The more niche communities seem to still be pretty good (and I do still enjoy engaging in them). But the subs like ask Reddit, Aita and the relationships one? Yea, it all feels like bs.
I think it’s due to the fact that a lot of mods left and the API changes made it harder to auto moderate subs.
If only the niche communities over here were a bit more active. For instance, I’ve been hyperfixating on Tamagotchi, but there isn’t a Tamagotchi community here yet :(
Gather round, children, and let me tell you a story of the same type of mindless corporate stupidity that happened in my state, about how something successful was ruined because all they could see was at the surface level…
When the mini-market chain AM/PM opened some stores in Baja California, they came up with a hybrid concept that also included a made-to-order fast food kitchen serving burgers, and a sizable seating area, they called this Dave’s Kitchen. It was a huge, huge hit.
Enter 7-11 into the scene. Getting wind of this new phenomenon and armed with corporate cash from their Mexico offices in… Monterrey I think it was… they bought every AM/PM in the state and converted them to 7-11s, surely salivating at the prospect of this large client base that was supposedly built-in with their acquisition.
So what was the first thing they did?
They shuttered Dave’s Kitchen. Poof… gone!
They got rid of the soda machine, the ice cream machine… instead of assimilating the business model of what they had bought, they got rid of everything that made these AM/PMs unique in the market, replaced it with their own bland and generic way of doing things according to the home office in Monterrey.Within a month, the new 7-11s had lost around 3/4 of their customers. Their emergency response was to send in a squad of corporate poll takers to pester the customers still there and see… why the other ones had gone, I guess?
Asking the wrong questions (why did the customers leave in droves?) to the wrong people (the few remaining clients who didn’t leave). And thus, nothing of value was learned, because when your corporate business school suits are clumsy unthinking hammers, every situation and problem look like a goddamned nail.
Perhaps they realized it would be cheaper to stop the growth of a superior product. Especially when that superior product would likely require more types of costs that would eat corporate level profit. More higher paid employees that can’t be mechanized.
Status quo is incredibly profitable, assuming nothing threatens it. That’s why big business does everything they can to increase the barrier of entry, and happily overpays to buy out successful competitors, with the leadership of the competitors having enforceable noncompetes for the model.
AM/PM honestly sounds like what the Sheetz chain does these days in a lot of ways.
Why is this a JPEG. I barely can read that text in red.
Maybe your client? Renders clear and legible for me
dark red on grey
I have tried to read that text on my desktop PC, so I was visiting regular site, but I must say that the picture is much clearer on my phone.
I guess it’s mostly because my gaming monitor is not that good at displaying colors or some other shit.
Needs more JPEG
how are people so bad with colors
The worst part is that they’re all really fucking bland questions. The shit you’d see on Facebook.
They’re engagement fodder designed to elicit human responses to provide a larger training dataset for future LLMs. That and to drive up Reddit usage and engagement numbers.
I’ve never understood what anyone gets out of hosting and spamming reddit with bots
Selling accounts with high karma to people wanting to push an agenda with a seemingly legit account
Conspiracy hat on:
It’s done by Reddit themselves. They know user visits are dropping. They know power users have slipped. To avoid making it look like a desert, they have bots create content.
Reddit’s origin story is sockpuppeting as users.
They’ll do it again
The difference between now and then though, is they were a private company.
Unless they disclose they use bots to post content and make the site look active, any use of user count and engagement for any aspect of the company becomes fraud as its misleading investors.
Oh we have 1 million posts an hour! Fraud.
Oh we have 100 million monthly active users! Fraud!
Investors Q/A - do you use bots? Answer No. Fraud.
Fraud doesn’t really stop a big company, if they can get away with it.
Facebook for example.
And whose to say it’s not them directly, but a “third party who Reddit pays for user acquisition” services?
They can pay a random LLC to do it for them.
Q&A do you use bots to generate content or have you used any 3rd party that uses bots themselves directly or through another party.
As long as its asked and it gets leaked they lied it’s fraud.
Plausible deniability doesn’t work if proof comes out.
You don’t hire a hitman and get off scott free when proof comes out you hired a hitman.
The 9Gag way…
My friend still uses reddit
Pissing off all their best users sure was a fantastic idea.
So… I could sell my Reddit Account? 10 Years 20K+ Karma, any bids?
/s
I’ll give you one up vote.
It’s remarkable, the questions that aren’t from bots are completely indistinguishable.
It’s all low quality engagement bait, and all these questions were on the front page of askreddit a hundred times with slight variations.They’re indistinguishable because they’re copied from top-voted posts that are a few years old (title, text, and image if applicable). It’s guaranteed to produce a post that fits the community and gets a lot of engagement, so it’s a cheap and effective way to mature a bot account. Once you start looking for it, it’s everywhere, and Reddit admins don’t care.
What’s the aim? What do they use the accounts for once they’ve acquired the karma, which I am assume is the goal.
I’m speculating, but my guesses are:
- Gathering enough karma to post on subreddits that have a minimum threshold.
- Getting enough post and comment history to pass a casual inspection, either by human moderators or spam filters.
- Maturing the account to the point where it can be sold to another shady company.
- Generally having a lot of bot accounts ready, just in case.
Once mature, it’s usually used for spam or astroturfing. There is a noticeable uptick around big elections, wars, etc.
I saw one repost-bot that metastisized into the most vile porn-spam-bot you can imagine, but they’re usually more subtle than that.
I look forward to meeting my undeleted zombie Reddit account one day. I’m picturing it like Shaun and Ed at the end of Shaun of the Dead.
I’m almost tempted to turn off 2fa on my account and give it a weak password just to see what its next life becomes.
