this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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I dont have any direct experience with reddit any longer.
What I can say, is that I think a verrrrrrry significant portion of comments and commenters are actually reddit run bots. My source for this is my experience in the daily thread of a certain degenerate gambling forum. There were maybe like 12-30 posters who would reply, engage, etc... in the daily and day after threads. However, there was a yyyyyuuuuugggge number of accounts that would just comment with no real further engagement. Like you would respond to them, but they wouldnt respond back.
I truly believe that reddits internal business model is predicted on the use of reddit run bots to create synthetic engagement in certain audiences around marketing targets that a selective group of advertisers (read, not buying reddit ads) are given access to. The basics is that reddit astroturfs synthetic engagement until organic engagement takes over. I have no way of proving this and its pure speculation.
This is why I don't even worry about considering the user numbers on lemmy. Relying on my anectdotal experience, we've got about the usership/ engagement numbers from around the 2009-2011 time period, which is actually pretty amazing. Also, the overall lemmy experience is far superior, for example, just the ability to sort by a couple of different 'hot' options is a major improvement. I really think if the devs just keep vibing on their plan, lemmy will be more than strong enough to survive and continue for decades to come.
The fact is that reddit stole from us our faith in a 'good internet'. The users of reddit built reddit, not the company that owns it (they suck). The users of reddit paid for the server time and made the system work. That good faith was utterly exploited by the leadership of reddit and we should never forget how they stole from and exploited their community.
It's not just speculation on your part.
How it started:
https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/
How it's going:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/13p889x/reddit_admins_were_just_caught_using_bots_or_fake/
They also started handing out usernames to companies over "trademark infringement." Someone with the username "FoodNetwork" is losing the username to the real Food Network.
I was on reddit long enough to remember how people used to run corporate stooges out with pitchforks.
"These are fan run forums," they would say. The idea that you could have your username taken by a corporation was unheard of, because originally, it was considered really bad form to have anyone from the business running the subreddit, because then it wouldn't be a neutral source of information.
Nope, now they can steal usernames and it's totes okay for subreddits to be completely controlled by their corporate namesake.
Pretty sure corporations running their own subreddits has been.a thing for awhile now. Fairly certain Costco's subreddit is fully modded by their advertising department. Threads written by employees during COVID were getting nuked constantly.