### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/
Apologies if this is a repost. They’re scared lol.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14q12g7/subreddits_are_starting_to_see_spam_from/
Looks like r/programming discovered the astroturfing, so in true Reddit fashion they simply shut down the subreddit entirely to avoid the spread of negative public sentiment. Thanks for galvanizing my resolve to migrate to the fediverse, Spez
Shut down, you say? Every subreddit should post such truths, you say? Reddit will atomize itself instantly, you say?
Okay, maybe not but it's a fun thought, no?
I noticed this happened before the reddit blackouts. I haven't been to reddit since. Is this a new occurrence of the same ChatGPT astroturfing or is this that same news?
r/programming was one of the earliest subreddits, I think it was actually #2. Can't view it anymore, but the moderation team of r/programming would have been pretty reddit admin/staff heavy. Pretty sure spez was listed on the moderation team at one point.
Hello i hope you dont mind if i post that post, in case someone does not want to go onto reddit:
r/Save3rdPartyApps
u/attackofmilk
Subreddits are starting to see spam from anti-protest, pro-admin ChatGPT bots
Thread on /r/Pics discussing bot spam. (Pics is now NSFW, but this thread is only profanity / vulgarity.)
/r/pics/comments/14puynz/chatgpt_bots_are_spamming_proadmin_astroturf/
/r/Programming closed (by admins?) after community recognition of bot spam:
Ycombinator thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36361247
Top-voted post from /r/Programming before it closed: https://web.archive.org/web/20230611210834/https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/146wn9s/meta_who_is_astroturfing_rprogramming_and_why/
(I would have just crossposted the top thread directly, but this sub forbids crossposting NSFW posts (which is now everything on /r/Pics )
Ad-free no-money-to-reddit teddit link, https://teddit.adminforge.de/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14q12g7/subreddits_are_starting_to_see_spam_from/
The perfect site for reddit admins would be endless bots posting, commenting and viewing adds while said advertisers are oblivious to the con.
The first two have been going on at some level for years. The last? Well, it will be interesting to see the official reddit app's adoption numbers in the coming months.
That's also a fantastic way to end up in jail, which I wouldn't be opposed to spez getting familiar with
That won't go well either, in the long run. Advertisers will catch on to how many "people" are viewing their ads without ever clicking on anything and put their funds elsewhere.
Just gotta make it look good for the IPO, then what does Spez care?
At least ChatGPT is a more polite than the toxic, racist & sexist shit that remains on Reddit. Scrolled through /r/all this morning and was appalled by some of the toxic comments in the various submissions. I also noticed some sockpuppets somehow spewing the same bullshit opinion about certain topics, using the literal same type of phrasing too, just in different comment chains and with different accounts.
Honestly, probably better for my blood pressure to stay away from most of it.
Reddit is deploying millions of bots across the site, most of people on that shit site are interacting with bots.
PSA regarding federation (copied from previous comment)
I also want to continue spreading the word about federation issues. I've been on Lemmy for a month now and it's going great. But that whole time, it's essentially been impossible to comment on kbin magazines. The comments simply don't show up. I'm not seeing most of your comments when browsing here from Lemmy, but I am seeing Lemmy comments.
I obviously have this account, but its annoying to keep switching between accounts, plus I haven't really gotten the hang of the kbin interface yet.
Point being, I suspect much of the sluggishness of organic growth is not due to a small userbase, but rather due to the fact nobody can actually find the threads and comment on them efficiently. We need to remain steadfast and trust that the developers will fix this stuff up soon. I really feel that simply making Lemmy and kbin federate perfectly would immediately make this platform 10 times more active. We have plenty of people but right now we are fragmented into parallel communities. This isn't even getting into the server overload at a number of Lemmy instances.
I just don't want people to write off the platform before we can see how it's actually meant to work. I've seen a ton of brilliant comments on kbin and I haven't even had the chance to really mix it up with you guys yet.
Here was the Lemmy post about this story that somebody actually posted here a couple days before this thread. But it doesn't show up here and none of you can see it.
https://sh.itjust.works/post/706681
I really don't want people to get discouraged by this bug because it's very disconcerting when you make a high value comment or post and the response is crickets. Its not because the platform is empty, it's because federation is fucked and your post is invisible to everyone not on your local server.
I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I don't feel it's appropriate for me to comment on this.
/joke
Jesus Christ, do we have a good reason to believe that this was the admins and not some other random third-party group just deciding to do this for shits and giggles?
Because on one hand yeah I could totally see red it doing this after all of their other stupid mistakes so far.
On the other hand this seems really strange to me and it just seems so insane to think that Reddit would even think of doing this.
On the other hand this seems really strange to me and it just seems so insane to think that Reddit would even think of doing this.
Have you read about any of Spez's interviews? This feels entirely like something they would do. Don't forget, reddit was originally populated with bots.
I haven’t heard about that (being originally populated by bots) but I would love to read something about it if you know of anything.
“Huffman […] together with Ohanian launched Reddit in June 2005. Embarrassed by an empty-looking site, the founders created hundreds of fake users for their posts to make it look more populated” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit#History
[Serious] I am sorry, but can someone explain like I'm five what this is about?
Thanks in advance. I pay onise you, I am NOT a Bot. :-)
Someone (presumably at Reddit, but there's no hard proof of that), has recently begun using a large number of dummy accounts and what appears to be ChatGPT to post pro-admin, anti-protest comments across the site, and give them a lot of upvotes. Someone figured this out and posed evidence of it to /r/programming. Shortly after that thread reached the top of /r/programming, the subreddit was abruptly closed by the site admins, which is extremely suspect to say the least.
If I were gonna troll Reddit... This is the way. This is an attack on their integrity.
You'd be a fool for attacking an imaginary target, then.
They really are just bungling this completely.
If they were competent, we'd all still be on Reddit.
They found a bot on Reddit!? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you... well okay, not that shocked :-). \s
(yes I know, there's more to it than that, I just wanted to say the meme text, and also take this opportunity to BOW DOWN BEFORE OUR NEW OVERLORDS)
I already knew they didn't want moderators to have better anti-spam tools since it would decrease the apparent activity to attract advertisers.
When people tell you who they are, better to believe them the first time.
Huffman said he didn't need no stinking meatsacks... so now he must be happy with the way the site is working now... right!? :-P
What's astroturfing?
It's a play on the term "grass root movement". A grass root movement is one that starts with the people at the bottom, not at the top. So if a bunch of people got together (mostly independent of each other) to promote or protest something, that is a "grass roots" action.
Astroturf is basically fake grass, so "astroturfing" is something that is made to look like a "grass roots" movement but it isn't.