• Heresy_generator
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    1671 year ago

    Member-only story

    Medium wants me to pay them to read a story from “Homeless Romantic” who is listed as a “Ph.D. Rocket Surgeon & Aspiring Troglodyte”?

    Are they fucking high?

    • gregorum
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      551 year ago

      well, whomever describes themselves in such a manner clearly is.

    • TacoButtPlug
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      1 year ago

      It’s been a wonder that site ever got traction as something credible to get info from and not just a weird mesh of editorial, blogging, and long winded shitposts…

      edit: That being said, fuck reddit.

      • @Caaaaarrrrlll@lemmy.ml
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        71 year ago

        I’ve always seen it as a site for random people to shitpost. Who takes Medium seriously as a credible source?

      • @OmanMkII@aussie.zone
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        31 year ago

        For me, it was often a place where a lot of qualified people would essentially write blogs because hosting their own site for it would get utterly ignored by google. The last few years though I’ve got more utter morons than people who can write a good article, even for generic questions that they could straight up copy and paste from another site.

    • RedFox
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      51 year ago

      Are they fucking high?>

      Yeah, probably

  • @PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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    3871 year ago

    The ebike subreddit is modded by the owners of Lunacycle. They actively remove posts about bad customer service/other issues from Lunacycle. I witnessed them name and shame some random redditor and accuse them of fraud because they posted screenshots of email correspondence that pointed out shady dealings on Luna’s part.

    They use the general subreddit for electric bikes to funnel everyone into ordering from them.

    • gregorum
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      1 year ago

      during the massive purge of rebellious mods, there was a huge opening for corporate shills to move into places where previous mods had kept them out. this phenomenon was widespread in many fan and specialty subs. Reddit admins were more than happy to let this happen, as corporate shills were also more than happy to be cooperative with Reddit admins.

      • deweydecibel
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        1 year ago

        Everything about Reddit’s most recent changes has been openly about cracking the place wide open for corporate marketing. Everything good about it was because of how genuine it was, and it was genuine because for a very long time, the attitude was to shield it against corporate influence.

        That’s the only reason it became such a valuable place for search results: as the forums and blogs around the Internet went silent and corporations ravaged individual websites, reddit was a bubble of genuine interaction. It’s not just Google’s shitty algorithm, it’s also because the Internet itself got injected with shit, and reddit was a safe haven. A deeply flawed one, but still, notably less fake and corporate than the web pages around it.

        That’s what gave it value.

        Spez knows this. The admins have known this the whole damn time. That’s why there used to be rules against self-posting content. That’s why celebrities were only allowed to promote things in AMAS. To head off attention seeking, marketing, and corporate influence.

        But the time came to make money, and they’re burning it all down to accomplish that.

        I will never not share this blog because it hits the nail so cleanly on the head it sails straight down to the core of the earth:

        Stop talking to each other and start buying things

        It’s not just about ads, it’s about the corruption of public spaces. The death of social media is when someone tries to start making money off it at the expense of its genuine human interaction, which can not exist in that environment unmolested, and will cascade into the platform’s collapse over time. it’s enshitification, yes, but it’s also something else: “dehumanation”. The drowning of the human element of your social platform through profit seeking.

        • @czardestructo@lemmy.world
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          231 year ago

          I’ve been through too many exodus, this post hits hard and true. Been using the net since 95 and have been a community refuge too many times. I’m really hoping federation takes off because I’m tired of rebuilding. Not sure I’ll try again if this doesn’t pan out.

          • JJROKCZ
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            91 year ago

            Hate to break it to you but it will likely happen again. Meta is already encroaching on our new corner of the web, they’ll either eat it or it’ll die out on its own as funding doesn’t really exist here

    • GreatAlbatross
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      111 year ago

      In a similar more minor vein, the Snowpeircer (tv show) sub was administered by the showrunners.
      They were mostly subtle about it, but quietly removed lots of posts after a week or so that didn’t fit show promo.
      I’m pretty sure they’ve abandoned it now that the show is in limbo.

  • @ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1641 year ago

    Is all bad online behavior “trolling” now? Isn’t “shill” a better word for someone who is paid to surreptitiously promote something?

    • paraphrand
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      151 year ago

      No, all bad online behavior now is “bots.”

      At least that’s how people in the comments on lemmy and Reddit label them.

      • Cosmic Cleric
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        31 year ago

        No, all bad online behavior now is “bots.”

        At least that’s how people in the comments on lemmy and Reddit label them.

        I, and others, have distinguish between shills and bots.

        Usually people use shilling as an alternative to astroturfing by paid human beings, while bots are just AI/programming posting.

        • paraphrand
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          31 year ago

          It seems to correlate with the rise in general awareness of LLMs like ChatGPT. It seems like just the threat/possibility of ChatGPT being used has already distorted discourse online.

        • phillaholic
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          11 year ago

          I always saw it as someone who only repeats talking points verbatim is essentially a robot. If I can’t tell if you are a human posting, or an automated response is there a meaningful difference?

    • @Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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      751 year ago

      Back in my day trolling meant something. It meant you cared enough to actually form a real argument that withstands scrutiny, just to setup for the rug pull. The better your polemic, the more engagement as people debated if you were for real or not.

      Shitposting controversial hot takes or dog whistle memes is mid af, do better

      • @MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
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        231 year ago

        From my understanding trolling meant exactly what it says it is: Trolling. I think people for some reason get this mixed up with trolls - as in the fantasy type monster. But I think it actually has to do with the fishing termtrolling where you cast out your line, and see if you can get somebody to take the bait. Once they take the bait, you take em for a ride.

        • @theneverfox@pawb.social
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          01 year ago

          Actually, that’s also where the name of the mythical creature comes from. They’d set up bridges that offer convenient shortcuts as bait for humans

        • Cosmic Cleric
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          1 year ago

          From my understanding trolling meant exactly what it says it is: Trolling. I think people for some reason get this mixed up with trolls - as in the fantasy type monster. But I think it actually has to do with the fishing termtrolling where you cast out your line, and see if you can get somebody to take the bait. Once they take the bait, you take em for a ride.

          When the word is used on the Internet it’s meant in the fantasy monster way. Specifically it comes from the story of the troll underneath the bridge, interfering with people trying to cross the bridge.

      • Cosmic Cleric
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        31 year ago

        polemic

        po·lem·ic /pəˈlemik/ noun a speech or piece of writing expressing a strongly critical attack on or controversial opinion about someone or something. “his polemic against the cultural relativism of the Sixties”

    • @gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 year ago

      it is not “now”. It is exactly as it was being used in 2020, when the article was written, by the mass media. They were calling “troll” everyone they were disagreeing with.

  • sebinspace
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    241 year ago

    You’re kidding yourself if you think they aren’t also on Lemmy.

    • @z00s@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can assume they’re everywhere but at least Lemmy is still a small enough target for now that it’s not completely enshittened (yet)

    • Troy
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      11 year ago

      Too small. We only have users with individual agendas still.

      May I talk to you about my lord and saviour, Gandalf?

    • @Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      51 year ago

      Lemmy probably isn’t big enough for the ad bots to be worth it yet. Lemmy is more infested with right wing astroturf shills pretending to be leftists and pushing “both sides” nonsense.

    • kingthrillgore
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      21 year ago

      What are you talking about? We’re not active on Lemmy. We don’t even have time to be here, we’re too busy enjoying a refreshing Starry

      • sebinspace
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        11 year ago

        Okay but actually imagine preferring Starry over Sprite.

    • @psud@lemmy.world
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      21 year ago

      This is research from before the API changes. Loads of astroturf efforts were easy to notice, there must have been more subtle ones.

      I always wonder whether the famous post about vacuum cleaners was paid for by the company he recommended. If it was, they got their money’s worth - that redditor was convincing.

    • @ManOMorphos@lemmy.world
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      61 year ago

      A lot of the shill marketing is very hard to prove. A lot of the dialogue gets mixed in with commentors that have genuine brand loyalty.

      It’s far too easy for a marketing team to acquire a high karma account and blend in. We’ll never get a truly clear picture of how much Reddit is astroturfed.

  • nicetriangle
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    161 year ago

    It is incredibly cheap and easy to artificially bump a post to the top of a decent sized subreddit. I’ve seen it done before and the cost per impression/click puts most advertising to shame. And this was being done unsophisticatedly by some dude and a cheap bot. Now imagine what major corporations can do with all the resources to burn.

  • @egeres@lemmy.world
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    191 year ago

    I know lemmy is fundamentally critic of reddit, but let’s not forget if lemmy ever achieves a significant weight in humanity’s attention, it’s not immune to such disease. The problem is systemic, not inherent of a specific platform. Any place with a lot of eyes will be susceptible to manipulation, even more so now that we have tamed artificial intelligence to write texts just about anything. We as a community need to think about countermeasures to fend this off

  • FlavoredButtHair
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    221 year ago

    You mean that wasn’t some random wrestling fan or music fan I was chatting with? Fuck reddit.

    In all seriousness, it was awesome 2 years ago, but the mods are fucking it up really bad. Lemmy FTW.

  • Phil K
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    1071 year ago

    I popped over to Reddit for the first time since third party apps were cruelly shut down. It’s clear that Reddit has sunk to new lows. Obviously trolling and a marked decrease in the quality of content

    • @Dagnet@lemmy.world
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      691 year ago

      what I noticed is that posts have huge amounts of upvotes, even from small communities, and often no comments or when it does have comments its often very basic stuff, almost AI like

      • @EatYouWell@lemmy.world
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        441 year ago

        Well, if you’re going to defraud investors by pumping up your numbers before your IPO, you might as well go all out.

          • The Picard Maneuver
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            211 year ago

            Yeah, looks like the default “word_wordnumbers” usernames that reddit gives you if don’t change them.

            I wonder if that would be an easy way to detect botting by not filling in that field for them.

            • HarkMahlberg
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              211 year ago

              Yeah, looks like the default “word_wordnumbers” usernames that reddit gives you if don’t change them.

              This change is when I knew Reddit was going down the shitter. Automatically handing out default usernames instead of requiring you to pick your own. The only people that could possibly help are a) people with absolutely no imagination whatsoever, b) bots, and c) people making a dozen alts to puff up their main.

            • Cosmic Cleric
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              Yeah, looks like the default “word_wordnumbers” usernames that reddit gives you if don’t change them.

              Funny enough, this started happening on YouTube (comments) as well, around the same time.

              The issue with sites starting to use numbering as part of the default username only started happening after AI posting became a thing, because an Achilles heel is the fact that AI can’t come up with enough believable unique names for all the posts they want their AI bots to make.

              • @numberfour002@lemmy.world
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                11 year ago

                an Achilles heel is the fact that AI can’t come up with enough believable unique names for all the posts you want your AI bots to make

                That seems counterintuitive to me in the context of modern AI approaches. I’m wondering if you could elaborate on that a bit more.

                • Cosmic Cleric
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                  1 year ago

                  That seems counterintuitive to me in the context of modern AI approaches.

                  How so? Elaborate?

                  I’m wondering if you could elaborate on that a bit more.

                  This seems sufficiently explanatory to me, especially the italicized part…

                  AI can’t come up with enough believable unique names for all the posts they want their AI bots to make

                  Unbelievable usernames becomes an easy identifier/tag for identifying bot post.

                  Edit: since this comment got downvoted (as the assumed reply) I thought I would elaborate a bit more.

                  Basically, we name our user accounts to fit the society we live in’s norms, it’s naming conventions.

                  If you just run a bunch of vowels and consonants together, that does not make a username, at least not one that people will recognize as a valid one created by a human being.

                  Part of how bots are effective is in the quantity of bots that are used. Since it’s near zero cost to spin up a new bot to make posts/comments, many can be made.

                  However people can track the validity of a user name as being a bot versus human by the quantity of the posts/comments the username makes (only so many hours in a day, and human beings are busy with other things besides just posting on Lemmy), so no one single bot can make too many posts/comments at one time.

                  Because of this, you need a large quantity of unique names, one for each of your bots, and they have to be believable ones by humans, so they’re not identified as bots.

        • ThisLucidLens
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          41 year ago

          I can’t believe 8 people had the exact same idea for a post at the same time, that’s crazy

          /s

      • @Lemonparty@lemm.ee
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        51 year ago

        You know what else is random and probably related to their paid content? Their sorting doesn’t work right anymore. Posts in “hot” are regularly like more than a day old but then also some are brand new like minutes old. But if you sort by top 24 hours…same posts. Sometimes the order is different but easily 75% of the posts are the same. A 24 hour old post with no new comments is “hot”? A one hour old post with 20 comments is in the top posts of the past day?..OKAY

        • @numberfour002@lemmy.world
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          31 year ago

          It could be incompetence. Lemmy.world has similar and significant issues with sorting as well and I presume you’re not also implying that paid content has anything to do with lemmy sorting.

  • @kandoh@reddthat.com
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    311 year ago

    And another 50% is trolls working probono to be try and convince people that racism is the only way forward

  • @Jordan117@lemmy.world
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    681 year ago

    And a significant part of the remainder are repost bots recycling old popular posts and comments in order to farm karma, which will eventually be sold to OnlyFans spammers, political ops, and corporate shills.