The theory of the empty internet is looming. ;)

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.

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

~~Ask~~Reddit is over run by bots.

FTFY

the average redditor will still insist on appending "Reddit" onto Google searches since it "lets them see real human opinions" only because they can't discern obvious botting from genuine human interactions

News flash: it’s not just ask Reddit. It’s Reddit entirely. That place is a shithole of bots.

Ok this red on black contrast is awful on the eyes.

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.

Why is this a JPEG. I barely can read that text in red.

The worst part is that they're all really fucking bland questions. The shit you'd see on Facebook.

No offence to anyone here but fuck Reddit!

how are people so bad with colors

So.... I could sell my Reddit Account? 10 Years 20K+ Karma, any bids?

/s

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.

Pissing off all their best users sure was a fantastic idea.

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.

I've never understood what anyone gets out of hosting and spamming reddit with bots

remember when they banned bots on r/mademesmile or something and there were no posts anymore?

If reddit hadn't locked their API behind absurd paywalls, it would have been a cool project to try to make a browser plugin that gives accounts a "credit score" based on the factors you've been looking at, in order to let users quickly judge how likely an account is a bot.

It could let people adjust the metrics it uses to calculate that score in the settings, so even if it becomes popular enough for bots to start trying to game the system, people can adapt their scoring metrics themselves and share config profiles that they think are more effective at rating bots.

Might be something cool to see for activitypub/fediverse/lemmy accounts, but with the data available varying by instance it might be a little harder to calibrate a "catch-all" scoring config

AskReddit was a junk pit anyway, so it would not be a loss, even if it wasn't reddit.

I used to call out bots sometimes about 2-3 years ago and I can tell you it already was like this. The only difference is the addition of AI, but early bot networks just used Google translate back and forth to copy entire old posts without being noticed.

Askreddit was a scummy Karma farm already. This still sucks, though.

What's your favorite Iron Man scene from any of the Marvel Movies?

Fun thing to do is when you realize 99% of the internet is just advertising teams working for these rich fucking A hole's, is you make them work for their money but posting things that PR companies would hate. Just culture jam the hell out of the dead internet. Its the only way to be. Its what makes places like r/joerogan and r/thefighterandthekid so much fun.