New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

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.

I’m calling 1 year on the over/under for the introduction of blue check marks.

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.

Since before the exodus or after?

I'm not used to seeing this with so many pixels.

It's so much worse than 15%.

And they said the bears were the ones posting obnoxious huge images!

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

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.

Are they fucking high?>

Yeah, probably

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

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

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

Shill is a banned word on reddit still right?

Is all bad online behavior "trolling" now?

People like throwing buzzwords regardless of their meaning.

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.

Et tu, Barbie?

I can’t believe THE Margot Robbie is on the fediverse.

Good for you, girl!

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

Even just calling it a "new study" is already a lie

This title is one of the 15%

I'll see the same post on 2 or 3 subs and it will just be something I saw a year or more ago.

It's amazing how quickly the admins came down on some subs after the trench titty drama broke. He was basically reddit's MrBabyMan. And he's probably not the only one.

What’s Sam Altman’s connection to Reddit?

How is Sam Altman related to Reddit?

Maybe it'll be good and healthy to start again from fresh, get the old feeling again. We just gotta build up that initial content now to grow the appeal to newcomers

Corporate trolls at it again!

Man. I zapped all my cookies the other day, and when I re-loaded reddit, it forced me into a new new version of the mobile site.

Now almost every single comment that isn't top level is hidden behind the 'more comments' button. When I click it, the whole page reloads, with the top comment and the one response. And a button for the next reply. And so on.

I've noticed since this change, almost no posts have any discussion any more at all. Which honestly. Why would you bother?

The pop-iver video player is an infuriating choice. I watched the video, scroll down and the fucking thing follows me?! Wtf?! Why?? Am I going to forget that I just watched that video two seconds ago?! Argh!

If the fediverse gets a lot of traction, this sort of “spam” will be difficult to moderate and every instance will need to have sophisticated systems to prevent it.

If it's on Medium it's almost certainly repackaged news anyway.

Am I blind? I don't even see where it names the study. It just says Pew, who publishes many studies. Does medium expect me to search for their sources?

I went to the mall because I wished to experience Christmas undignified, to front only the essential facts of capitalism, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to New Years, discover that I had not contributed.

Not calm? Eat a snickers.

Yeah but we just got 8" of rain and 70 mph winds during a freak December storm that took out half our power grid, how will Amazon-Clause find my house?!? 80 degrees warmer than it should be here and our snowman holding up the mail box melted!!!

So you're saying it's almost certainly a significantly larger percentage now.

Sounds about right.

And the other 50% is AI bots, just trying to keep people engaged.

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.

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

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

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

Disappointing yes. Surprising no.

Humans gonna Hume, as they say

There are still propagadists here, and they are leaving no stones unturned by covering as many platforms as possible.

Not if Lemmy sticks to their platform.

That's the potentially nice thing about Lemmy though - if you're savvy, you will probably start to identify which instances are more or less trustworthy than others. And if an instance tends to have a lot of untrustworthy activity, defederation is always an option. To what extent we'll see those things play out, I don't know yet, but it'll be interesting to see.

Vigilance and blocking

Not just mods, but the entire Capitalistic model.

Yes, mods are nuts on reddit.

At least here this is some accountability with the modlog.

Hello fellow human. I am making smalltalk like humans do sometimes.

Yes hi I am Real Man hey do you like to go skateboards?

I’m OPs defense, it do say “at least”.

Does a local biz owner count as a corporate troll?

I would've banned you for saying "Trump loving" followed by "shitstain" because there really is no need to say the same thing twice and waste everybody else's reading time...

Yep, i've been banned from like 10 subs despite being very careful with how i word my opinion that's different that what's normally accepted.... it didn't used to be that way, a lot of the opinions I have that get me banned were once mainstream on reddit.

It pisses me off how kid-friendly everything has become online. You can't swear at people and call them fucking idiots no matter how warranted it may be. People censor "removed" because it's a 'gay-slur' but in the UK it's a food type and a fag is a cigarette. "LatinX" and "unaliving" are things. There's Reddit subs where people can say "nigga" without being banned because it's assumed they're all black. But it's online so there's no way of fucking knowing!!

I feel like the Internet is turning into a fucking kiddie day care centre for young adult Americans.

It's insidious too. I didn't realise how much I was self-censoring until I came to Lemmy and started swearing more in comments. On Reddit I'd been talking like a guy surrounded by children, afraid to swear, lest I offend someone.

At least here I feel like I can express thoughts and feelings.

Exactly. And on major subreddits it would be much higher. Worldnews at the moment just feels like IDF posting pro-genocide content, commenting, upvoting and agreeing with each other.

Reddit goes in the bin. 🚮

There's a theory that certain emails scams are so obvious and easy to spot because that acts as a self-selection mechanism. A person who sees the obvious scam and immediately recognizes it as such was probably never going to fall for it. The ones that respond in spite of all the signs tend to be easier or more lucrative targets.

I could see forcing people to download an app just to see the content as operating on a similar (but not 100% analogous) principle. The type of person who willingly installs the app to see the content (without knowing if it was worthwhile/relevant beforehand) may be exactly the type of person that they prefer to join their site. Perhaps they are easier targets for marketing, less likely to understand /complain about the ramifications of changes to the site that are user adverse, care less about privacy, etc and that makes them more lucrative?

at least its such functionally, if not in actual numbers

the impact those accounts have is much higher than a normal 15% slice of the comments.. what they produce is generally non-random, so it's all going toward whatever set of ideas they need to bombard with bullshit.. they intentionally shut down and/or control discussion..

say more about that. what sort of apps are being peddled?

Inexperience leads to easier marks. Someone who is otherwise markedly intelligent will fall for the silliest things on impulse.

Wow. Corporations are tagging younger generations as dumb shits.

I mean, I wouldn't use that language, but yeah of course. They don't have firm beliefs yet, in most cases, and their worldviews are more likely to be shaped by memes, whereas the older generations adopt the memes that appeal to their worldview.

If you want to shape people, you want to ideally target young adults.