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   Evan B🥥ehs (eb@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:16 JST Evan B🥥ehs

   • Jason Koebler

   @jasonkoebler's https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-products-and-game-google-with-parasite-seo backs up my assertions about the death of social media in https://boehs.org/node/llms-destroying-internet

   Though, he states that reddit won't become an AI hellscape. I disagree. It already is one.

   Where do the "high karma" accounts come from? They come from huge subreddits where the bots have begun posting marginally related content that people blindly upvote because "cute animal" or whatever (+voting rings). The quality control is gone. The frontpage is governed by bots.

   • Embed this notice
     Jason Koebler (jasonkoebler@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:08 JST Jason Koebler

     in reply to

     @eb but yes there is obviously a lot of manipulation, spam, etc on there and it's getting worse

     Eaton repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Evan B🥥ehs (eb@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:08 JST Evan B🥥ehs

     in reply to

     • Jason Koebler

     @jasonkoebler Remember what I was saying about the dead internet theory? https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11615413

   • Embed this notice
     Jason Koebler (jasonkoebler@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:09 JST Jason Koebler

     in reply to

     @eb I think Power Moderators is actually an aspect of Reddit that is extremely under-discussed. A few people who mostly suck and have huge egos have a disproportionate impact on what people see.

   • Embed this notice
     Jason Koebler (jasonkoebler@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:09 JST Jason Koebler

     in reply to

     @eb Like I said I think you're mostly right but I think it still feels possible for an individual user to curate a not-entirely-shitty experience on Reddit. It is definitely the most useful platform I regularly use, for me. But I have aggressively unsubscribed from most large subs. That experience is impossible on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/Threads/TikTok. Is still possible here.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan B🥥ehs (eb@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:10 JST Evan B🥥ehs

     in reply to

     • Jason Koebler

     @jasonkoebler

     Third, I would contend that the moderators haven't won out. The protests were entirely unsuccessful. Reddit correctly understood that some people are just attached to the clout and will fill in the holes. I think a lot of the dedicated moderators have left.

     But anyway, if you spend a few minutes scrolling through the front page, you can find posts that slightly don't fit, with thousands of upvotes. Quietly, in the comments, one person complains.

   • Embed this notice
     Jason Koebler (jasonkoebler@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:12 JST Jason Koebler

     in reply to

     @eb I mostly agree with you but I do think Reddit is currently more resilient to this than the other platforms because it uses ethically dubious but definitely more effective volunteer content moderators, who have enough power that, in a well-moderated community, the incentives of moderators and Reddit the company aren't aligned, and the moderators actually win out. Their automod tools are also pretty decent

   • Embed this notice
     Evan B🥥ehs (eb@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:12 JST Evan B🥥ehs

     in reply to

     • Jason Koebler

     @jasonkoebler In some communities, the moderation is tight. In many of the largest communities with "less defined" focus areas (like "BlackMagicFuckery" and "MadeMeSmile"), there's been a considerable quality degradation — the mods have given up.

     This is not surprising, given the largest communities are lead by "power moderators", people who "moderate" a large number of subreddits for clout.

     1/2

   • Embed this notice
     Evan B🥥ehs (eb@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 07-May-2024 00:09:14 JST Evan B🥥ehs

     in reply to

     • Jason Koebler

     @jasonkoebler and Reddit has a perverse incentive to turn a blind eye to this. The more content people scroll through, the more ads they show, and the more stuff they can sell back to google. It doesn't need to be good content. It just needs to be good enough that people put up with it.

     It would be immensely simple for Twitter to stop the bot problem, or at least reduce it. But then the numbers on the graph would dip down further.