Public stalking-enabling was always the worst aspect of reddit. That it helps bots is incidental to how good it is for user privacy.
As others highlighted:
This only helps the bots. It’s useless against stalking, since you can still find a list of the person’s post/comments by searching their username in Google or even Reddit itself. And a stalker, unlike someone trying to denounce bots, will do it.
If anything this harms users. A false sense of security is worse than accurately feeling unsafe.
And the motivation for that is clearly to hide the bots. Bots give you metrics. Metrics give you ad views. Ad views give you money.
All while they partner with Google for ai training.
Just handing one another a series of increasingly poisoned chalices when nobody is immune to iocane powder
Yeah, I remember when they were partnering with whoever it is that does ChatGPT when they were testing out early iterations of it. I saw those gigantic endless comment chains they were testing and I knew we were in trouble back then.
Yeah, caption misses the fact that you can be easily banned for simply interacting with such bot in comments in any way against the bot.
Reddit did WHAT?
huge number of people who make controversial statements (particularly those who are pro-russia) have their profiles set to hidden so you can’t see what else they have posted
Huh. How hard is it to make a browser extension that automatically down votes posts by any such person? Asking for people who might still be on there.
Probably easy. However, anyone using such extension would be banned for voting manipulation. YMMV on how justified the later is.
honestly people just need to stop using the site.
Yeah, but what constitutes vote manipulation is an issue that pops up here, too. I bet most instances would ban someone acting like this, too.
That is very much the first people I would expect making use of that feature, yes.
I use it, just because some people’s first reaction in an argument is to look you up. While if you hide it then googling you takes longer and is not ordered properly. Hell a while back I replied to someone about my opinion on something and the first thing he said is “a guy who’s into x hobby can’t seriously have valid opinions”. So yes, since then, my profile is private.
Then you’re not one of the bad actors I’m concerned about. The problem with this change is that there’s no way for other people to tell the difference. If I have suspicions about the motivations of the person (assuming they are a person) I’m interacting with, and I cannot disprove those suspicious to my own satisfaction, that leaves me with two rational options: 1) Blind faith, which in an anonymous Internet context is particularly unjustifiable, or 2) To assume bad faith and act accordingly.
This has some really unfortunate consequences.
Transcription
4chan greentext post with a photo of a robot with its mouth open wide in surprise, wearing glasses and an orange singlet with the Reddit logo on it:
>be me bored redditor
>click on obvious bot account using ChatGPT
>want to check post history for confirmation
>“this user has no posts”
>wtf.jpg
>realize reddit added an option to make post history invisible
>bots now basically untraceable
>reddit “accidentally” made it harder to tell real users from bots
>engagement numbers go up nobody questions it“be me, Reddit sheep”
FTFY
There used to be a site called Reddit, where you were your post history. Now that site is dead - the URL still works, I guess, but it links to some weird Twitter with an alien logo.
That’s the best description of reddit I’ve ever seen both past and present, and you’ve completely bypassed all of the usual sayings about reddit in the process. I applaud you! Now where’s that Lemmy gold thing…
On a side note, an actual financial implementation of Lemmy gold would probably be a really good feature to drive donations to hosts. I’d imagine the implementation as the user donates to their host and receives a configurable amount of gold to give as a reward for donating. That gold is entirely tracked by the instance their account is on, then when they gift gold to a user the receiving instance just receives notice that gold was given, similar to an upvote. Then to filter for bad actors instance admins can whitelist/blacklist instances from giving gold to their instance, and probably also make it possible to see which instances a user’s gifted gold came from as a layer of transparency to help spot bad faith instances that give free gold or too much gold or whatever.
I could also see an extension where a portion of the gold’s value is transmitted to the recipient via cryptocurrency (about the only thing cryptocurrency is actually good at, peer to peer online transactions) but that has way too much opportunity for abuse. Maybe that can be done manually by admins to help ensure a fair dispersal of gold funds? Still overcomplicating and introduces a ton of opportunity for abuse though
I’m not sure if gold would be a good fit for the Fediverse forums. As problematic as the voting system is, tying visibility to popularity is less worse than tying it to money spent.
Instead I think the current approach (donations) should be improved. I expect the same type of people who’d buy gold to finance their instances to be OK with donations, as long as they know it’ll be well used.
People able to pay money, to have their voice louder than the rest, is one of the many current plagues throughout our societies right now. I don’t think gold or awards would be good at all for the fediverse. Please dear satan, no
I would just add a regular donate function that takes crypto, Paypal, etc but adds a small fee configurable by the instance owner on top.
But to stop it from becoming like YouTube with clickbait everywhere, you would need limits on how much can be given and received.
Reddit is bots talking to bots
Reddit is admin bots banning real people for messing with other bots.
You wouldn’t want to leave deciding the narrative up to the people.
And the humans that do reside there have the same opinions as the bots
Reddit was interesting before politics became interesting
Maybe you need to read a history book
I see it a lot with AskReddit, surveying (or possibly influencing) how people feel when something happened in the news. Those posts get bumped to the front page.
Mfw putting “author:username” into the Reddit search bypasses this
for now
Which is the worst of two worlds, because now most people will still not be able to verify other account’s credibility, however people with bad intentions - who are usually more prepared - will still be able to continue their activities.
If you want to be anonymous on the internet you can’t rely on some website to protect you.I get your point but people need to really start learning the reality of the internet again.
This is an example of social darwinism. That doesn’t mean I don’t agree with this idea, it’s just that I don’t agree that it is viable to expect it from everyone.
Companies must be forced to care about peoples’ security and privacy. Actively fighting against bots infestation would be a part of that.
Bots only upvote their own bot circle or content which makes their owners $$$$.
Real human concerns will only be heard if they align with $$$$.
We are remaking the whole world for bots.
Who’s paying them and how/why?
I don’t doubt it, otherwise why else - I just don’t know how.
There are a few countries that aren’t exactly friendly with the Western world and know our democratic systems have a weakness in that you can rile people up and get them to vote against their own best interests, damaging their own country.
The internet and social media in particular are valuable tools for this strategy, so it would be insane for them not to use it to its full potential. And that means endless bots manipulating the narrative.
I suppose everything from: normal advertising; to government advertising [propaganda]; to any industry where PR is important [e.g. oil, healthcare], aka corporate propaganda. And the interests of governments and multinational corporations reach far, from the environment to finance to workers rights. Similarly, their advertising reaches just as far, much further than just “vote for us” or “buy from us”.
If I sound like a cynic it’s only because the world made me that way.
I’ve memorized most of the comment scripts on reddit at this point. Going to the comments is like eating dog food because youre bored.
Wait, hold on, slow down. Are you telling me there are bots on Reddit?
bots on fedi have been probing for an algorithm to exploit. not getting far, just annoying.
Care to elaborate on what you’ve found to watch out for?
blank profiles, ‘johnny truth’@ multi instances, high follows near zero followers, spam post then delete acct, usual jump bait spam for page views, porn spam. admins(thanks) mostly stay on top of it. botters might figure out how to make a profile but all their tools are geared toward average platform idiots. def above average idiots around here. here on lemmy just look at their profile posts, you’ll know. same post over dozens of communities. report/permaban/mute/block next.
jump bait spam
What’s that?
links to sites controlled by scammers
Thanks - good to know
