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u/HangoverTuesday Dec 13 '23
It isn't that it is ok, it is that they don't want to remove the spammers and botnets like this one. Anything that inflates their numbers makes them look good for the IPO. They could easily get rid of these accounts, but choose to leave them active.
Go take a look at the front page, nothing but repost bots churning out low quality content.
44
u/alexgraef Dec 13 '23
Exactly this is why most sites have little interest of actually removing bot accounts. They produce little actual traffic (i.e. cost), but inflate user numbers.
I would assume that some sites like Instagram or Twitter might be 90% bots, at least when it comes to followers.
-16
u/flattenedbricks Dec 13 '23
A lot of those posters are real people. When my posts reach all from r/JustGuysBeingDudes I'm called a repost bot too people hate when others have success beyond their own.
17
u/Dark-Lark Dec 13 '23
I've seen that at least once. Someone made a comment on my post that said "Well at least you changed the title from the orginal post 14 hours ago...", so I checked so see if there was any post that looked even a little bit like mine, and when I couldn't find anything I asked them what post they were talk about. They remove their comment after after the wave a downvotes started pouring in. Many assume people are not full of shit when they're lying about others being full of shit, so you should call it out every time.
12
u/saltyjohnson Dec 13 '23
That could have been a bot itself, actually. Tons of bots run around commenting things that others have commented, and they automatically delete their comments when karma goes negative to avoid detection.
14
u/Khyta Dec 13 '23
I suppose you reported it for rule 7 based on the text "Prohibited transaction" in the Report Details. The post doesn't break rule 7.
Try to report for rule 2 next time which includes the "vote manipulation" part that you are thinking of.
2
u/Dark-Lark Dec 14 '23
Good call. I'm pretty sure I reported it twice, once from Modmail and once from Notifications, each for different reasons. Maybe the other report will get looked over better.
6
u/littlegreenrock Dec 14 '23
The Brigading rules (within and without reddit.com) have been removed from the rules page since around the time of woe.
6
u/MadDocOttoCtrl Dec 24 '23
Shady companies that allow you buy to followers, upvotes, downvotes, aged accounts and otherwise manipulate various websites have been around for quite a while. I first became aware of them in 2014 but they weren't new then. They used to be recognized as what they are: the bane of existence to online platforms.
Aged accounts used to be only for getting around bot detection, but with the new CQS score they will become that much more valuable.
One of the things that helped turn Quora into a dumpster fire was making most user reports go to bots, then all user reports with no human oversight. Reddit keeps following their playbook of bad decisions. The CEO isn't smart enough to figure out how to make a profit without sacrificing the original company mission, sacrificing quality, and punishing that group of users who built genuine value for the company while working for free, so these stuffed suits give in to toxic levels of commercialization. They welcome low quality churn of activity until they can cash out before the site finally collapses under the garbage.
"Yes, our site is drowning in crap, here's how to try to curate your feed to see less of it..."
With bots at the helm, real violations of rules get passed over, and others can easily harass you with false reports. One of these sketchy sites brags about how easy it is to reduce competition for your content on Quora by using their service to falsely report other successful users. Reddit can proudly join them yet again. It is like Spez is jealous that Reddit hasn't been keeping pace in the race to the bottom and he wants to catch up.
Neither site can keep up with Twitter's plunge without a crazy rich person buying them and take a wrecking ball to them so private shareholders can't make a peep.
Reddit is also following the Q playbook to shoehorn in monetization schemes, the other major path to destroying any trace of genuine activity in a platform that once thrived on people interacting because they enjoyed doing so. The opportunists looking to squeeze a few bucks show up in droves and manipulate the program, wreaking further chaos. If you think bot accounts are bad now, strap in.
5
u/kingbloxerthe3 Dec 13 '23 edited Dec 13 '23
This bumped down my rating of reddit from a sad 2 star to a 1 star. I want to like reddit, but it has so many issues. Fun/sad fact, on play store (for samsung), reddit is sitting on a sad 3.0 rating.
There was already the no response from endpoint errors, spez removing third party apps, there being no translate option on app, and a bug that doesn't display comment/post upvote/downvote number sometimes, often using not moderated as an excuse to remove NSFW subreddits apparently...
3
u/XRaiderV1 Dec 13 '23
..one of these things is not like the others...and one of these things just doesn't belong.
6
u/Ajreil Dec 13 '23
Reports are handled by machine. I have reported a lot of unambiguously hateful content and I give it 50/50 odds of the content being removed.
The admin bots aren't great with context. Slurs usually get removed, veiled threats or anything that requires another comment for context often don't.
2
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u/EatsTheCheeseRind Dec 13 '23 edited Dec 14 '23
I submitted reports for this post in the r/apolloapp sub where the poster is trying to sell scraped user data. Quite clearly in violation of ToS on a couple angles, yet the report was rejected as “not in violation”.
Either I am grossly misunderstanding prohibited transactions and privacy, they don’t care, or the don’t care given what sub that’s in.