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The level of engagement on Reddit these days

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/179560d9-e33b-4e1e-83a9-7507868d46d4.png

Just a few years ago, you would never see such a disparity in votes vs comments. But these days, this is pretty much the norm. I've seen posts with 10K+ upvotes and no more than 80 comments.

I'd say in about 2 years, the entire place is going to be bots with AI generated content that try to mimic "real users" using their new Dynamic Product Ads tool. Not sure how that's legal as I thought ads needed to be marked or differentiated from regular content, but here we are.

The future looks bleak and AI even bleaker. Because it's going to be used against us to make the rich richer and not to make our lives better.

Kichae ,

I saw some engagement graphs a few weeks ago for a few niche subreddits. Not necessarily niche in the "small" way, but in the "focused interest" way.

Posts and comments per day completely collapsed during the 3rd party app-pocolypse, and never recovered. Community membership didn't even show a blip, but actual discussions fell off a cliff.

The Reddit app is really bad, and the website is worse. The mobile website is somehow the worst of the lot. Doing anything but voting and scrolling is painful. Reddit has successfully ended its usefulness as a community space. Most people there don't aeem to have noticed this sea change, yet.

Or at least, they've found no compelling reason to go elsewhere yet.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

I can echo the last part. I refuse to use the app so I use the both the website and mobile version. Both are almost unusable. Comments often fail to load, just showing the Reddit logo animation. It takes 8 reloads to sometimes load a reply to one of my comments. Half the time it never loads just stalls at 30% loading. The post options to attach images or media to a comment doesn’t work on mobile; tapping the buttons literally do nothing. It works on desktop.

eveninghere ,

I think one has to gather more proof before concluding that the gap is due to LLMs. It can also be that the engagement was lost due to third party app drop. We don't have stats to distinguish them.

Corgana ,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

Reddit has been trying hard for years to move beyond being a discussion forum to another mindless scroling app.

The reason is because in the time people read one discussion thread they only see one ad, but scrolling memes, etc they will see many more. It makes the ads much more valuable.

Taako_Tuesday ,

Never thought of it that way! What a dystopian world we live in where intelligent conversation dies because there's no good way to profit off of it.

Tiauguinho ,

Products and Services… ad eternum!

Corgana ,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

It's not hopeless! The Fediverse is AFAIK entirely nonprofit, and smaller instances means more moderator eyes on everything, too.

If I had to predict the future, I think apps like Reddit, Twitter, Tioktok, etc will be the places for entertainment and the Fediverse will become the place for conversation.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

And what's worse is that in a few years, thanks to "AI" learning how to mimic us, there will be full on accounts that look legitimate at every level. Probably even have other social media connected to boost validity. But at the end of the day, it's just a sophisticated bot trying to sell you McDonald's.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Yeah Ars has already called them out for being basically an ad company that cares only about shoving as many ads and paid content as they can in your face.

Corgana ,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

Got a link? I'd be curious to read that.

papegaai ,
@papegaai@beehaw.org avatar

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/reddit-sneaky-ai-spam-bots-compete-to-sell-you-stuff/

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Thanks, yep this is it, thanks 🙏

sqgl ,

Aren't ads dispersed throughout the discussions? If not, then why not?

wargreymon2023 ,

Im not surprised by how quick it dies, base solely on the bad attitude of Spez.

Alice ,

Reddit is so useless. I write occasionally, and whenever I hit a wall researching a character's background, everyone tells me, "ask on Reddit!"

I stopped asking on Reddit five years ago, because I can't get any feedback besides a handful teenagers making wild guesses. Thank you for trying, kids. I guess.

exanime ,

Same, I lurked around a lot and thought it would be useful one day of I had a question ... I'm just an avid DIYer and out of maybe 10 times I decided to ask, I got 1 solid answer... Everything else were wild guesses or just trolls

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Been mostly the same for me. If I ask a basic question like how to turn on Find My, I most likely will get a slew of downvotes and then one good samaritan post up the answer. If you ask a more technical question, like why is Find My iPhone using location services indefinitely, literally the entire website is like 🤷‍♂️

HeartyBeast ,

To be honest, it feels much more likely to see posts on the Fediverse with many upvotes, few or no comments

anachronist ,

Yeah the fediverse has lower engagement all around because the community is a lot smaller. This is especially true in "long tail" communities. However, the upside is that there are no bots, dark patterns, or manipulated feeds.

That being said, while I appreciate the chronological feed I do wish there was some way to "weigh" less active communities so that I can see their activity in my feed without them being drowned out by the busier communities. I've noticed that I've gone to communities that I'm definitely subscribed to, and seen that there were several posts that I missed because the posts were drowned out by content in busy communities like, for instance, technology@beehaw.org

RobotZap10000 ,

Is that not what the scaled sort is for?

HeartyBeast ,

However, the upside is that there are no bots, dark patterns, or manipulated feeds.

There’s a huge amount of incoming spam, much of it, I suspect posted by bots. I’ve also seen account posting ‘news’ from sites that are clearly AI generated

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

That makes sense tho given how the FV has pretty low engagement and most of it is still good bots doing housekeeping or trying to boost exposure.

I guess I just didn't think Reddit would collapse sooooo fast!

pineapplelover ,

Damn I didn't realize how artificial it is now. I remember before the protests I can feel the entire platform reposting stuff over and over with the same content. Pretty much the only good subs are the small niche subs, but those large ones are atrocious.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Reddit also released a new ad system that imbeds products in a "real life way" so you can get bots replying to users asking question that look 100% genuine but are run by say McDs. So if someone asks hey what do you eat in a given day, the bot can come in, totally organically, and say "oh i usually start my day with eggs and toast then for lunch I get a mcwrap because they're on special for the month of march". They "learnt" that people don't write McWrap so they are trying to plug products basically how we do.

Which makes recommendations suss af! I feel almost paranoid going there these days like are half the posts and comments I reply to real??

pineapplelover ,

Genuine question, are mcwraps a thing? Back when I was younger and used to eat from McDonald's, that was one of the few things worth getting.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca/product/creamy-avocado-ranch-mcwrap-crispy.html

pineapplelover ,

I remember them canceling it because I remember they said they didn't have those anymore. Didn't really see a reason to go to McDonald's anymore

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

In addition to factors already mentioned by other users, I believe that there are also social/cultural reasons for that lack of engagement.

Commenting in Reddit is like stepping on a mine field - no matter how innocuous your comments are, you're bound to have users there assuming words into your mouth to screech at you. Plus all the "ackshyually", one-upping, "wah TL;DR!" (i.e. "I'm entitled to an abridged version of what you said, even if you likely spent far more time writing your comment than I would reading it").

Eventually you say "why bother commenting? Just to get a headache?" and stop commenting altogether.

ALostInquirer ,

Does it sometimes seem like commenting in high traffic online spaces feels this way too, not just Reddit?

lvxferre , (edited )
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

Kind of. In most high traffic spaces it feels simply pointless; as in, nobody will read it.

In Reddit (and Twitter) however it feels like people will read it, misread it, and punish you for what you didn't say.

pbjamm ,
@pbjamm@beehaw.org avatar

Before I quit Reddit (when Bacon Reader died) I had already curtailed my commenting because of this. It seemed that any time I tried to make a thoughtful comment on a even slightly contentions subject I ended up in a pointless argument with someone who had poor reading comprehension. It was disheartening to realize that while I was agonizing over every word I put into my comment in an attempt to clearly explain my thought, the same courtesy would not be extended by the people mis-reading it. I started to think people were just scanning comments for keywords to get angry about then telling me that I was ignorant of a subject I knew a great deal about or a reactionary child when I am 50 IRL. Commenting became a burden and it lead to a decline in the quality of conversation as more and more thoughtful commenters found that burden too great.

TachyonTele ,

The same thing happens on Lemmy, unfortunately. A lot of people just want to be keyboard warriors.

GrindingGears ,

It's actually the mods that did it for me. If you don't have this really weird super specific but vague world view, and you can't follow 143 different rules (some not specified), then they start censoring you and temp banning your comments and contributions. The mods on my community sub actually permabanned me when I questioned them on it, instead of discussing it. After that I was like this is infuriating, and I don't really want to participate here. Problem is, they mod anything related to said topic, like city, province, country, most political parties, quite a few special interest topics, etc. Its super weird behaviour.

TachyonTele ,

It's also filled with repeat comments. Most posts you read a few top comments and their threads. But then it quickly becomes other people just commenting the same exact thing.

It's just not worth looking at comments there.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Don't even get me started on that. I made a post that blew up (7k upvotes) and literally the entire comments section was the same responses. Out of the 100s that replied, only 10% or less were novel.

Zworf ,

Yep this is one of the reasons I kept deleting my account even before the whole spez drama.

drwho ,
@drwho@beehaw.org avatar

Don't forget folks aging bot accounts by downvoting everything they see to generate history.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

I didn't even know this was a thing lol

mondoman712 ,

IIRC they changed the way they calculate the scores a few years ago, which generally increased the numbers you saw.

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Yes, exactly. The upvotes did not reflect actual real engagement for a long time. I don't remember anymore where I read about it, but allegedly there is also some artificial correction applied. Maybe to combat brigading of upvotes but can of course be used for manipulation.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Oh I did not now this. Did this happen before or after Spez's API freakout?

mondoman712 ,

Yeah way before. I had a bit of a look through some announcements and couldn't find it so I can't say exactly when.

SteposVenzny ,

I think this disparity in votes and comments is also hugely affected by how the UI has been changing over the years as well as the destruction of third party apps. The site is now designed in a way where active participation is less encouraged than ever before unless you’re running old reddit on a traditional computer with an ad blocker.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Yeah I think this is spot on. Someone else mentioned that Reddit doesn't really want you spend lots of time (yet anyway, till they can roll out better their new Dynamic Product Ads) on a single post. It would rather you scroll upvote and move on so they can try to get as much of the feed to your eyeballs as possible.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/reddit-sneaky-ai-spam-bots-compete-to-sell-you-stuff/

clot27 ,
@clot27@lemm.ee avatar

Reddit is ded, and for good reasons

SkyNTP ,

Just wait till the advertisers find out the eyeballs they are paying for are also just AI sock puppets. Enshitification strikes again.

henfredemars ,

I’m sure the leadership will have cashed out by then. In fact, disgusting wealth has already been generated.

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

I know there is software that exists that can poison art so LLM can't use it. I am hoping we make something like that against AI bots and ads. What a brutal future we have coming man.

Can you imagine once we move to androids and other synthetic like machines? Or brain implants? Your bff that's telling you to eat more eggs because they read they were really good for might literally be saying that because of chicken farmers or some vested third party who makes bank on eggs. Just wild that we are going to be attacked from all sides by corporate greed.

streetfestival ,
@streetfestival@lemmy.ca avatar

I’d say in about 2 years, the entire place is going to be bots with AI generated content that try to mimic “real users” using their new Dynamic Product Ads tool

Yeah, it's just partially like that now lol. A few weeks ago there was a side-by-side reddit screenshot post on Lemmy. It showed the exact same reddit post, with the exact same tens of comments (all word for word, some in response to each other iirc), from different accounts less than a year apart. 100% fabrication. I'd never seen such extensive bot-masquerading as people behaviour; it was a realization moment for me

nhgeek ,
@nhgeek@beehaw.org avatar

I think X led the way in robotic hellscape innovation that's now being adopted by Reddit.

henfredemars ,

Dead Internet theory in full effect.

pbjamm ,
@pbjamm@beehaw.org avatar

The Future is a Dead Mall

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Why am I not surprised! Musk is absolute cancer.

xor ,

Reddit is a PsyOp

henfredemars ,

Cool username btw.

xor ,

thanks… it’s my favorite bitwise operator….

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Holy crap the dude looks Ross Marquand its uncanny lol

xor ,

huh, i don’t really see it…

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Really???? https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/8aafc95e-126b-492d-a355-1b0d643f042d.jpeg

We might need to take to this a lemmy vote lol

xor ,

they look like they could be related….
….
but it would be a fun fake conspiracy theory to start….

ultratiem OP ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

That was my initial reaction like wait Immortal is also a conspiracy nut lol

xor ,

i like how flesh simulator’s stories are all well cited though….
most conspiracy concerned people just say random stuff and never back it up….

remington Mod ,
@remington@beehaw.org avatar

We can still find engagement in small niche subs on Reddit. We've known, for many years, that people were going to move away from large corporate-controlled sites such as Reddit, Twitter etc..

The Fediverse is addressing this. It isn't a panacea. However, it is a re-imagining of what we want the Internet to be.

There are many others, that will come along after us, to address this further.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

The Fediverse doesn't have any defenses against AI impersonators though, aside from irrelevance. If it gets big the same incentives will come into play.

Dymonika ,

What will stop bots from coming here? Registration filters and user reports?

B0rax ,

Yes, if it grows large enough, the bots will come.

henfredemars ,

There will always be bots on the Internet. I do not believe this is a solvable problem. Instead, we focus on mitigation.

However, Reddit has little incentive to fight the bots because it increases engagement metrics. In fact, it costs money and reduces profits to reduce bot activity. Hence, so many bots.

Right here on Lemmy, because nobody financially benefits from turning a blind eye to the problem, I think we have a head start. This platform is created by users for users. For that reason, I think we should never have the problem quite to the same extent as they do.

drwho ,
@drwho@beehaw.org avatar

There are spambots that still post on Usenet newsgroups even after organics abandoned them twenty years ago.

ringwraithfish , (edited )

Bots are already proliferating the fediverse. Kbin is constantly spammed with "buy online drugs here" links. Transparent bots (those that are tagged as bots) try to boost engagement by reposting things from Reddit, but are still perpetuating one of the worst aspects of reddit even if they're being upfront about it. AI generated articles posted on obvious junk websites are constantly being spammed by the same accounts.

It's a difficult problem to solve.

Dymonika ,

Kbin is constantly spammed with “buy online drugs here” links.

Got examples? I've never seen this once as a Kbin user.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@lemmy.zip avatar

They come up every few weeks, usually admins ban them quickly

ringwraithfish ,

Here's one: https://kbin.social/m/random/t/1060795
I always see them popping up under random@kbin.social

exscape ,
@exscape@kbin.social avatar

Yeah, I see a ton of this under random.
Here's my front page at this very moment: https://i.imgur.com/4IsJ68f.png

otter ,
@otter@lemmy.ca avatar

One thing I noticed the other day, while banning one such bot, is that the same network has been posting on Reddit as well.

Turns out the Reddit ones have been posting the spam for months, while the Lemmy ones get banned within hours.

Part of that is the lower volume of content here, but part of it is also the great people that take the time to report bad content ♥️

ringwraithfish ,

I always report. However, I heard that the report only goes to the admin of your instance. Maybe future releases will support cross instance reporting and the ability for admins to "trust" bans by admins from other instances.

otter ,
@otter@lemmy.ca avatar

I'm fuzzy on the details, but I do get reports from users on another instance as long as it's "relevant" (ex. in one of our communities, one of our users)

Banning a foreign user on our instance will fix the problem for our instance, but they need to be banned on the home instance too in order to stop the spam from continuing

ringwraithfish ,

Does ActivityPub report back bans to the user's home instance? I could see a moderation tool that let the admin autoban their users if enough federated instances had banned them.

rwhitisissle ,

I would imagine IP bans would be useful. Although the issue with this is that you run into the problem other websites are having: people who are valid users that are on VPNs get caught in the filter of IP bans because botnets also use the same VPNs.

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