Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed

#For sale: Ads that look like legit Reddit user posts

“We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden. We find that humans don’t usually type out full URLs in natural conversation and plus, most Internet users are happy to do a quick Google Search,” ReplyGuy’s website reads.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I wasn’t a mod, but I did participate in the blackout as a user and I did not immediately switch to Lemmy when it was over. It took about two weeks to get over the whole ‘FOMO if I leave Reddit’ and ‘I’ve spent over a decade here’ sunk cost issues.

    So I don’t blame anyone for not immediately switching to Lemmy, but if you haven’t jumped ship from Reddit by now, especially if you’re doing thankless mod work for people who don’t appreciate you, I have little respect for you at this point.

    And let me take this opportunity as someone who mods several lemmy.world communities to say that I do not feel that the .world admin are unappreciative at all. In fact, exactly the opposite. And they’re working for free just like I am, so it is a whole different scenario anyway.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 months ago

      As someone who moved a million-users community to lemmy successfully, if those mods had already started moving their communities to lemmy during the blackout, many many more users would have moved already. But they never planned for that, so it was just a weak bluff that reddit called.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        But that would have been to assume the blackout would fail, and I think a lot of people didn’t think it would. I was dubious, but I think I was in the minority there.

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          Not really, I started moving /r/piracy when I saw spez doubling down. By that point the writing was on the wall.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I think you’re really underestimating how people are pulled in by sunk cost. I think many people, especially mods, earnestly believed that because they had invested a lot of time and effort into Reddit, Reddit would listen to them if they protested.

            That’s not their fault, that’s just human nature. You were able to overcome that, which is good, but I don’t blame anyone for not being able to at the time. A year later is another matter.

    • ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 months ago

      I tried to get other people off the site before I left, but the mods decided to be douchebags about user retention.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        If anyone looks up my profile there, it says something like ‘Fuck Reddit! Reddit sucks! Go to Lemmy!’ but that’s the best I can do at this point.

        I’m pretty sure it’s why I didn’t get an IPO buy-in offer despite having super high post and comment karma too.

        • ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          They kept sending their IPO shit to me with no way to opt out. I reported them to the FTC for not having an unsubscribe on their email.