If you ever needed a sign to stop using reddit, this is it.

  • Nyxias@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    “DADDY DADDY!” Spez screams excitedly to Musk “I BECOME LIKE U NOW! AND SOMEDAY, I HOPE TO GAIN AS MUCH AS U DADDY!”

  • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Yea I mean he sold the whole site out to right wing propaganda peoples, that had to be worth a few billion

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’d take it with a big grain of salt — it’s Forbes, they lube up people with money with pretty weak arguments. He is a billionaire, but mostly through overvaluation of the company he’s ultimately gutting for profit. (Although if it died, he is still rich, unfortunately, just not a billionaire).

    Some of the arguments being made in the article though, like it being an “authentic place” and having more traffic is a little misleading. For AI, we already know 50% of the Internet is AI made now, in a remarkably short amount of time and a hefty amount of that is going to be on Reddit. If the 90% by 2026 prediction holds true, he’s basically an owner of a gold mine that’s already tapped out. Users won’t necessarily catch on, but they will be drowned out as a source of LLM data.

    Admittedly, the traffic increase isn’t all bots but to classify it as organic is misleading too- iirc, they have a deal with Google to push reddit in exchange for Gemini training. Even unrelated searches are propping up Reddit as the first result; it’s like using SEO cheats. As with the poisoning of his data with artificial data, that deal may not last (and if the AI bubble bursts, that’s certainly gone).

    Frankly, we need the bubble to burst but we also need heavy regulation on these industries. I’m not too hopeful of the latter and the former isn’t going to be pretty— it’s not like the .com bubble made the 90s a better era, for instance.

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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    1 month ago

    Daily active users have approximately doubled since the summer of 2023.

    Surely some of this is bots but… I have a hard time believing it is all of them. So much for the API protests in 2023… 😞

    • fonix232@fedia.io
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      1 month ago

      It most likely is.

      Not ALL bots are Reddit-made. Sure, many are, but there’s a growing interest by many states to increase their influence of social media.

      Tons of Russian/Chinese bots pushing the tankie agenda for example, tons of bots pushing right-wing psy-ops and lies, lots of companies trying to push their own angles as well… and given the number of people who’ve left Reddit since, and who’ve been kicked off the platform, I’d say a majority ARE bots.

    • davepleasebehave@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      the main content creators and initial users have probably left.

      I went back to Facebook recently, a very different and dire sight to back in it’s hay days

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        I wish I could go back in time and tell my boomer family members to keep using email instead of Facebook. They were right and we were wrong. Now they’re the only reason I still have a Facebook account.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I speculate it’s mostly Ouroboros style funding and phony metrics. Bots selling “engagement” to other bots is pretty profitable, I guess. At least for now. The only person I know who still openly uses reddit is an obnoxious drunk white woman in her 60s.

    • Fandangalo@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I wish more people converted over, but the user experience for the fediverse is very strange for many people, tech inclined folks I know included.

      • fonix232@fedia.io
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        1 month ago

        When you say experience, do you mean the general UX (i.e. how the apps/sites work), or the communities (or lack thereof)?

          • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Fair, but I did try for a while. Lemmy has a lot of “snipers” who don’t contribute anything more than condescending AKSHUALLY “corrections” or pure snark. You go into their history and that is 90% of what you see. I have blocked several. I think it’s leftover baggage and trauma from reddit. (I don’t consider your meme reply to be a snipe, hopefully that was not implied.)

        • The Velour Fog @lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I’d love to create a few niche places like the ones I enjoyed on reddit but when it comes to creating a community on Lemmy, the barrier to entry is steep for me. From what I understand I need an always-on storage medium to host and I don’t really have a spare device that I can reliably keep on 24/7 to host a community on here. I wish it were easier but that’s the nature of the beast I spose.

      • Meatwagon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        Okay so im new here and I can’t figure out how to view all communities in one spot on desktop. I can on mobile through the apps. Like reddit’s /r/popular

        • Fandangalo@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Probably a range of things. Like the fediverse is growing, but look at bluesky’s success. They forgo the real benefit of the structure, but people get a “just make a login” experience.

          The kids are probably on something I don’t even know.

          • fonix232@fedia.io
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            1 month ago

            Blueksy is not comparable to Reddit though… not in structure, approach, or (initial) ideology.

          • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I thought about making a bluesky account, but it doesn’t entirely feel all that safe when conservatives are freely posting their misinformation over there too without any pushback.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    it’s all false growth. it’s the same reason why the economy is tanking yet the exchange is “strong”.

    bubble economics.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      1 month ago

      AI, is largely an excuse by companies to deflect attention away form the layoffs, they are personally doing. because so much industries are now tied to AI, when it burst a shit ton of jobs will be lost outside of tech.