Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed
arstechnica.com
Reddit says its "communities are naturally commercial."

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.

  • @kakesEnglish
    34•24 days ago

    I know it’s a real problem and all, but dear lord does Lemmy in particular love that word.

    • capitalEnglish
      22•24 days ago

      Too much. Reminds me of that time not long ago where every lie was “gaslighting” all of a sudden.

    • VoytrekkEnglish
      7•24 days ago

      The word really started to become popular last year, especially regarding Twitter and Reddit.

      • BolexForSoup
        4•24 days ago

        Because it was the biggest talk/most shared at the most recent DEFCON

          • BolexForSoup
            3•24 days ago

            Right, but that specific term was popularized at DEFCON recently and spread. The talk happened because of the acceleration the last few years.

            • @kakesEnglish
              1•24 days ago

              I honestly think a large part of it is teens just looking for an excuse to swear, too.

              • BolexForSoup
                3•24 days ago

                I’m in my mid 30s and I use the term all the time as do my colleagues lol but I guess we’re both leaning on anecdotal evidence here.

                I like the term. I think it really effectively communicates that it’s a deliberate effort to make something bad. It properly displays the malice, how much these platforms really despise their own users.

                It clearly says “they’re doing it to you on purpose.”

                • @kakesEnglish
                  1•24 days ago

                  Same here - mid 30s and I use the term to refer to this phenomenon. I meant more to address the over-use of it on Lemmy (and perhaps elsewhere online).
                  More of an observation than a condemnation, I suppose.

    • db0English
      4•23 days ago

      It’s a very accurate word for what is continuing to happen in this instance. This is not a bad use at all.

    • proleEnglish
      2•23 days ago

      Yeah. I’m glad that people seem to have more interest in and understanding of rent seeking behaviors, but can we stop pretending this is new?

    • Flying SquidEnglish
      1•23 days ago

      In this specific case, it’s exactly the reason Cory Doctorow invented the word.

      Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

    • @[email protected]English
      1•23 days ago

      Should we stop using a word because it describes reality too well? I see it everywhere these days, and it’s an accurate descriptor.

    • finthechat
      -1•24 days ago

      I hate it. It’s been used so much that it’s lost all meaning.