• NBJack@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    I can’t put my finger on it, but I think there’s been an uptick also in posts purely in the form of increasing engagement. Safe ‘bets’ on getting responses (i.e. ++ to AskReddit), remarkably bland headlines, and just shit that reminds me of controversy of the “jumpstart” of automated bots they used in the earlier days.

    • gonzo0815
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      1 year ago

      A lot of suspicious “wholesome” posts on all, too. Seems like an astroterf to make the whole thing more digestible.

    • athos77@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been half turn between blaming spez for that, trying to keep “engagement” numbers up so he can IPO and walk, vs blaming karma bots. And then I thought, “Why not both?”

      • Spiracle@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Pretty sure one of the new (announced?) changes is that people will be able to get money from being popular enough. Encouraging “engagement” and karma farming over actually using the site as a human.

        • athos77@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          My understanding is that that’s an expansion of reddit’s earlier cryptocurrency effort, where users in like 3 subreddits could earn reddit moon tokens. Which is nice and all, but it’s about as reliable as any other cryptocurrency; it follows reddit’s usual policy of never giving out anything of real value and making other people do the work; and since they’re “awarding” it themselves, that means they have the main stash of moons in hand and they’re the ones who will “win big” if moons ever takes off.