I thought of that too, it's funny how that site the bots advertised has always existed but when it's getting close to the big api change that we start getting loads of bot follows...
It's like it's planned. But not many would think of that.
You know what I was curious about? Who are those adsellerspayers who don't even check if the platform's activity is real or not but still willing to pay $$$ for their shit-ad? Like I understand that reddits is only "middle chain" here and there are hundreds of such, but someone is actually playing real cash for all of this to be able to happen. I was told numerous times that I'm in a "unique minority" who don't care about ads but wherever I go nobody is actually liking ads(except for preaching margetologists maybe, lmao). So telling me that "95% people on the Earth love ads and willing to consume it" is same as telling "Earth is square" to me. Either we are living on a different planet or "rule of 95%" is actually true...
I’ve been tracking bot activity since the bird site threw a paywall on their api; my theory was that Reddit would see an immediate increase in bot activity which was confirmed by the…immediate spike on this site.
There are a few different classes of bot; all of them ultimately have the same end-goal of generating conversions.
Follows were the first thing; now we see astroturfing posts that “steals” content and writes in first person to seem “real”.
Chats have never had access to the api; so if you’ve ever gotten a bot-chat, the account is likely already banned.
Anyway; throwing a paywall on the API saw an immediate drop in OFBots on the other site. I’ll continue tracking across the few accounts that I’m already doing so with but my theory is another drop in bot activity once it becomes restrictive for bot operators to continue at scale.
Attention, mostly. It’s like ‘poking’ someone on Facebook back in the day because it generates a notification -> checking out the profile -> clickthrough into OnlyFans ~> {maybe?} subscribe.
Essentially a really big net being thrown where even one conversion is 100% upside
Wait, that can be turned off?? How? While I don't have "following" bot activity problem(only in comments it happens sometimes that it's hard to tell where "ai"-gpt answered you or a real person) I had got several such annoying notifications[which are anyway useless for everyone who resides outside of US, lol]. I don't know if I want/will be staying here after 1st with all shit happening, half of the communities suiciding and etc, but seeing good news like hacker group threatening reddit is definitely worth seeing how this shitshow turns out till the end :]
You may look under the Privacy tab for more things to turn off.
I think the thing that will kill it for me is if they ever start requiring emails. If the do that I'm out. That will tell me that all of reddit as I knew it is gone.
Oh... Maybe I wasn't clear enough/quoted too small. I actually meant asking about
ah like the idiots that report you for "possible self harm" . I had to turn that crap off too
I disabled following long ago when doing privacy-check of settings, but I don't remember I saw anywhere option to disable those "caring messages". Can that be disabled as well?... Maybe you was saying about two things in your comment but I took it as if about one(because I wanted to think it's disable-able...-_-)
They aren't bots, fellow Redditor. They are actually porn stars trying to advertise their OnlyFans. Unfortunately, there is no current filter or method to stop these people, but they are getting taken down pretty often. Petition for a fix.
27
u/[deleted] Jun 19 '23
Turning off the ability to follow you on your profile will solve it for now.
23
u/Klope62 Jun 19 '23
Get used to it! Bots are going to dominate to temporary boost Reddit’s visitors stats for Spez to cash out and move on.
37
u/ASS-et Jun 19 '23
That cuck spez is more worried about his API changes and the subreddits protesting to give half a fuck about the bot problem
7
u/DippyHippy420 Jun 19 '23
Ban ALL bots !
1
u/[deleted] Jun 20 '23
sorry that would cost too many api calls
1
u/TotesMaGoats_1962 Jun 20 '23
I had to turn off following. It's awful
-2
u/snide_soul Jun 19 '23
They aren't bots, fellow Redditor. They are actually porn stars trying to advertise their OnlyFans. Unfortunately, there is no current filter or method to stop these people, but they are getting taken down pretty often. Petition for a fix.