Same story. One year ago. That and stopping drinking are some of the best choices I've made in a long time.

I still use reddit occasionally for its smallest communities where I know I'm still interacting with humans. I assume the top posts are all bot posts with bots flaming bots in the comments. Everyone's time is worth more than that.

Do people think there is a reason this won't happen to Lemmy eventually?

SAME. I had been very sick and off social media during the whole exodus, so had no clue about the lemmyverse, but going back to reddit the astroturfing was sooo bad, I just had to look for alternatives.

bots, on a forum i go to , they buy hundreds if not thousands of accounts to do this.

People don’t think on social media. At least average normal people don’t.

I really think that a large percentage (far from a majority, tho) of what people see as new bot activity on social media is just a rise in “normies” using things like reddit.

Just look at all the people being fooled by ridiculous AI shit.

When it's posts you agree with, it's honest users. When it's posts you disagree with, it's astroturfing.

I joke, but unfortunately that seems to be the most common metric for a lot of people. If it's a position "no one would really support" (in their view), then support for it must be astroturfed.

Many comments all pushing the exact same sentiment.

If you know the engagement metrics for how much engagement a post needs to break into the algorithm and be recommended, you can spot them because all the astroturfed posts have x# of upvotes before real conversations start when it breaks into the mainstream

The problem is, unlike most people realize, astroturfing is rarely sourced from shill accounts like it used to be. Nor are high-karma accounts being purchased.

The issue is bots and shill accounts manipulate vote counts of posts/comments with certain positions. So, you don’t tell the difference, unless you find a way to track who is voting on Reddit content.

I remember their being a lot of users saying it's "stealing" to block ads, especially on YouTube and you should definitely just sign up for premium.

This is a fantastic question.

If you ask it in a UFO subreddit, you’ll be attacked. The dynamics there are totally fucked up. (Because the bots and astroturfing there is only about hiding the truth, you see.)

Agree. It's the nastiness that goes with it as well, if you have a different opinion you get smacked down for it. It's horrible.

probably would get shadowban very quickly if it suddenly changes hands from inactivity, and it starts posting from atypical location, IP, or the behavior of the previous posting pattern was different. reddit currently is banning people quite easily, even if your acc isnt ban evading. high karma aged account seems to help agains tthat. but i read that accts created from the app and with google as the email seems to be preferred and slightly more resistant to the filters.

Got my very old one too, lots and lots of posts & interactions, if you find a buyer i'll give you 50% 😁

What's the 1% threshold?

and palintir using thier bots to train thier AI better, and produce propaganda on reddit.

palintir bots are also making headways into the site.