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Dead Internet Theory

kudmitry.com

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Re: Dead Internet Theory

#51

Post by georgeburdell »

clearleaf wrote: post #14
lizknope wrote: post #5

Bots have ruined reddit but that is what the owners wanted. The API protest in 2023 took away tools from moderators. I noticed increased bot activity after that. The IPO in 2024 means that they need to increase revenue to justify the stock price. So they allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue. I think they purposely make the search engine bad to encourage people to make more posts which i…

It's been really sad to see reddit go like this because it was pretty much the last bastion of the human internet. I hated reddit back in the day but later got into it for that reason. It's why all our web searches turned into "cake recipe reddit." But boy did they throw it in the garbage fast. One of their new features is you can read AI generated questions with AI generated answers. What could the purpose of that p…

I see a retreat to the boutique internet. I recently went back to a gaming-focused website, founded in the late 90s, after a decade. No bots there, as most people have a reputation of some kind

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#52

Post by whstl »

masswerk wrote: post #24
pixl97 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is I knew people that used the phrase 'you're absolutely right' very commonly... They were sales people, and part of the pitch was getting the buyer to come to a particular idea "all on their own" then make them feel good on how smart they were. The other funny thing on EM dashes is there are a number of HN'ers that use them, and I've seen them called bots. But when you dig deep in their posts they've…

I'm a confessing user of em-dashes (or en-dashes in fonts that feature overly accentuated em-dashes). It's actually kind of hard to not use them, if you've ever worked with typography and know your dashes and hyphenations. —[sic!] Also, those dashes are conveniently accessible on a Mac keyboard. There may be some Win/PC bias in the em-dash giveaway theory.

A few writer friends even had a coffee mug with the alt+number combination for em-dash in Windows, given by a content marketing company. It was already very widespread in writing circles years ago. Developers keep forgetting they're in a massively isolated bubble.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#53

Post by b65e8bee43c2ed0 »

swed420 wrote: post #41
lizknope wrote: post #5

Bots have ruined reddit but that is what the owners wanted. The API protest in 2023 took away tools from moderators. I noticed increased bot activity after that. The IPO in 2024 means that they need to increase revenue to justify the stock price. So they allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue. I think they purposely make the search engine bad to encourage people to make more posts which i…

> Bots have ruined reddit but that is what the owners wanted. Adding the option to hide profile comments/posts was also a terrible move for several reasons.

given the timing, it has definitely been done to obscure bot activity, but the side effect of denying the usual suspects the opportunity to comb through ten years of your comments to find a wrongthink they can use to dismiss everything you've just said, regardless of how irrelevant it is, is unironically a good thing. I've seen many instances of their impotent rage about it since it's been implemented, and each time it brings a smile to my face.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#54

Post by ziml77 »

bananapub wrote: post #35
SchemaLoad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest change reddit made was ignoring subscriptions and just showing anything the algorithm thinks you will like. Resulting in complete no name subreddits showing on your front page. Meaning moderators no longer control content for quality, which is both a good and bad thing, but it means more garbage makes it to your front page.

why would you look at the "front page" if you only wanted to see things you subscribed to? that's what the "latest" and whatever the other one is for. they have definitely made reddit far worse in lots of ways, but not this one.

The front page when I used reddit only contained posts from your subscribed subreddits, sorted by the upvote ranking algorithm.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#55

Post by duskwuff »

bananapub wrote: post #35
SchemaLoad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest change reddit made was ignoring subscriptions and just showing anything the algorithm thinks you will like. Resulting in complete no name subreddits showing on your front page. Meaning moderators no longer control content for quality, which is both a good and bad thing, but it means more garbage makes it to your front page.

why would you look at the "front page" if you only wanted to see things you subscribed to? that's what the "latest" and whatever the other one is for. they have definitely made reddit far worse in lots of ways, but not this one.

> why would you look at the "front page" if you only wanted to see things you subscribed to?

"Latest" ignores score and only sorts by submission time, which means you see a lot of junk if you follow any large subreddits.

The default home-page algorithm used to sort by a composite of score, recency, and a modifier for subreddit size, so that posts from smaller subreddits don't get drowned out. It worked pretty well, and users could manage what showed up by following/unfollowing subreddits.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#56

Post by lifetimerubyist »

lizknope wrote: post #33
lifetimerubyist wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't showing ads to bots...pointless?

If the advertisers don't know the difference between a human and a bot then they will still pay money to display the ad.

You’d think they would eventually notice their ROI is terrible…?

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#57

Post by lizknope »

lifetimerubyist wrote: post #56
lizknope wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the advertisers don't know the difference between a human and a bot then they will still pay money to display the ad.

You’d think they would eventually notice their ROI is terrible…?

I hope so but I don't know.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#58

Post by clearleaf »

imglorp wrote: post #34
lizknope wrote: post #5

Bots have ruined reddit but that is what the owners wanted. The API protest in 2023 took away tools from moderators. I noticed increased bot activity after that. The IPO in 2024 means that they need to increase revenue to justify the stock price. So they allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue. I think they purposely make the search engine bad to encourage people to make more posts which i…

> allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue Isn't that just fraud?

Yes registering fake views is fraud against ad networks. Ad networks love it though because they need those fake clicks to defraud advertisers in turn. Paying to have ads viewed by bots is just paying to have electricity and compute resources burned for no reason. Eventually the wrong person will find out about this and I think that's why Google's been acting like there's no tomorrow.

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#59

Post by _zagj »

Reddit has a small number of what I hesitatingly might call "practical" subreddits, where people can go to get tech support, medical advice, or similar fare. To what extent are the questions and requests being posted to these subreddits also the product of bot activity? For example, there are a number of medical subreddits, where verified (supposedly) professionals effectively volunteer a bit of their free time to answer people's questions, often just consoling the "worried well" or providing a second opinion that echos the first, but occasionally helping catch a possible medical emergency before it gets out of hand. Are these well-meaning people wasting their time answering bots?

Re: Dead Internet Theory

#60

Post by d4rkp4ttern »

f311a wrote: post #44

> The use of em-dashes, which on most keyboard require a special key-combination that most people don’t know Most people probably don't know, but I think on HN at least half of the users know how to do it. It sucks to do this on Windows, but at least on Mac it's super easy and the shortcut makes perfect sense.

First time I’m hearing about a shortcut for this. I always use 2 hyphens. Is that not considered an em-dash ?
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