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Reddit is pretty useless for getting any kind of advanced information on any topic. The impression I had of the US election based on it was completely out of line with reality, so in that case it couldn't be trusted as an accurate source of information on current affairs.
People are addicted to it, but you'd have to be pretty sad to pay for it.
Blocking ads on it is a trivial matter. It never made any money.
The question is why did anyone think it would ever be worth much at all.
The impression I had of the US election based on it was completely out of line with reality
I've largely switched to Lemmy for the past two years, but this was really the last nail in the coffin for reddit for me too. It's an enforced echo-chamber and no longer a reliable source of information. It's hard to notice how bad things are when the politics are leaning in your direction, but once you see it, you can't unsee it, and it feels gross.
Lemmy is obviously pretty politically homogeneous too, but the difference is that I don't feel like someone is trying to trick me. Topics and and sources are clearly influenced by the individual posters' opinions, but it doesn't feel like there's a coordinated behind-the-scenes effort to push an agenda, which makes for a better vibe.
Yep, its got pretty extreme. So many comments seem to be bots, and it really feels like you're being pushed in a certain direction. I can't fathom how it got so bad
There are bots on here too. I've noticed a lot of handled accounts that will reply consistently with pro Russian propaganda. Some may be bots, but others are handled. Either way, the goals are the same.
You sadly can't escape it these days.
No matter where you go, it's best to be aware and double check sources.
I’ve noticed a lot of handled accounts that will reply consistently with pro Russian propaganda.
without evidence, you are just spreading fud
I said "I've noticed" which is anecdotal, but others have shared similar experiences with me. That along with the well documented interference campaigns, it's not a stretch to draw the same conclusion here on Lemmy.
Did you read the article I shared by chance?
this is just more fud.
I wish I didn't have to be skeptical, but sadly I do. If you read the article I shared, it outlined how insidious foreign influence campaigns can be.
For example, in 2019, 19 of Facebook’s top 20 pages for American Christians were run by Eastern European troll farms.
That's just one example of many. We all need to be hyper vigilant.
instead of seeing a spook behind every post, just engage (or don't) with the comment on its merits. to do otherwise is a form of ad hominem, wher you are attacking teh speaker instead of the content of their speech.
I'm advocating for awareness and critical thinking, not paranoia. The New York Times article I shared outlines how influence operations have grown more sophisticated, with bots and handled accounts leveraging LLMs to mimic real engagement while derailing or inflaming discussions. Recognizing these tactics isn’t about dismissing individuals—it’s about understanding patterns of manipulation that have been well-documented. Identifying bad-faith engagement isn’t an ad hominem attack; it’s a necessary part of critical discourse. If you disagree, that’s fine, but ignoring the issue doesn’t make it disappear.
For me, it was the massive uptick in bans that proved the manipulation was real
Are you an Apollo exile?
I was a "Reddit is Fun" user for at least a decade
I literally just uninstalled both rif and rif premium 1 minute ago. Their last update was June 2023. I can't believe it's been that long.
So this place isn't overrun by bots. Awesome. As someone new here, are there fewer bots bc it's a smaller audience, or are there actually protections against bots?
Welcome welcome! The few bots that try to spam have been found out and disconnected relatively quickly (there have been a number of Fediverse-wide intentional efforts to spam that were dealt with).
The comment quality tends to be higher on average and braindead meme chains that bots can copy for karma farming are far less common.
That said, the Lemmy experience is yours to craft. Subscribe and block as needed, don't feed the trolls, don't sweat getting a few downvoted comments here and there, report bad behaviour and have fun.
So, it's all down to federation, essentially. If an instance allows its users to act in bad faith (lemmygrad, exploding heads, etc), then typically people will ask their instance admin to defederate from them or else move to a server that will. And if you can't find a server you like? Great news! Just pull down the source code and start your own!
Worth noting that lemm.ee pretty much does not defederate with anyone so is great if you are going to be moderating any communities because you can actually see nearly everyone that is posting.
Yeah, I also have a strong [left] libertarian bent, and I appreciate that .ee admins trust me to block servers I don't want to see for myself. I think the only two that .ee has defederated from are lemmygrad and exploding heads (Nazis).
Unless I am wrong I don't even think that those ones are blocked.
Oh shit, maybe I'm just banned lmao
lesser bots, i think because reddit bots are mostly political propaganda ones from RU and US.
your comments also wont get astroturfed by russian bots most of the time, or angry conservative doesnt know how to discern the meaning of your comments.
lemmy.world news and politics subs mirrored reddit strongly during the election shill op
people were banned to ciritizing Kamala's campaign. Any discussion of 3p was also banned.
With that being said... federated nature permits people with different opinions to find other subs for discussions.
There's a difference between being banned and being downvoted to oblivion for pushing idiotic tactics.
i said banned...
Lies
Absolutely correct, comrade. And what happened? We leftists told everyone Kamala is evil, and the people listened to us and didn't vote Democrat. We got Trump into the white house. And then the Democrats realised that they need to appeal to the left to win next time. So they've cleaned up their act and taken genocide off the agenda. And now they're actually stopping Trump's fascism. He'll be impeached any day now!
I can't tell if this is sarcastic or serious.
I choose to believe that the current Republican regime and the pressure by Democratic constituents on Democrats will push the Democrats to be more liberal and do more, but honestly there's some clear "first Hitler then us" vibes to that thinking that I can't get past
Reddit is pretty nice as a source of information, but mostly on smaller and more obscure things, not big political topics like US elections.. that's what the last year has taught me, at least.
Its value is equal to its usefulness as a propaganda organ. Twitter wasn't purchased to make money. A megaphone is more of a tool than an investment.
Dunno, I think Musk was forced to buy it, then he suggested it was going to be all sorts of things while massively cutting costs, before pivoting to giving Trump a quarter of a billion in order to get access to government.
I don't think there was any intention to buy twitter for propaganda, and I haven't seen any evidence that shows to what degree (if at all) it helped Trump get elected.
he only used it as a propaganda tool after he was forced to buy, he had to make that money back somehow, SAUDIS and putin did step in to help.
Exactly. I responded to somebody who said twitter was bought not to make money but as a propaganda tool.
Then a sequence of morons 'attacked' me. (I put attacked in quotation marks as it hardly counts as any kind of 'attack'.)
I mean, you DO understand that the current situation involves granularity like we have never witnessed before, algorithmic fuckery that we have been warned about, and the fact that access to Twitter data in controlled by the guy who initiated all of the fuckery involving twitter, right? What I'm saying is that your standard for evidence is not in touch with the current reality. Fortunately, this guy can't seem to hide his intentions, so we really don't need an in depth analysis. The only ones who would wish for the rest of us to demand such a thing in order to believe what we are seeing in front of our very eyes are the ones who would benefit from the truth being obscured.... Oh. I think I understand now
I wish I was naive as you.
Stop, stop! He's already dead!
I thought they were supposedly going to be making money selling training data for AI's.
And what is an ai trained on reddit going to help with? Misinforming people on specialised topics, or misinforming people on current affairs?
Edit - I suppose you might be able to train an ai not to reply as per replies on reddit, dunno.
lol
Fuck if I know. I never said it was a good idea!