Reddit did WHAT?
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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huge number of people who make controversial statements (particularly those who are pro-russia) have their profiles set to hidden so you can't see what else they have posted
That is very much the first people I would expect making use of that feature, yes.
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Huh. How hard is it to make a browser extension that automatically down votes posts by any such person? Asking for people who might still be on there.
Probably easy. However, anyone using such extension would be banned for voting manipulation. YMMV on how justified the later is.
Absolutely horrid feature. Supposedly it's to protect vulnerable people's privacy if they post in certain communities, but if they truly wanted that to be how it's used, they'd have limited the ability to apply the feature only to subreddits where mods have specifically coordinated with the admins to get approved as places where vulnerable people are posting. Or, and here's a shocker, they could just rely on the tried-and-tested method of using alt accounts. Instead, bots and trolls just hide their entire post history from people.
Now, supposedly, mods can see the full, unhidden history of any user who has recently posted in their subreddits. Which is good. But the number of other good-faith users being obstructed by this change is huge. It's overall a massive failure from Reddit.
Besides, you can still see their post history simply by searching
"u/username" site:reddit.com
It gives people a false sense of security
Yeah, but it's an extra step many won't take.
If someone had a dedicated stalker, that stalker would definitely take extra steps to keep going.
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Most of Reddit was bots interacting with bots a while ago already.
The site makes most of its money selling ads. The value of that ad space is based on user metrics.
Many users are now fake. They are actively hiding this fact.
Apropos of nothing, the company has a $34 billion market cap.
Why is anyone paying for adverts that no one will see though? Surely adverts only have value if it brings in sales.
Would be amusing to see the entire advertising market crash tbh.
You think that in 2025 companies with large media budgets are buying digital ads and just saying "well fuck it maybe we'll make money on it"?
They track EVERYTHING. From the impression to the click tot he purchase, and there are trackers and attribution platforms by the hundreds out there to help them understand what the ROI they're receiving on those ads are.
Companies are buying ads because people are buying products.
Even if the site is 90% bots there are enough real people using the site to make buying ads profitable.
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It's extremely difficult to measure the effectiveness of online ads and most companies have an incentive to inflate their numbers since they're sold as a certain number of views/impressions.
Advertising is a scam for both those who buy it and the intended audience.
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Mfw putting "author:username" into the Reddit search bypasses this
Which is the worst of two worlds, because now most people will still not be able to verify other account's credibility, however people with bad intentions - who are usually more prepared - will still be able to continue their activities.
Now imagine you're a fragile person who's really paranoid about their internet activity. This is obviously a good change for them, so they click it. One day, someone decides to use this backdoor to bully that person by insulting them under multiple posts and comments that were meant not to be traceable. I can only imagine the consequences.
If you want to be anonymous on the internet you can't rely on some website to protect you.I get your point but people need to really start learning the reality of the internet again.
This is an example of social darwinism. That doesn't mean I don't agree with this idea, it's just that I don't agree that it is viable to expect it from everyone.
Companies must be forced to care about peoples' security and privacy. Actively fighting against bots infestation would be a part of that.
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Congrats for the moderator of /r/Jailbait for becoming a billionaire! /s
Oh god, I had forgotten about that...
Note to self: If the Epstein files ever come out, search for Steve Huffman in them.
He might not have been rich enough yet to be in that club at the time.
They have openly hired a diddler though. Was a big story for a while. Don't remember all the details except of course they did not allow much discussion of it.
Bots only upvote their own bot circle or content which makes their owners $$$$.
Real human concerns will only be heard if they align with $$$$.
We are remaking the whole world for bots.
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There used to be a site called Reddit, where you were your post history. Now that site is dead - the URL still works, I guess, but it links to some weird Twitter with an alien logo.
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I see it a lot with AskReddit, surveying (or possibly influencing) how people feel when something happened in the news. Those posts get bumped to the front page.
Reddit is bots talking to bots
Reddit is admin bots banning real people for messing with other bots.
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It seems to me that the combination of AI + engagement stats + advertising rates is probably enabling historically massive fraud.
But if the perpetrators of the fraud are tech giants worth trillions, and the companies selling the ads are the same tech giants worth trillions, how are individuals and small companies supposed to make good decisions about their ad budgets or do anything about the fraud?
I'm not going to shed any tears for the advertising industry, but I'm not looking forward to the side effects if the AI bubble pops and vaporizes $10 trillion of tech market cap. (all the big players would still be worth a trillion dollars but people would lose their shit)
Is reddit dead yet?
Its spirit is dead, but its corpse lingers on.
No. It's definitely not what is was, for sure. But while search engines (especially Google) are so fucking bad, adding 'reddit' to your search is still the best way to get answers to your actual question and not just irrelevant sponsors and paid plugs.
Ofc that's probably a big reason why reddit has swarms of bots for grass roots advertising.... it's a vicious slippery circle of slop
I haven't found a useful Reddit result that is less than two years old. Bot answers don't provide the same value as actual human expertise. Go figure.
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Not even close. It simply has too much critical mass.
Twitter was taken over by a white south african nazi and grifter with delicate sensibilities and people are still using it like nothing has happened.
Reddit would have to enshitify even more, and believe me they are trying.
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Transcription
4chan greentext post with a photo of a robot with its mouth open wide in surprise, wearing glasses and an orange singlet with the Reddit logo on it:
>be me bored redditor
>click on obvious bot account using ChatGPT
>want to check post history for confirmation
>"this user has no posts"
>wtf.jpg
>realize reddit added an option to make post history invisible
>bots now basically untraceable
>reddit "accidentally" made it harder to tell real users from bots
>engagement numbers go up nobody questions it
Wait, hold on, slow down. Are you telling me there are bots on Reddit?
Idk people used my reddit post trails to be creepy little bitches back in the day.
But then how would you check if someone is a disingenuous troll, or a hypocrite, etc, it's the usual privacy vs open information trade off
The only thing on the UX manager's mind, when considering this decision, was “engagement.”
Nothing else is even in their same universe.
A post made on a public forum is public information. I've used post history to figure out if someone was serious vs telling a joke that fell flat or for weird patterns.
Eh. If a webcrawer took a snapshot, they could just be indexed anyways. Its false sense of security.
Just like upvote/downvotes on Lemmy. Btw its all public lemvotes.org
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bots on fedi have been probing for an algorithm to exploit. not getting far, just annoying.
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I've memorized most of the comment scripts on reddit at this point. Going to the comments is like eating dog food because youre bored.
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