this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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But Huffman said Reddit was now battling to ensure its users stay at the center of the social network. “Where the rest of the internet seems to be powered by or written by or summarized by AI, Reddit is distinctly human,” he said. “It’s the place you go when you want to hear from people, their lived experiences, their perspectives, their recommendations. Reddit is communities and human curation and conversation and authenticity.”

As Reddit becomes an increasingly important source for LLMs, advertisers are responding with what one agency chief described as a “massive migration” to the platform.

Multiple advertising and agency executives speaking during this month’s Cannes advertising festival told the FT that brands were increasingly exploring hosting a business account and posting content on Reddit to boost the likelihood of their ads appearing in the responses of generative AI chatbots.

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[–] WrenFeathers@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago

He said, in his best human voice.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 12 points 6 days ago

And we're supposed to take his word for it?

[–] Nangijala@feddit.dk 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's gotten to the point that if someone were to ask me what my super power would be if I could choose, I'd say that I'd like to be able to see what is human and what isn't when I'm online. Very boring super power, but it would make some things a lot easier.

Ironically I also lost count on how many times I was accused of being a bot near the end of my time on reddit. I wouldn't be surprised if those who accused me were bots themselves. It was just insane sometimes.

But good luck with that, Mr CEO. I'm sure you care very much about your human users on your goofy platform.

[–] LadyButterfly@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Me too...any tips for spotting it?

[–] Nangijala@feddit.dk 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It is so tricky and i dont have any good answers as I'm a tech-idiot, but I'll try my best to give you some suggestions:

In the past you may come across a comment that sounded overly robotic and emotionless when they commented, but that might as well just be someone on the spectrum. Nowadays some bot comments sound more human than actual human comments. I really cannot tell.

I think I was often accused of being a bot because I tend to go into detail about things that interest me and try to explain things in too many paragraphs, lol. I have tried to learn how to shorten my replies to people but I fucking fail everytime. I literally just spammed a friend with a long ramble about why the Syrian flag looks different and went into the history of the flag and made a cliff notes version of the conflict in Syria because it randomly became an interest for me for a few minutes after a car passed my window with the new Syrian flag on the car helmet. So maybe that trait is a bit off putting to random people who cross my path online. I dunno.

Anyway, I have heard that some people look at sentence structure and grammar to decipher who is real and who isn't. If the grammar is too good, the sentence structures too perfect, then some people suspect it is a bot. But it's probably just a matter of time before bots will adapt to poor grammar and writing patterns. If they can go from sounding like a Wikipedia page to cracking jokes and sounding human in less than five years, they can learn how to imitate shitty writing patterns that most of us have. I for one tend to accidentally press the s when I want to press the a and I usually catch it before posting, but sometimes I overlook it.

Usually, on reddit, I would check the comment history of someone I suspected of being a bot. If they posted way too much, like seconds between each comment and in various different subs for hours, I would conclude they were a bot, but I don't think all bots are like that.

I dunno how I would spot bots in the fediverse, tbh. Maybe similar, checking the comment history if i suspect a bot, but otherwise i dunno man.

Usually I go by how people behave. Anyone who acts insane or aggressive gets blocked. I am too old to deal with shit like that, but that has less to do with bots and more to do with no longer tolerating extremely divisive behavior.

[–] LadyButterfly@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

That's really helpful thanks mate. And I agree, banging your head against a brick wall just hurts your head

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

"remain"? They really don't use their own service, do they?

[–] Buske@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

And controlled by 15 mods.

[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm wondering if advertisers are starting to notice - that's the only thing that'll make these fuckers try to clean house. It's maybe two years since I left reddit and even then it was absolutely infested with bots. They didn't give a fuck, only cared about the IPO. But advertisers are going to care when they get lots of engagement but no customers because all the engagement is bots.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Do they have a way to test that? Surely the advertisers wouldn't just trust meta, google, reddit, etc.

[–] mrnarwall@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've worked on some enterprise projects specifically to detect bot activity, so that they wouldn't waste ML resources on a fake customer. While it's a bit of a cat and mouse game, they can certainly review past data for their advertising campaign and the conversion rates they are getting in order to determine if reddit ads are worth the money

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago

That's good to hear, I hope they have many fights about it.

[–] Lucky_777@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

Bots dominate Reddit. This will never change. Straight lying to everyone's faces.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So he wants it to be a huge testing grounds with ai for anybody that uses it, got it.

Use the platform? You are talking with and training AI.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

he wants to be facebook essentially, also like to point out that reddit bans the word facebook and FB.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ewwww why (besides the obvious lack of moral-compass greed) would you want to be Facebook?

[–] MBech@feddit.dk 1 points 6 days ago
[–] PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

not this human

sent from my pinephone

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 7 points 6 days ago

Ah ! so when do they roll it back ?

[–] Makeshift@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 days ago

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

They chase away the humans and ban the ones that are left!

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 days ago

Probably why they are banning so many REAL users at such a high rate.

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago

LMFTFY

Battling to ensure right wing users stay at the center of the social network.

Fixed it.

[–] Tramort@programming.dev 191 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Starting when?

That ship has sailed.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 81 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The ship was never at that port.

Reddit was using bots and vote manipulators back to the Digg days, as well as scraping/reposting akin to what 9gag became famous for.

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[–] Kirk@startrek.website 31 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I know he's just selling the platform to AI companies, but it's an odd take considering they've been moving away from being a message board and towards being just another content feed for years now.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 week ago

Looked up some information a bit ago and found Reddit using AI written answer pages to aggregate information. Which- why? The information was already indexed by a search engine, the sole reason I landed on this page. Why are you offering me secondhand, watered down information written by your idiot machine when I can instead read sourced accounts with citations?

It’s interesting to know that you can do this, but I could not care less about a machine’s perspective on what is or is not the prevailing opinion. Moreover, it completely contradicts your stated goal, you perjurious pool of feculence.

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[–] BetaBlake@lemmy.world 58 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Half of the comments are from bots and everyone gets autobanned.

Reddit is quite literally on autopilot

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[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 53 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

He didn't say entirely or how many, lol. If there's 2 humans writing, it's technically still, "It's the place you go when you want to hear from people."

[–] huppakee@feddit.nl 24 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Exactly what I thought, cause a lot of comments are from bots and even the ones that appear from humans aren't necessarily humans. How can you say it remains like it is now and it is written by humans at the same time?

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[–] wanderwisley@lemm.ee 50 points 1 week ago
[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 48 points 1 week ago (2 children)
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[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

brands were increasingly exploring hosting a business account and posting content on Reddit to boost the likelihood of their ads appearing in the responses of generative AI chatbots

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If we don’t look for bots, there aren’t any. Sounds more republican every day. If we don’t record covid deaths, there aren’t any.

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[–] Tronn4@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago
[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

Maybe he shouldn't have permabanned all of us power users after the Inauguration. He might have some active humans posting if he hadn't let the DOGE Goblin intimidate him into firing all of his best posters, the ones who built Reddit into what it was over the past decade. WE were Reddit, not bots, and now we're gone, and only the bots remain.

Good job, Spez.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 3 points 6 days ago

they were already on the 4th purge by the time i was permaban in feb, from nov-5th. and then im guessing they switched to using more insidious shadowbans, so people wont notice huge drop in users at once if its done randomly by AI, and shadowbans to alert the accounts that they are banned too.

[–] neuromorph@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

The only thing I miss from reddit was reddit gifts. That was the true peak.

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[–] SirMaple__@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)
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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 27 points 1 week ago

I'm guessing he hasn't browsed his own site recently then.

Probably nothing there to interest him since they banned /r/jailbait

[–] NatakuNox@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] LuxSpark@lemmy.cafe 24 points 1 week ago

Not by this human.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 23 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Pretty sure all the humans left Reddit like two years ago.

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[–] TomMasz@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ha ha ha. Spez can be hilarious when he wants to be.

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[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Woah. A pledge from a CEO. There’s no way this is meaningless PR bullshit. We better take it seriously.

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