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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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
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Congrats for the moderator of /r/Jailbait for becoming a billionaire! /s
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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 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)
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.
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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.
bots on fedi have been probing for an algorithm to exploit. not getting far, just annoying.
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Is reddit dead yet?
Its spirit is dead, but its corpse lingers on.
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.
Didn't people leave it for BlueSky? I can't figure out how to use BlueSky... could never get Twitter to work either, maybe it's too Gen Z for my Millenial ass?
Didn’t people leave it for BlueSky?
A small number of people yes, but most influencers remain on Twitter or use both.
I should also point out that BlueSky is backed by crypto bros and they've never had any intentions of improving anything the way the people who want to move moved things.
They ran on the idea of decentralization but ultimately BlueSky is, in practice, completely centralized and its not possible to decentralize it. You can run your own instance, but that would just be a separate centralized instance as opposed to any sort of meaningful federation.
I can’t figure out how to use BlueSky… could never get Twitter to work either, maybe it’s too Gen Z for my Millenial ass?
I hate to say it but.... that has nothing to do with age, because there are old people on either. Its just a microblog platform like any other microblog platform.
The problem is I can't find any worthwhile content. Feels like it's completely random what shows up on my feed
Well, until you start following people you like the content of, of course no algorithm will have good suggestions for you, so youll get a generic one hoping that you like something eventually and thus it can fine tune.
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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
Being on reddit makes me sad, because I got my account permabanned. I do miss being able to use the last actually active forum on the net.
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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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.
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
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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Wait, hold on, slow down. Are you telling me there are bots on Reddit?
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