this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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[–] dumples@kbin.social 145 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The only reason reddit was valuable was because it was from real people who weren't paid off. Well that's ruined now.

[–] eronth@lemmy.world 30 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, I've noticed that a bit lately anyways. Maybe I'm looking up stuff that has less of a community on Reddit, and thus has less discussion, but I have absolutely noticed some comments have a single product name-drop with little clarity for why they liked the product. It starts to feel like they're just ads (generated or otherwise) meant to trick you into thinking Reddit users are liking the product.

AI is going to just make it worse, and cause Reddit to not be a good goto for actual reviews and discussion on pros/cons.

[–] Jordan117@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

There's an excellent chance that even some of the "authentic" discussions you see are word-for-word reposts of old posts and comments, created by bots to build up karma in order to be sold to spammers and influence peddlers down the line.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

The first obvious wave of this stuff, to me, was the video conversion ripoff software and similar. They had people looking around for questions their software was possibly a solution for. Sometimes they would act like users, other times it was more neutral info, but still clear it was self promotion because of what was recommended.

[–] dumples@kbin.social 3 points 8 months ago

Exactly. Usually there's a conversation or a quick consensus on one or two things. But I've been seeing lots of single answers or just ads

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I wanted to figure out what game hosting sites were good and Google pointed me to reddit...every thread was full of boilerplate ads for different sites. The comments were the most obvious, marketing-approved sentences I've ever seen

[–] dumples@kbin.social 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Everything I can find online seems to be advertisements or paid reviews (Also advertisements) when looking for anything anymore. Businesses are terrified of an open honest conversation about what is good and what is not

[–] sudo42@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I so don't understand how to run a business.

  • Spend $Billions shoving advertising down everyone's throats? Absolutely!

  • Just make a good product and provide good customer support? It will never work!

[–] Nikelui@piefed.social 4 points 8 months ago

Option 1 is easy and any idiot can throw money at it to solve the problem. Option 2 requires talented people and real effort.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you're terrified of honest conversations, your product is probably shit.

Marques Brownlee had a video recently about the question "do bad reviews kill products?" that highlights the issue well

[–] dumples@kbin.social 9 points 8 months ago

Exactly. Every company is terrified of honest conversation since it makes putting out shit harder.