Reddit

"At least..."

I feel like the 15% number is very, very low.

I just hope that the next new study doesn't end up being "New Study: At Least 15% of All Lemmy Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion", otherwise I would be wondering WTF is going on, is Lemmy on the way of being enshittified by Corporate Morons?

Shit you can get paid?

Uh, this post is a bummer and I don't even know if I actually believe the premise... Whatever I guess, lett's all actually just get out of here and go get some Sprite® brand family products, you guys.

People are literally defenceless vs propaganda. Me too. It takes extraordinary effort to decipher the fake from true and whether the true is a full truth or some small piece on silver platter.

At this point I gave up and I just try to find out motives of every… player and align myself with these that best serve my interests.

I don’t read much news because it’s all leftist or alt right propaganda drivel and while I align myself with the left because it serves my interests the best I won’t waste my time listening to their whatever narrative they crafted last week…

Just observe their actions and try to find out the motives and then ask if their motives align with yours. Their words or narrative are worthless drivel at this point, mostly.

Alt right drivel however is especially toxic and insulting but that is specifically done to evoke emotions. Anti gay propaganda crafted by closeted bisexual priests that want a piece from the table. It’s a bit like these email scammers who filter out less naive by making lots of grammar errors on purpose. You are supposed to be enraged either way.

Why is Medium conflating trolls and shills?

People who are paid propagandists are shills, not trolls.

I remember writing a comment about invasive advertising by Instagram. Just shared some anecdotes about how a few extremely specific conversation topics soon became the topic for the ads I was seeing on Instagram, and pointed out that if they were in fact using background conversation to target ads, it would be extremely easy to automate with the voice recognition technology available at the time, so why would they ignore the opportunity if targeted ads are their main source of revenue?

It became one of my most down voted comments at the time, and I had about twice as many replies as downvotes, claiming all kinds of wild or easily disproven shit to disprove the idea that Instagram used such tactics. Was very fishy

That's alarmingly low - it suggests that it doesn't take much for any given influencing campaign. If there are fifteen discrete such campaigns in play, that's just 1/100 of everyone. Now imagine that there's tens of such campaigns, and the numbers look even more reasonable. Also, it's probably cost-effective at this scale since this has been with us a while, which is terrifying.

What I want to know is: what percentage are human users that ate the ~~onion~~ metaphorical tequila worm^1^ and are now parroting these trolls?

1. Follow me here: drink a bottle and eat the worm inside. You're not thinking straight and did something you wouldn't do if you had your wits about you, or maybe a friend nearby that is thinking clearly. Propaganda has a way of forcing you into a phantasm by emotional manipulation, making it easy to jam all kinds of nonsense into your head. Extending the metaphor, said propaganda also lays out how to defend your worm eating habit as though it's totally normal to do.

Dead internet here we come!

Only 15% 🤨

Used Reddit for years. There's no way the percentage is that low.

Reddit is a cesspool of shite. So glad I left and found Lemmy.

the rest are just regular trolls

Lemmy wouldn't have that problem because we're all too busy enjoying an ice cold Coca-Cola.

Remember the_donald started out as a meme sub that got taken over? I fell victim to astroturfing that election season. Thankfully it has made me more skeptical about online interactions now.

those are some low numbers. between corporate, state, and anonymous shills and trolls, I wholly believe at least 50% of all reddit content is paid for or manipulative for agenda based groups. the sheer number of repetitve posts with repetitve comments constantly being on the front page is pure propaganda. Of course I rmemebr back in the old days when the reddit feed was in (almost) real time where you couldliterally wait every 10 minutes and refresh for an almost completely new front page. Now it's all about repetivie agendas and narratives operating in cycles to manipulate public opinions. the same lame post will sit on the front page for entire days.

Capitalism consumes everything.