• starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    I do have to wonder how many of those millions of users are bots. Browsing /r/all, you can find plenty of weird pseudopornographic subreddits like /r/ReallyGorgeous, which are populated by literally thousands of bots upvoting and commenting on fake selfies posted by the most obviously stolen accounts. Report these accounts all you want, the admins don’t care.

    • BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Probably a big number, but also probably not that many in terms of user count when compared to the overall count.

      I don’t think we have good data on reddit, but a lot of fairly smart people have been trying to figure that out with twitter/x. Key you have to remember is that the average user only consumes content, they don’t contribute in any fashion. So, you can have 10 or so bot accounts being more visible than 10,000 ‘active’ users and still be posting things at a rate that would seem reasonable for an average human. They’ll just come across as a highly engaged user until someone looks closer.