Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed

#For sale: Ads that look like legit Reddit user posts

“We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden. We find that humans don’t usually type out full URLs in natural conversation and plus, most Internet users are happy to do a quick Google Search,” ReplyGuy’s website reads.

  • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The depressing thing about all this is that this stuff actually works. Most people will happily consume whatever shit is served to them.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      I left in a huff when they jumped the shark and dropped 3party app support. I was a pretty heavy user / contributor and fully thought I might crawl back at some point. Turns out I’m doing fine without going back and the alternatives, while massively smaller, are so much less crappy feeling. I think a lot of people would feel the same way if we could just get them to try the green eggs and ham. I think it’s great that Kagi is starting to index Lemmy, but the one gateway to get people over here that might actually work would be if Google searches started turning up Lemmy content. I think that would grab some attention.

      • bean@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Same! Also a Kagi subscriber. Hello! I thought Reddit might cave on the 3rd party thing for a while. Then they were doubling down and treated the developers of those apps like shit. I was a happy Apollo user, and I trusted what he said about how Reddit acted. I moved to Lemmy. It was confusing at the start but now I feel as at home here as I did in Reddit. If not more actually, since our user base is smaller, I feel like community is closer and has a little more tech know-how too. I do miss some fun Reddit things but I think Lemmy and the fediverse has a ton of potential and I want to be part of it ☺️

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I don’t actually think that’s the case - my reading of that whole kerfuffle was that the blogger had overreacted.

            • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              7 months ago

              Agreed, but they both did in my opinion. I’ll stick with StartPage and DDG, myself.

          • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            Really? Do you use this criteria for everything in your life? Show me a ceo that isn’t a maniac and I’ll show you someone that hasnt had a proper psychological screening. Lemmy has blown up the lore on this guy anyway. Not much evidence he’s any more of an asshole than most ceos.

      • Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        Just gonna suggest searxng as an alternative to kagi if you want something open-source, free, and still customizable.

        Most searxng instances also index lemmy.

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I think there was a post a while back where someone found Lemmy posts on search results. I think it’s still being drowned out by bigger platforms but it’s good to see it happening!

        • Nommer@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          They do show up in DDG occasionally but I was troubleshooting a jerboa problem. The results are there, they’re just buried deep.

      • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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        7 months ago

        I was very similar, heavy Reddit user that quit over thr 3PA shitshow last year. Not sure if you’ve noticed the same effect, but my attention span has gone way up.

      • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I’m unfortunately on Reddit regularly, but that’s only because it still has decent tech support search results. Haven’t logged in since the APIpocalypse

      • EddoWagt@feddit.nl
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        7 months ago

        I still miss many of the nice communities though, Lemmy is fine, but it has less users in total than many of my niche communities. I still visit Reddit sometimes to find something out about my interests, although that might slow down if bots really take over Reddit

      • bobalot@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I still visit smaller subreddits when looking up technical fixes (like unraid) but I no longer post and got rid of all my old posts.

        Hopefully as Lemmy grows, I can leave that shithole for good.

    • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      When you’re constantly inflicted with advertising it’s the fish not seeing the water story. Fuck advertising propaganda and malware networks. Fuck advertising without consent in public spaces. And most of all fuck reddit for betraying their mods and users and treating them like pieces of shit because they can get away with it.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Homie, most people in my office don’t read fucking books. Half the people in my life before I was an adult have grown to never touch a book or educational material in their adult lives. We’re fucked. By and large people just want to not care about anything it seems. I still get scoffed at when mentioning google and they’re under an antitrust lawsuit right now. We are not going to last unless education comes to the forefront.