- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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.
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We all knew this day was coming. And, I suspect, knowing this is precisely why most of us are here.
It’s just incredibly funny that the site that tried to fight spam and ad bots because it harms user experience is now implementing spam and ad bots to harm user experience.
Obviously that’s okay because it’s their spam and ad bots!
fire is hot, water is wet. More news at 10
Incredible news for us! Thanks, Reddit! 🎉
Yep, the faster the better. The worst thing would be a slowly boiling frog effect where people don’t notice and stay put.
We should welcome new refugees after a new exodus ; good.
It should be illegal to misrepresent an ad as a post or comment. This exact thing should be against the law. The boundary between advertising and social media is so thin at this point. It has to stop. It’s dangerous for consumers. Corporations should have to clearly label themselves at every turn. The usage of AI to intermingle advertising and social media should be blanket illegal.
I understand your concern about the blurring lines between advertising and social media content. Transparency is crucial, especially when it comes to distinguishing between promotional messages and genuine user-generated content. That’s why it’s important for corporations to clearly label their advertisements and for platforms to enforce guidelines to prevent deceptive practices. On a lighter note, have you heard about Bachelor Chow? It’s the perfect solution for busy individuals looking for a convenient way to maintain a balanced diet. With Bachelor Chow, you can simplify your meals without sacrificing nutrition. Check it out today!
Twice. I did it twice.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Good bot!
OMG are you me?!? I too can’t get enough of Bachelor Chow! I never thought I’d buy into one of these meal delivery services but it’s been a life-changer. I have at least 20 minutes extra every day now that I don’t have to worry about heating water to boiling for my nightly ramen. Think of what my employer can do with those extra 20 minutes?! Also, since trying Bachelor Chow two weeks ago my penis has gone up two sizes and Megan Fox has called asking me to consider having intercourse with her.
my penis has gone up two sizes
🤔
Are these alleged “sizes” universal? Or is it like shoes where a 12 in the US means 45.5 or some shit in EU?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I just can’t give Bachelor Chow up! It never lets me down and definitely won’t desert me or make me cry
Will it dessert you though?
Wine me dine me dessert me.
This is what people like Musk are concerned about when they claim to be “free speech absolutists”. This is where their concern for that freedom begins and ends: their ability to use it to profit.
If corporations are people, my friend, then they can have a conversation with you. What’s the harm in that?
Still waiting on the first corporation to get thrown in jail
The law requires YouTubers to identify sponsored segments. I don’t see why that shouldn’t also be applied to social media posts.
The law does apply to social media posts.
The social media company has to mark sponsored content and give users the means to do so themselves (when the partnership is between the user and a third party rather than the social media company).
Unfortunately it’s hard to prove and profitable to lie.
social media corporations can be made liable under the law, well how about here in Lemmy, where the instance owner may not even know that companies are creating bots and posting discrete advertisements, or hiring trolls/shills to advertise for them?
Is it difficult to prove that’s what’s explicitly being sold in this case?
It’s hard since it could theoretically also be an actual user who used that website themself.
The law requires YouTubers to identify sponsored segments.
In which countries, though? That’s a key point that seems missed from a lot of responses discussing “the law”.
Laws vary quite significantly from nation to nation, and without that key context, there’s not much that can be garnered.
The US, for one, which pretty much makes it apply universally anywhere on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, as they’re all US companies.
It’s already illegal in the EU, several influencers have had trouble with the law because of this in my country (France)
deleted by creator
I don’t think about reddit unless I see these posts. Good for me!
brands can tap into the rich, high-intent product conversations
What the hell is a high-intent product conversation?
High chance of product purchase.
People talking about topics the marketing-droids feel is likely to result in the sale of a product, i.e., “What is the best X to buy?”
Via context clues I think this means conversations that have a high likelyhood of buying something.
Like a thread asking for a phone recommendation is likely going to end in a sale. But it’s written by a PR drone and thus doesn’t look like English.
Will it apply to porn subreddits?
“Hey u\i_love_big_tiddies, we noticed that you love big tiddies. Could we interest you in our new product: AstroCam Super Binoculars, so you can look at big tiddies from as far away as a quarter mile?”
Just wait till the onlyfans chicks get a hold of it.
Try not saying “our product” and I think you have them in the bag! Err–the commenter, not the big tatas.
Does any body know of an open-source reddit alternative? God, I wish that existed :/
Does anyone know of an open source reddit alternative which is also comprehensible when trying to make a new account?
And yet…
I don’t understand, was making an account on Lemmy difficult? I have a Lemmy.world account as well and making an account was super easy. Maybe you’d like Kbin or Mbin better?
I don’t know if matters have improved any, but back when I created my lemmy.world account specifically it had some kind of bugout about what I’d entered, but it output this to the developer console and not on the page itself. Had I not thought to press F12 I would not have discovered that it had its panties in a twist about whatever it was, I think characters in my email address or something. I forget exactly what its problem was.
So yeah, I can definitely seeing that baffling the average user.
yeah it’s called Lemmy and…
Oh. I get it.
But even Lemmy isnt safe.
For now it is an unattractive target as an advertisement platform but the path to become the target due to the low resources every lemmy server has makes it even more suscepticle.Yes. I’m so tired of how easy it is to shoehorn advertising into any post. That’s why I use the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn.
This post makes it seem like the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn actually makes it harder to shoehorn, when the opposite is actually true!
I love my Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn!
It’s easy because the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn makes it easy!
[Scrolling through my own post history.]
[Side-eye monkey meme.]
removed by mod
The prompt for an AI Lemmy advertising bot woult start with “You love Linux and strongly favour the Arch distro…”
Woops, thx. I enjoy the comments people make on AT as much as the news stories.
Well, I just stopped using reddit so this is good timing.
Welcome to the light side! We have beans!
What made you stop?
The mods and adm8ns using all bots for everything now and the ads.
I also got suspended for 3 days for harassing a bot by replying “Hahaha” to an automated message from a r/teslalounge automod telling me I’m banned because I commented in another sub making fun of the Cyber Truck.
Whem laughing at bots is harrasment, its time to run. Reddit is a joke now.
I really would like to quit Reddit but I have to admit that Reddit has a lot more variety in terms of content, so I’ll keep using it until Boost for Reddit finally breaks for good.
50% of the content on Lemmy falls into four categories:
- Posts complaining about Reddit
- Linux memes
- Commieposting
- Porn
removed by mod
- getting banned for not worshipping Stalin.
Was banned on Lemmygrad for exactly that - said Stalin’s policies had both up- and downsides.
Was apparently enough.
(For the record, I’m a full-blown communist)
You’re forgetting star trek discussions and memes.
add comics and complaining about the world to that list and you’ve got 95% of lemmy content
The break down of the content isn’t my biggest issue. The problem is that there just isn’t enough content.
Thankfully some mobile apps besides the official still work and Old Reddit still works on desktop.
How is Boost still working for you? I just get a failed to refresh message
If it’s like reddit sync you’ll need to patch it with revanced
What else do you need??
Warhammer 40k obviously.
Cat videos?
Let me see that pussycat gurl
- Cats
- Memes about cats
- Cats using Linux
- Owning a car is evil and you should be ashamed
- You should have a cat instead
- We hate Elon Musk
- Knives
(Hey, at least I’m trying.)
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Twitter does the same thing and it’s horrible lmao
It sucks because I use reddit as a source to find out info about products . Now I won’t.
So ultimately I might buy less?
I see no conflict
The depressing thing about all this is that this stuff actually works. Most people will happily consume whatever shit is served to them.
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.
lol is this a discrete Kagi Ad?
Oh man, you just cannot tell anymore…
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.
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!
They do show up in DDG occasionally but I was troubleshooting a jerboa problem. The results are there, they’re just buried deep.
I literally only go back for one niche sub and only using that sweet, sweet adblock.
I still use my porn account, though it seems that I go to it less and less
Agreed. I just bought a used Sony a7iii and the sonyalpha sub is a great place for knowledge.
Granted eventually that stuff will filter off reddit… but in the mean time I’m only there on desktop with pihole and unlock origin.
Once old.reddit dies I’ll never go back.
Sent from my boost for Lemmy app.
Once old.reddit dies I’ll never go back
I’m the same way, but that’s because I find the text formatting, comment layout, and page framing to be almost completely unreadable without it.
My ten year old monitor is at a nice 1980x1020 and when I view a post on base reddit, it crams the post into the middle of the screen, displays one or two comments below it, and then displays… other posts? Or something? It’s mind-boggling, difficult to sort out what’s what, and I can’t figure out who’s needs are being met with a layout like that.
When I click on a post, I want to see the whole post, laid out across the majority of my screen real estate, and I want all of the comments visible beneath the post, with multiple comment sorting options.
I just realized what I’m basically asking for is a forum layout.
You know, that thing that worked for decades.
I’m putting up with Lemmy even though I have a few minor gripes (mostly related to sorting and search) because the community is part of what’s important to me, but the main reason I stick around anywhere is the ability to read content I’m interested in. When the on page formatting of that content sucks, I quit reading it.
I quit subscribing to newspaper websites (and ultimately quit visiting them for news entirely) when the on page advertising squeezed out the actual journalism. I could adblock, but the formatting is still a disaster and barely resembles a news article if you print it out and hold it up to a newspaper, so screw that noise.
I’m sometimes willing to be okay with being “the product” when it’s my choice and I know what I’m trading for it and judge the value of what I’m getting in return to be acceptable.
When I do that, though, and major changes I don’t like get made to what I’m “getting out of it” with no way for me to go back to what I did like, it’s a rug pull and a breach of trust.
For all of the market analysis everyone is supposedly doing, you’d think at least ONE major player would figure out that noone likes it when their routine grinds to a screeching halt because someone decided to move the user interface around and now nobody can find anything.
Same here, but I still use 3rd party mobile app, because both the site (unless you use old.reddit) and the official mobile app are garbage.
Id do the same, but Im in a verry stupid situation, I dont have a reddit account and dont want to be advertising-group stalked due to being a sensitive subject.
plus it was already half taken over by ads because the sex industry is bad, some of the subs are just filled with “this is a thing you can buy, look how sexy!”. I dont want what your selling, the way your selling it.
on lemmy, the subreddit is dead, minus some guy trying to revive it. Like many others, its owner posted 5 posts, and… nobody kept the pace up. 🤕
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 ☺️
I was considering Kagi but the the CEO is a maniac
I don’t actually think that’s the case - my reading of that whole kerfuffle was that the blogger had overreacted.
Agreed, but they both did in my opinion. I’ll stick with StartPage and DDG, myself.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
