At first I thought your point about bot traffic was being dramatic, but holy crap it’s bad. Twice now I’ve fallen for post later identified as bots. One (now deleted by mods) I even replied to to commiserate and offer suggestions, and I feel like I was duped into empathizing with a machine cynically farming data.
Then there’s this bizarre interaction on a post I made:
This top level comment: is a neutral reply to my prompt, ending on a generic friendly note. I reply to it, saying I had to lay down ant traps but felt bad about it because the ants are just trying to survive.
8 minutes later the same guy makes another top level comment with a completely different tone, and accuses me of being a psycho based on how I worded a part of the OP, even though his first comment seemed to indicate he had already read the OP, and my reply clearly showed I was attempting to empathize with the bugs invading my desk.
Barely 5 minutes later dude makes another top level comment generically replying to the OP like the prior two interactions had never happened.
Interesting case. Pretty formulaic and prolific poster, and odd to post three top-level comments, but I also sometimes post multiple top-level comments.
I think there’s a strain of bot designed for a particular type of account (human at first, then converted to botnet drone) that tries to mimic the previous comments’ style that’s particularly prevalent on reddit, though I’ve not found any hard evidence, or seriously investigated it really. More of a hunch I’ll follow up on one day. I’ve just accepted that the cost of being charitable to other humans on the internet means occasionally taking a bot at face value. Happens on fedi from time to time. Reddit though, the bot:human ratio just feels too high. Makes it not fun for me to engage, I just feel like I’m talking to ChatGPT. Which sucks, because I know I’m wrong at least some of the time, but… 🤷 whaddya gonna do.
At first I thought your point about bot traffic was being dramatic, but holy crap it’s bad. Twice now I’ve fallen for post later identified as bots. One (now deleted by mods) I even replied to to commiserate and offer suggestions, and I feel like I was duped into empathizing with a machine cynically farming data.
Then there’s this bizarre interaction on a post I made:
This top level comment: is a neutral reply to my prompt, ending on a generic friendly note. I reply to it, saying I had to lay down ant traps but felt bad about it because the ants are just trying to survive.
8 minutes later the same guy makes another top level comment with a completely different tone, and accuses me of being a psycho based on how I worded a part of the OP, even though his first comment seemed to indicate he had already read the OP, and my reply clearly showed I was attempting to empathize with the bugs invading my desk.
Barely 5 minutes later dude makes another top level comment generically replying to the OP like the prior two interactions had never happened.
Interesting case. Pretty formulaic and prolific poster, and odd to post three top-level comments, but I also sometimes post multiple top-level comments.
I think there’s a strain of bot designed for a particular type of account (human at first, then converted to botnet drone) that tries to mimic the previous comments’ style that’s particularly prevalent on reddit, though I’ve not found any hard evidence, or seriously investigated it really. More of a hunch I’ll follow up on one day. I’ve just accepted that the cost of being charitable to other humans on the internet means occasionally taking a bot at face value. Happens on fedi from time to time. Reddit though, the bot:human ratio just feels too high. Makes it not fun for me to engage, I just feel like I’m talking to ChatGPT. Which sucks, because I know I’m wrong at least some of the time, but… 🤷 whaddya gonna do.