It probably seems weird asking this on Lemmy, but of course posting this on Reddit would get banned or taken down. Reddit doesn’t like being critical of Reddit. Anyways….
Over the last 10 years as a Reddit user I’ve believe the amount of accounts that are bots or foreign bad actors has tipped past 50%. I have no statistics to speak of, but would love if somebody did and could share.
Based purely on some of the conversations, posts, rage bait, strong ideologies, etc… I’m pretty convinced that a reasonable sample of humans could not or would not act the way they do on that platform. So often now I see posts that I feel are specifically attempting to sow discord and disagreement.
Does anyone else agree? What percent of users do you think are bots? Foreign bad actors?
Sadly, I think Reddit has no desire to find out or do anything about it. There would be no upside to them correcting their advertising numbers.
My guess: (pure speculation)
Lemmy (edit: I mean the comment section) is probably at 25% government agents or people acting on behalf of governments including US, Russia, China, possibly other allies of the aforementioned.
Bots tho, probably few, maybe 10% or less. Most of the instances use manual applications, so hard to get bots through. You’d need to write a different “essay” for each application, also think of unique names that doesnt look bot generated.
If you look specifically in (edit: the comments section of) political threads, probably anywhere from 25% to 50% government agents.
Mainsteam social media like Reddit, probably at 25% to 50% bots pre-exodus, now it seem like 50% to 75% bots, the percentage of government agents are probably much lower, since unlike Lemmy where there are much less users, on reddit they wouldn’t have the manpower to post enough comments to manipulate the discussion, but they could just use bots instead, many of those bots are probably operated by governments. And on political subreddits, these numbers will skyrocket.
Thing thing about the internet, is you have to treat it as entertainment, not real source of unbiased information, especially not a forum where any rando can sign up.
I’m gonna restate what I said in another thread:
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I’ve come up with a system to categorize reality in different ways:
Category 1: Thoughts inside my brain formed by logics
Category 2: Things I can directly observe via vision, hearing, or other direct sensory input
Category 3: IRL Other people’s words, stories, anecdotes, in face to face conversations
Category 4: Acredited News Media, Television, Newspaper, Radio (Including Amateur Radio Conversations), Telephone, Telegrams, etc…
Category 5: The Internet
The higher the category number, means the more distant that information is, and therefore more suspicious I am.
I mean like, if a user on Reddit (or any internet fourm or social media for that matter) told me X is a valid treatment for X disease without like real evidence, I’m gonna laugh in their face (well not their face, since its a forum, but you get the idea).