[kmlevitt]

I still have mod status on a large-ish (70k+) subreddit so I can view reddit's internal traffic statistics for it, and these estimates are definitely wrong.

These stats claim the sub has had 10-20 comments per day in just the past month, so maybe 300-600 tops.

In reality it's had 1200+ comments just in the past week alone and probably closer to 5000 for the month. And you can see the activity with your own eyes in every thread, so I definitely trust reddit's own stats more.

[echelon]

Did you participate in the blackout? What was your impression of it? Were any of the tools you used impacted by the API ban?

I think a much more effective strategy would be a user-led LLM "spamming" campaign.

Package up a lightweight, easy to use LLM for Windows users and let them turn their accounts into noise. Purposely generate overly-argumentative, blatantly wrong prose on every subject and in every subreddit.

Reddit would hate that. Just a hundred users engaging in it could probably tank the quality of the whole site.

[kmlevitt]

I don’t go on Reddit that much anymore and I haven’t been active as a mod on that sub for a very long time. But based on my experience doing it, users are quite good at identifying stupid bullshit and reporting it to mods, which makes it easy to spot. Plus they downvote low quality comments like crazy so it gets buried and people don’t even see it.

Because of those things Prank spammers usually don’t last long. Usually a small gang of people will try something like that and you can quickly ban them. They might try to come back on new accounts but eventually tire of it and find another way to keep themselves busy. The mod queue feature is quite efficient so we can ban reported junk much faster than they can post.

I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but it would be more difficult than you might think. If you try to automated completely it would cost you an awful lot in fees (Open AI’s server bills are “eye-watering“ and if you go past the free limit they start passing that cost onto you), and the admin’s would probably be able to identify the accounts doing it and ban them site wide.

[vGPU]

The trick would be to spend a few months making good comments and then have the AI go back and edit them with junk.

[rglullis]

While an interesting idea, the problem is that the majority of users would be more bothered by it and they simply don't care enough about Reddit's management to fight it.

[arp242]

> I think a much more effective strategy would be a user-led LLM "spamming" campaign.

Also hugely immoral.

If you don't like Reddit and decide to not use it: fine, your choice, obviously.

But completely fucking over a platform because you don't like it? That's an entirely different thing. Who are you exactly to decide how Reddit runs it site?

This is just a DDoS attack, but in a slightly different form.

[echelon]

You're right, and it'll probably become outlawed by legislation (or be caught by existing protections).

Reddit and its userbase have always been on the activist spectrum (SOPA, PIPA, CEO changes, API changes, etc.) And before it, Digg was much the same. Given the fact that they'll brigade r/Place with automation tools and protests, I'm surprised it hasn't happened in the form of a broader protest.

[srcreigh]

is your sub growing?

[littlestymaar]

In practice subs are always growing while there's activity on it, because barely anyone ever leaves a subreddit.

[kmlevitt]

This is true. But we are also up in terms of page views per month, unique visitors, etc., etc. reddit has probably been getting gradually bigger each year for as long as I can remember, and it doesn’t look like that trend has peaked off yet. At least not the subs I have access to.

[kmlevitt]

Yes, still. I’m a mod on a few other decent sized subs (30k-ish) actually and most of them are still growing, unless the topic at hand is clearly outdated.

[johnnyanmac]

Reddit throttled its API usage a month before the great 3rd party purge, so I'm guessing whatever collection method that site was using simply doesn't work correctly anymore. Or worse yet, the remnants of the API spits out completely incorrect data itself.

Sounds like Reddit itself has recovered in terms of raw numbers, but I (and others) have noticed yet another downtick in quality. Lot more bots (AI craze doesn't help. And despite the API narrative being used to counter them, they probably suferent the least), comments seem to be as hostile as early pandemic. But these are hard to measure objectively.

[kmlevitt]

I'm on reddit a lot less these days, but subjectively it seems about the same for me, except most of the old subreddits I'm a legacy mod on are way busier than I remember. They're definitely still gaining users.

It could just be that the longer you're on there, the worse the quality appears to get to you as newcomers come. People always start to feel that way after being there some time. But then again people have been complaining about the quality of reddit going down literally almost as long as reddit has existed.

[mnky9800n]

In my opinion Reddit has a content problem in the same way 24 hour news does. Simply put, there's not enough content to put up constantly so it's supplemented with repeating memes, reposts, and drama.

[kmlevitt]

At the end of the day it comes down to the upvotes, though. If the other users are on your wavelength, you’ll probably like whatever they recommend. But over time you could have less in common with the average user there, meaning what they upvote will be less relevant to you too.

[vGPU]

Bots seem to be more prevalent everywhere. For example, I’d say roughly 3/4ths of the followers on my twitter are obvious bot accounts with names like battery48462628 and that have either no comments at all or random Chinese foods and city pictures with captions like “flowers are the spice of life”.