I’m not a heavy Reddit user but I’ve noticed a sharp increase in comment spam disguised as real discussion.
I think the turning point was when they allowed accounts to hide their comment history. Before, when you could click on an account and read all of their other comments it was easy to tell when an account only existed for fake conversations about a product they were spamming.
Now the spam accounts hide their comment history so they can do nothing but spam similar comments all over Reddit and walk the line where it’s not obvious if any single comment is spam or an one off comment from someone trying to be helpful.
Users are using Google and other services to find their other posts and post warnings, but it takes so much more effort now.
I have noticed the same uptick in bot-like behaviour there. The part I struggle to square is, why so much of it is so useless?
It's maybe account laundering, but on any popular post you'll see at least half of the comments are tangential at best. They're not an expression of anything a person would express, like replying with just skull emojis to a random news post, or saying "he really said" with an exact word to word recreation of a throwaway quote from a video. No one ever replies to these posts, they get like 2 upvotes (if that), the platform doesn't reward them at all but they constantly appear in a very artificial looking way.
Just a thought, but I wonder if Reddit are hiding this information deliberately to prevent anyone from publishing a study estimating what percentage of their traffic is driven by bots (anecdotally, it's a lot - and they used to be mostly organic even half a decade ago).
Moderators can still see the full comment history.
The advantage of hiding one's comments is precisely that they do not show up as easy as before on Google, discussions don't get derailed because of comment muckrakers going through their opponent's post and accuse them of being anti-zionist or pro-zionist, and actual stalkers have a far more difficult time tracking down victims.
It's definitely not as consistent as Reddit's official post histories, but from my experience you can still find a lot just by Googling site:reddit.com "username".
I wonder if people are finally catching on. I feel like I hear less of "I add 'reddit' to all my searches" than I used to.
The reliability of reddit comments has been questionable even before LLMs. Because people trying to push whatever they are interested in pushing realized that having organic-looking comments is the perfect way to sway people who don't trust professional publications and traditional ads. And now with LLMs in the mix, there's basically not even a cost to doing this and making it look like tons of people love your product and are sharing their friendly thoughts and advice.
This is a direct result of pretty much all of the LLMs using Reddit as a training tool. People are selling GEO services with reddit spam being a big part of that.
I think the turning point was when they allowed accounts to hide their comment history. Before, when you could click on an account and read all of their other comments it was easy to tell when an account only existed for fake conversations about a product they were spamming.
Now the spam accounts hide their comment history so they can do nothing but spam similar comments all over Reddit and walk the line where it’s not obvious if any single comment is spam or an one off comment from someone trying to be helpful.
Users are using Google and other services to find their other posts and post warnings, but it takes so much more effort now.