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What percentage of Reddit users are bots or foreign bad actors? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 1 week ago by slowmotionrunner@lemmy.sdf.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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.

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[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean more like comments, not the total users. Total user at 25% would be a lot of man power.

Like a post with 25 comments could have at least 7 comments be a government account, and it doesn't take a lot of people. One new NSA or FSB hire can run 7 virtual machines to create Lemmy sockpuppet accounts to push whatever they want. Like... it only takes 1 out of the thousands of employees they have to run this. Lemmy is small enough to be doable.

I mean, if I wanted to troll, I could pull up 7 tor browser sessions and create accounts to post bad faith arguments, but I just don't have the energy for it.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

It certainly can be done, and without much effort, but there’s virtually no bang for that buck right now, because the audience is laughably small.