this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
397 points (95.0% liked)
Technology
59578 readers
3015 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not just speculation on your part.
How it started:
https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/
How it's going:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/13p889x/reddit_admins_were_just_caught_using_bots_or_fake/
They also started handing out usernames to companies over "trademark infringement." Someone with the username "FoodNetwork" is losing the username to the real Food Network.
I was on reddit long enough to remember how people used to run corporate stooges out with pitchforks.
"These are fan run forums," they would say. The idea that you could have your username taken by a corporation was unheard of, because originally, it was considered really bad form to have anyone from the business running the subreddit, because then it wouldn't be a neutral source of information.
Nope, now they can steal usernames and it's totes okay for subreddits to be completely controlled by their corporate namesake.
Pretty sure corporations running their own subreddits has been.a thing for awhile now. Fairly certain Costco's subreddit is fully modded by their advertising department. Threads written by employees during COVID were getting nuked constantly.
Reading what happened to the german subs, that also happened with newly created spanish subs, many got thousands of subscribers but no engagement, only one or two comments per thread and little content but a lot of subscribers.