The Impact of Corporate Trolls on Reddit: A Growing Problem
The rise of social media has brought about a new battleground for the spread of misinformation, manipulation of public opinion, and promotion of products and services. Reddit, one of the most popular social media platforms, has not been immune to this phenomenon.
Two significant studies, the Pew Research Center study conducted in 2018 and the Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020, have shed light on the prevalence and impact of corporate trolls on Reddit.
I wonder what that number would be if you also included feds and police departments
I'll never forget the Reddit news post where they revealed that their most posters per capita was some air force base, and then deleted it.
Reddit has removed their blog post identifying Eglin Air Force Base as the most reddit-addicted "city" - Eglin is often cited as the source of some government social-media propaganda/astroturfing programs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/s/FMEy2r6J1o
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
And it's still somehow more useful for finding information than google 90% of the time
I wish people would stop saying this. just be willing to skip the first 1-2 pages of corporate articles or append "study" and/or "research" at the end to find actual scientific evidence instead of a random redditor confidently blabbing shit with a total air of "trust me bro" and "I made it the fuck up"
People won't stop saying this until it stops being true
random redditor confidently blabbing shit with a total air of "trust me bro"
yeah that's not what it's for, it's for finding groups of nerds bickering over shit and parsing through the argument to determine which position is more likely to be correct
Also "finding information" doesn't mean literally "scientific information," I'm not going to find some scientific study on some bullshit related to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure or whatever
Word. I can't figure out how to get google to do anything sometimes. It just keeps returning the same handful of links no matter how i structure search queries. And that's if it doesn't "autocorrect" my query. Like it works, but sometimes it flat doesn't.
Agreed, I find this method especially helpful if something is going on with my pets. If you just google it or use any of the other big search engines you will get identical articles telling you that they will die and take them to the vet immediately. Answers on reddit are generally pretty good about letting you know what kinds of things like that are serious because usually at least a couple people have experienced the same exact thing.
actual scientific evidence
I agree with you which is why I use Google Scholar for finding actual research, but if I need to figure out how to do something in Linux that I can't figure out myself then Reddit is gonna be one of my go-to tools.
Sure, but if it's something like builds in a video game or caretaking for a specific breed of plant often you get the most detailed response on Reddit - or at least you used to. It's probably been regurgitated and churned up by bots so much it's no longer too useful.
If it pumps up the user counts and page views, why should they care?
I think Reddit is well beyond concerns of degrading the user experience.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/03/29/the-future-of-free-speech-trolls-anonymity-and-fake-news-online/
The actual study
I just noticed today that google (not on personal computer no judgement) is autosuggesting AI generated instructions when I was searching how to do certain things in Word. And it was, unsurprisingly, complete jumbled garbage
r/hailcorporate I remember when this sub was well alive and popular, though its dead now. If you notice how it died right around the time this study came out years ago.
r/hailcorporate was like the normie redditor libs finding out their ship is sinking and trying to bail it out. Eventually they were drowned in bots.
Why do we call it trolls? Trolls are chill. Trolls do a little trolling. Hang out under their own bridge without bothering people. Steal a goat from time to time. No biggie.
Calling them trolls just feels like when mainstream media would report on the hacker named '4chan', or how libs of all kinds go 'uhhh russian china troll much??'
Trolls isn't accurate. These people are engaging in covert psychological warfare. They're mindflaying warlocks. They're not corporate trolls. They're just corporate. They're just another piece of the private media system.
I suppose the point that differentiates them from regular PR and advertising is that they're not who they say they are, but PR and advertising aren't who they say they are either. Their motives are hidden. Their operations, the places they generate superprofits from cheap labour, and so on. That's all hidden.
I do get the differentiation, but trolls are a shit name. It's far more sinister than trolling. I don't know what it should be called. But it should be far more severe.
"Troll" originally had a very specific meaning, it was a person who was deliberately acting obtuse and contrarian for the sole purpose of getting a rise out of others.
When news media started reporting on the internet, the word "troll" started being used as "online entity who does thing I don't like". Much like how "viral" now means "has >100 views" instead of "every person on the internet knows this".
And the rest are US federal employees, trolls and bots trying to manipulate public opinion.
no wayyy
