New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public…
medium.com
The Impact of Corporate Trolls on Reddit: A Growing Problem
  • Butterbee (She/Her)@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    Well, the article (at least in the free part… I’m not making an account just to fact check this site) mentions two studies right off the bat and claims that they shed light on the impact of corporate trolls on Reddit.

    “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.”

    If you look up these studies, the Pew Research Center has a survey they conduct and although the article claims they interviewed 2500 americans who use reddit the actual study had only 2,002 adults. It was also a study about what sites they used. It had nothing to do with Reddit. In fact, if you switch over to the Detailed Table, Reddit wasn’t even mentioned as a response. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/03/01/social-media-use-2018-methodology/

    I could not find a “Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020” that matched the article’s description. I did find a study published by them in 2020 about selfies and body image and especially snapchat. Once again, no reddit. But I can’t say I found the article mentioned.

    Then again, I can’t say the articles mentioned exist at all. ChatGPT almost certainly hallucinated this.

  • JiminyPicket@beehaw.org
    0·
    11 months ago

    Reddit gets shittier by the day. Currently, they’re blocking users using a VPN, they’re trying to force you to either login to read, or to stop using a VPN so they can have even more of your data. Reddit should be burned to the ground, it’s a data-harvesting cesspool, run by a bunch of greedy dickheads. I wish everyone would wake up and leave at the same time, destroy their IPO.

    • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.org
      0·
      11 months ago

      I’m not a Reddit exponent by any means, but I’ve yet to run into an issue using the site on Mullvad at the router level. There’s unfortunately communities there that can offer useful information not easily found by search engines.

      • JiminyPicket@beehaw.org
        0·
        11 months ago

        Yeah, unfortunate because all that information could easily move here if Reddit users stopped feeding the machine. The site is being blocked intermittently for numerous VPN users, using Proton, Mullvad, Nord etc. They say it’s a code error but it’s clearly trying to force people to use their crappy app, or login with no privacy.

        • rodgm@beehaw.org
          1·
          11 months ago

          I stopped commenting on Reddit and deleted my account but if a search result had some info I needed on Reddit I would still go there to read but not comment. But ya, a while back they started blocking me because of vpn usage. So I started blocking them out of any search results. It works both ways. Thanks for letting me know my suspicions were correct JimmyPicket. But that is how I ended up here.