It’s done by Reddit themselves. They know user visits are dropping. They know power users have slipped. To avoid making it look like a desert, they have bots create content.
The difference between now and then though, is they were a private company.
Unless they disclose they use bots to post content and make the site look active, any use of user count and engagement for any aspect of the company becomes fraud as its misleading investors.
Oh we have 1 million posts an hour! Fraud.
Oh we have 100 million monthly active users! Fraud!
Investors Q/A - do you use bots? Answer No. Fraud.
Conspiracy: Reddit sells bots and bot acquired analytics to high paying corpos, but are losing sales to secondary markets undercutting the reddit sold bots.
Could also be so they can make more ad money, since it makes it look like more people use the site, and more people see the ads. Allows them to get more money from advertisers.
Conspiracy hat on:
It’s done by Reddit themselves. They know user visits are dropping. They know power users have slipped. To avoid making it look like a desert, they have bots create content.
Reddit’s origin story is sockpuppeting as users.
They’ll do it again
The difference between now and then though, is they were a private company.
Unless they disclose they use bots to post content and make the site look active, any use of user count and engagement for any aspect of the company becomes fraud as its misleading investors.
Oh we have 1 million posts an hour! Fraud.
Oh we have 100 million monthly active users! Fraud!
Investors Q/A - do you use bots? Answer No. Fraud.
Fraud doesn’t really stop a big company, if they can get away with it.
Facebook for example.
And whose to say it’s not them directly, but a “third party who Reddit pays for user acquisition” services?
They can pay a random LLC to do it for them.
Q&A do you use bots to generate content or have you used any 3rd party that uses bots themselves directly or through another party.
As long as its asked and it gets leaked they lied it’s fraud.
Plausible deniability doesn’t work if proof comes out.
You don’t hire a hitman and get off scott free when proof comes out you hired a hitman.
Conspiracy: Reddit sells bots and bot acquired analytics to high paying corpos, but are losing sales to secondary markets undercutting the reddit sold bots.
The 9Gag way…
Could also be so they can make more ad money, since it makes it look like more people use the site, and more people see the ads. Allows them to get more money from advertisers.
My friend still uses reddit