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The level of engagement on Reddit these days
(lemmy.ca)
Just a few years ago, you would never see such a disparity in votes vs comments. But these days, this is pretty much the norm. I've seen posts with 10K+ upvotes and no more than 80 comments.
I'd say in about 2 years, the entire place is going to be bots with AI generated content that try to mimic "real users" using their new Dynamic Product Ads tool. Not sure how that's legal as I thought ads needed to be marked or differentiated from regular content, but here we are.
The future looks bleak and AI even bleaker. Because it's going to be used against us to make the rich richer and not to make our lives better.
Reddit has been trying hard for years to move beyond being a discussion forum to another mindless scroling app.
The reason is because in the time people read one discussion thread they only see one ad, but scrolling memes, etc they will see many more. It makes the ads much more valuable.
Never thought of it that way! What a dystopian world we live in where intelligent conversation dies because there's no good way to profit off of it.
It's not hopeless! The Fediverse is AFAIK entirely nonprofit, and smaller instances means more moderator eyes on everything, too.
If I had to predict the future, I think apps like Reddit, Twitter, Tioktok, etc will be the places for entertainment and the Fediverse will become the place for conversation.