So this might sound tinfoil hat but hear me out.
I know a couple of people who run Reddit account networks. Like actually run them, as a business. I always knew bots were a thing here but when they told me the numbers I genuinely didn’t believe them at first. It’s not 10 accounts. It’s not 1000. It’s hundreds of thousands of accounts just... living on Reddit. Posting, commenting, replying to each other, starting arguments, building up a history so they look like real people. Then they get sold.
And now I can’t unsee it. Half the time I open a thread I’m wondering if the post is AI, the top comment is AI, and the guy arguing with it is also AI. Like a good chunk of what we read here (maybe even half? idk) is just generated stuff made to bait real people into replying so the account looks legit.
And it’s obviously only gonna get worse. Every month it’s harder to tell if you’re talking to an actual human.
So my actual question is: is there still any point to Reddit if you can’t tell who’s real anymore? Does it still have value for you, or are we all just yelling at chatbots at this point?
(and no, this wasn’t written by ChatGPT lol)