I'd argue that Reddit leadership, which insulted, hobbled, and wrote off its mods and power users (destroying projects like /r/BotDefense) while doing little to crack down on the proliferation of bot repost content, had a major role in encouraging this. They might even like it better this way -- lots of extra fake engagement boosting traffic stats without messy human drama, which they can then ironically sell back to AI labs as training data.

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bmurphy1976 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Let's never forget the summer of 2023 when Reddit forceably removed mods from many major communities and replaced them with corporate shills. That was a major loss of dedicated people who cared more for their communities than Spez's pocket book.

	▲	alex1138 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The internet is rather trending in that direction, isn't it? Youtube got rid of downvotes and apparently upload dates, which seems like an easier way to trick people into ads. And Reddit, like you said If these platforms had to listen to "their customers" (here comes the inevitable comment about how users aren't customers; yes, I know)? They'd all be fired. They'd have to find a new job. They all act in incredibly insulting ways with a too big to fail attitude

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traderj0e an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It was bogus even before that. I heard complaints at some point that API changes broke bots, which actually sounds good.