this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
360 points (95.2% liked)

Not The Onion

17028 readers
1184 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

But Huffman said Reddit was now battling to ensure its users stay at the center of the social network. “Where the rest of the internet seems to be powered by or written by or summarized by AI, Reddit is distinctly human,” he said. “It’s the place you go when you want to hear from people, their lived experiences, their perspectives, their recommendations. Reddit is communities and human curation and conversation and authenticity.”

As Reddit becomes an increasingly important source for LLMs, advertisers are responding with what one agency chief described as a “massive migration” to the platform.

Multiple advertising and agency executives speaking during this month’s Cannes advertising festival told the FT that brands were increasingly exploring hosting a business account and posting content on Reddit to boost the likelihood of their ads appearing in the responses of generative AI chatbots.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Tramort@programming.dev 197 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Starting when?

That ship has sailed.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 82 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The ship was never at that port.

Reddit was using bots and vote manipulators back to the Digg days, as well as scraping/reposting akin to what 9gag became famous for.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Kirk@startrek.website 32 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I know he's just selling the platform to AI companies, but it's an odd take considering they've been moving away from being a message board and towards being just another content feed for years now.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 22 points 6 days ago

Looked up some information a bit ago and found Reddit using AI written answer pages to aggregate information. Which- why? The information was already indexed by a search engine, the sole reason I landed on this page. Why are you offering me secondhand, watered down information written by your idiot machine when I can instead read sourced accounts with citations?

It’s interesting to know that you can do this, but I could not care less about a machine’s perspective on what is or is not the prevailing opinion. Moreover, it completely contradicts your stated goal, you perjurious pool of feculence.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 30 points 5 days ago

I'm guessing he hasn't browsed his own site recently then.

Probably nothing there to interest him since they banned /r/jailbait

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 33 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

Maybe he shouldn't have permabanned all of us power users after the Inauguration. He might have some active humans posting if he hadn't let the DOGE Goblin intimidate him into firing all of his best posters, the ones who built Reddit into what it was over the past decade. WE were Reddit, not bots, and now we're gone, and only the bots remain.

Good job, Spez.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 14 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I'm glad he did, I like Lemmy so much more.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Nangijala@feddit.dk 9 points 4 days ago (3 children)

It's gotten to the point that if someone were to ask me what my super power would be if I could choose, I'd say that I'd like to be able to see what is human and what isn't when I'm online. Very boring super power, but it would make some things a lot easier.

Ironically I also lost count on how many times I was accused of being a bot near the end of my time on reddit. I wouldn't be surprised if those who accused me were bots themselves. It was just insane sometimes.

But good luck with that, Mr CEO. I'm sure you care very much about your human users on your goofy platform.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 49 points 5 days ago (2 children)
[–] D_C@lemm.ee 18 points 5 days ago

Wow, that's a bit unfair. What has he ever done to show he's a lying, money grabbing, scummy piece of shit?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] WrenFeathers@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

He said, in his best human voice.

[–] BetaBlake@lemmy.world 61 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Half of the comments are from bots and everyone gets autobanned.

Reddit is quite literally on autopilot

[–] ef9357@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago

And the other half are re-posts.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Buske@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago

And controlled by 15 mods.

[–] wanderwisley@lemm.ee 53 points 5 days ago
[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 39 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If we don’t look for bots, there aren’t any. Sounds more republican every day. If we don’t record covid deaths, there aren’t any.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

"remain"? They really don't use their own service, do they?

[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I'm wondering if advertisers are starting to notice - that's the only thing that'll make these fuckers try to clean house. It's maybe two years since I left reddit and even then it was absolutely infested with bots. They didn't give a fuck, only cared about the IPO. But advertisers are going to care when they get lots of engagement but no customers because all the engagement is bots.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 12 points 4 days ago

And we're supposed to take his word for it?

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 45 points 5 days ago (1 children)

brands were increasingly exploring hosting a business account and posting content on Reddit to boost the likelihood of their ads appearing in the responses of generative AI chatbots

[–] ILoveUnions@lemmy.world 16 points 5 days ago

"exploring" meaning they've been doing it for more than 5 years already and just got another incentive to continue doing so

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 54 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

He didn't say entirely or how many, lol. If there's 2 humans writing, it's technically still, "It's the place you go when you want to hear from people."

[–] huppakee@feddit.nl 25 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Exactly what I thought, cause a lot of comments are from bots and even the ones that appear from humans aren't necessarily humans. How can you say it remains like it is now and it is written by humans at the same time?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Lucky_777@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

Bots dominate Reddit. This will never change. Straight lying to everyone's faces.

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 18 points 5 days ago

"Trust me!" says yet another capitalist.

[–] Tronn4@lemmy.world 36 points 6 days ago
[–] SirMaple__@lemmy.ca 29 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 14 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ironically the fact that Star Trek is the one of the only specific media franchises that can maintain an active community on Lemmy explains it.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] rozodru@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

...with AI admin and moderation. Anyone who's been banned from reddit will tell you that, hell it says as much in the message they give you. I was banned once for saying "slava ukraini" which according to my ban was a direct attack at a minority (apparently russians are a minority according to reddit bots) and then another for asking how long before citizens begin shooting at ICE agents which, again according to reddit bots, was inciting violence on a minority (ICE agents are now also a minority according to reddit).

the vast majority of posts and comments are bots. the obvious reposts with misleading titles to generate karma to allow said bots to have enough karma to then post on various other subreddits to push whatever bullshit agenda or product they want to push.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

not this human

sent from my pinephone

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 4 days ago (3 children)

So he wants it to be a huge testing grounds with ai for anybody that uses it, got it.

Use the platform? You are talking with and training AI.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 24 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Pretty sure all the humans left Reddit like two years ago.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 7 points 4 days ago

Ah ! so when do they roll it back ?

[–] Makeshift@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

They chase away the humans and ban the ones that are left!

[–] NatakuNox@lemmy.world 26 points 6 days ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Sho@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Fuck, can this loser just fuck off into oblivion already?? You got your money pig boi now piss off!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 20 points 5 days ago
[–] LuxSpark@lemmy.cafe 26 points 6 days ago

Not by this human.

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago

Probably why they are banning so many REAL users at such a high rate.

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 20 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Woah. A pledge from a CEO. There’s no way this is meaningless PR bullshit. We better take it seriously.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] TomMasz@lemmy.world 21 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ha ha ha. Spez can be hilarious when he wants to be.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Zenith@lemm.ee 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

How does that work when your auto-banning everyone?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] DrSoap@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago
[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago (4 children)

It's really wild that the guy who co-founded Reddit is so universally hated by the users.

Talk about having completely lost touch.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›