There's no way they expect any Reddit user to believe they're "keeping it real." The site is completely overrun by bots, and they continue to take actions protecting those accounts while punishing real users. The weird reverse block function, curated histories, limiting RSS, breaking old.reddit. All of this helps bots hide their activity.
Meanwhile, real users are shadowbanned all over the place, often just for the crime of being new to the site or not self-censoring. If you use the report function linked at the end of the article, the AI-generated content you're reporting will frequently pass their poorly engineered automated sniff-test, and instead the reporter ends up with their own account flagged for "abuse" or "bullying."
I feel like it's gotten marginally better (certainly, relative to a few months ago in the subreddits I frequent), but it's unclear how much of that is Reddit, Inc.-driven vs. per-subreddit-moderator-team-driven.
I think the situation can both be "bad" and "better than it was before," but to your point, some of the recent actions (e.g., curating histories) definitely seem counterproductive.
There's no way they expect any Reddit user to believe they're "keeping it real." The site is completely overrun by bots, and they continue to take actions protecting those accounts while punishing real users. The weird reverse block function, curated histories, limiting RSS, breaking old.reddit. All of this helps bots hide their activity.
Meanwhile, real users are shadowbanned all over the place, often just for the crime of being new to the site or not self-censoring. If you use the report function linked at the end of the article, the AI-generated content you're reporting will frequently pass their poorly engineered automated sniff-test, and instead the reporter ends up with their own account flagged for "abuse" or "bullying."
I feel like it's gotten marginally better (certainly, relative to a few months ago in the subreddits I frequent), but it's unclear how much of that is Reddit, Inc.-driven vs. per-subreddit-moderator-team-driven.
I think the situation can both be "bad" and "better than it was before," but to your point, some of the recent actions (e.g., curating histories) definitely seem counterproductive.
Reddit is full of Parasite SEO lately.