They're also definitely doing some sort of keyword manipulation, cause the official Reddit App is fairly high in the result list when searching for Lemmy.
On another note: hi, I just came here today after RIF stopped working 👋
They're also definitely doing some sort of keyword manipulation, cause the official Reddit App is fairly high in the result list when searching for Lemmy.
In the organic results or the paid results? It's pretty common for competitors to buy your name in search term sales.
People must be doing that, I scrolled for a bit and didn't see a single 5 star review. The best part is most reviews call out exactly the same problems as my 1 star review from 2018. Very few even seem to mention the API or 3rd party apps. What have they been doing for 5 years?
After seeing this, I thought I'd go over to the Play Store to leave a 1 star review. Then discovered I had already left a 1 star review (complaining about their shitty interface) a few months ago, which I'd totally forgotten about ;-)
I have about a similar level of loading inconsistency between these new Lemmy apps, and the one Reddit app made by the actual company. And the Lemmy browsing experience is already way better.
it's not just that reddit turned into a huge greedy corpo-clusterfuck when they went public, it was kinda bad before that too and held bad practices. Lemmy has a lot of the same features that made reddit shit on a fundamental level.
The up-vote downvote system itself is a both a curse and blessing. it's sorts things decently but it encourages mediocrity and bot like behaviour in people, if one likes to put it that way. It makes discussing anything controversial and where the issue isn't black or white, impossible. Good for cat pics and tits, but really bad for politics and the like, because everything eventually floats towards some status quo and everybody and everything else is sidelined and encouraged to shut up or go with the flow or face downvote barrage.
Also the bots are here, not yet, but they will be. Bots are easy to make here too. If this place ever gets even decently popular this place will get astroturfed and up-vote manipulated just like reddit. it's too easy to manipulated community opinion or shill for issues or things in site like this. Federated structure might help or make it worse.
on the desktop lemmy ui there is an option to hide scores
it doesn’t completely solve the vote issue since most people don’t use it ( I assume), but I find my experience more enjoyable when I don’t know what scores a post or comment has
but it's also about upvotes. /r/worldnews and many large and default sub is infamously crawling with upvote bots and they drown out everything unwanted and most people only read the "hot" section.
The main reason sites have upvote/downvote features is to create confrontation and conflict. They want us yelling at each other and insulting each other because that engages more people and makes them more money.
Social media companies are the scum of the fucking earth. Tech needs to be much more heavily regulated than it is. It's long past time to put these intentionally destructive fatcat sociopaths in their place.
what i fear is that reddit will take completely unnecessary but effective potshots at the fediverse and take down instances or fill them with bots just to punish those who made a point of leaving.
I expect it from reddit, Twitter and Facebook. This is a competitive service, and it's not backed by a rich person that can swing money around to discover their behavior and sue them. They'll likely be doing some shady stuff to make sure this either doesn't work, or is under their control.
it’s not even about suing - i was reading the instance owners post about the version upgrade and it struck me that’s truly just down to random volunteers to work out tech issues. debugging malicious actions of a bigger team is just unfair.
Lmao I saw a 5 star review that said the official app was "better than any 3rd party app", that it had "non-intrusive ads", and asking for an ads toggle for premium users to be able to support reddit. I can't even tell if it's some sort of elaborate sarcasm. Wild.
Can't say I'm even remotely surprised. It's unfortunate that even user reviews have become all but useless on most platforms due to corpo bullshit like this.
I posted on another thread earlier and got an error, so pressed submit again and found it was double posted. Also, I wasn’t able to delete my duplicate comment. I’m not sure if it was an issue with the server or with the Memmy app, which I’ve started using today.
Isn't buying reviews/fake users something a struggling new startup does, not something that has been around for > 10 years. This is kinda sad (if indeed these are bought reviews).
Is this screenshot from Apple or Google stores (I don't know what either look like to be honest). I wonder if the same thing is happening on the other store now too.
I look forward to reading turf wars between Dominos, Pizza Hut, Coca Cola and Pepsi bots, all powered by ChatGPT, arguing their bot rage across Digg, Meta, Twitter and Reddit.
And I look forward to reading all about it through ActivityPub.
My old 5 star review became 1 star this morning. And like this will remain. Spez can buy the whole Chinese review-farm black market, the end is the end, the corpse is now smelling and will smell until it's buried.
My old 5 star review became 1 star this morning. And like this will remain. Spez can buy the whole Chinese review-farm black market, the end is the end, the corpse is now smelling and will smell until it's buried.
Sorry to all, I got gateway timeout a bunch of times yesterday with this post, now I see multiple same posts, will clean them, sorry again for the issue
The last time it was posted I investigated the reviews on Google play, and every rating was made by a real person, or a bot impersonating the real person.
There is no way to tell appart except by contacting the person.
Avoid falling into a circle jerk, we are better than this.
Is that second one not what you would do if you were trying to generate reviews that would pass automated checks? The hard part is deciding if the fake reviews were requested/bought/generated by Reddit or if they're an independent bot network trying to establish legitimacy or mask directed action.
Or just when there is a movement a protests there is always a bunch of people against the protest.
Bunch of redditors are pissed off that we ruin their addiction.
In the account I checked, somes had a selfie of themselves that werent indexed on google yet. To me it point out it's more likely a genuine account
The real people I'm not commenting on, I'm commenting on the bots. The question is why they're reviewing the Reddit app, and that's basically unknowable without an investigation well beyond my skill level and pay grade. They could be a bot network trying to build credibility or a bot network cashing out and leaving paid reviews.
You're the one who said some of the reviews were copies of legitimate reviews! What else would that be besides bots? I'm not making any definite conclusions about why those bots are there, in fact I was trying to be explicit about the fact that we can't assume intent, but the bots are there.
The last time it was posted I investigated the reviews on Google play, and every rating was made by a real person, or a bot impersonating the real person. There is no way to tell appart except by contacting the person.
I read this to mean that you were finding duplicate reviews where one set seemed to be bots impersonating the other set. But, your comment clarifies what you meant. My bad.
They're also definitely doing some sort of keyword manipulation, cause the official Reddit App is fairly high in the result list when searching for Lemmy.
On another note: hi, I just came here today after RIF stopped working 👋
In the organic results or the paid results? It's pretty common for competitors to buy your name in search term sales.
The famous example been Pizza Hut buying ads on searches for Domino's
It's 6th for me when I search lemmy. Visible at the bottom of the list before starting to scroll. Definitely a regular listing as far as I can tell.
Welcome!
I'm here full time too since I got connect.
One bot's review is referring to Reddit as Tripomate. Lol oh reddit...
Lol that's hilarious!
Lol thats gold.
We should report them as fake. Not sure how many reports it takes to get someone to look at it but it might be worth a shot.
Imagine if Reddit, after cutting off so many 3rd party apps got their own app banned. Even if only temporarily.
Delicious
I wouldn't be surprised, the reddit "leadership" has shown it's either their way or the highway even if their way leads to a cliff.
I just came to that
Delicious
People must be doing that, I scrolled for a bit and didn't see a single 5 star review. The best part is most reviews call out exactly the same problems as my 1 star review from 2018. Very few even seem to mention the API or 3rd party apps. What have they been doing for 5 years?
Pushing awards and micro transactions for Snoos and not making a functional app with sleek and in line advertising placement
I’ve been reporting the ones I see on the Apple App Store
I reported some of the ones I saw on the App Store but I doubt it will do much good.
After seeing this, I thought I'd go over to the Play Store to leave a 1 star review. Then discovered I had already left a 1 star review (complaining about their shitty interface) a few months ago, which I'd totally forgotten about ;-)
I did exactly the same.
Went in with a "fuck spez" attitude and turns out I'd already had a fuck spez moment when I picked up sync after finding the Reddit app garbage.
I never managed to get it to load anything on my 380mbps internet connection. Every 3rd party app (and the website) loaded fine.
I have about a similar level of loading inconsistency between these new Lemmy apps, and the one Reddit app made by the actual company. And the Lemmy browsing experience is already way better.
That was exactly what I did too
"Oh...I already gave it 1 star...good"
Past-self high-five.
(my first lemmy comment let's gooo)
Update it, old reviews don't reflect on the score. Don't know how old it needs to be though.
I feel like I must be crazy but these reviews do not read like 5 star reviews. Seems super suspect.
You’re right. One specifically mentions ‘would rate this 0 if I could’ so in lieu of that option, they selected a…5?
Have they gone through and scraped the text from a bunch of real reviews and are reposting them with 5 star ratings to make them look organic?
That honestly sounds to be the likely scenario. If someone saw the review they might shrug it off as an error or mistake.
They just continue to validate my decision to walk away
Right?
Reddit is completely astroturfed now. Nothing but bots and humans that act like bots.
it's not just that reddit turned into a huge greedy corpo-clusterfuck when they went public, it was kinda bad before that too and held bad practices. Lemmy has a lot of the same features that made reddit shit on a fundamental level.
The up-vote downvote system itself is a both a curse and blessing. it's sorts things decently but it encourages mediocrity and bot like behaviour in people, if one likes to put it that way. It makes discussing anything controversial and where the issue isn't black or white, impossible. Good for cat pics and tits, but really bad for politics and the like, because everything eventually floats towards some status quo and everybody and everything else is sidelined and encouraged to shut up or go with the flow or face downvote barrage.
Also the bots are here, not yet, but they will be. Bots are easy to make here too. If this place ever gets even decently popular this place will get astroturfed and up-vote manipulated just like reddit. it's too easy to manipulated community opinion or shill for issues or things in site like this. Federated structure might help or make it worse.
They're not even public yet lmao. And reddit got started by using bots to post content from RSS feeds to make it look busier than it was.
on the desktop lemmy ui there is an option to hide scores
it doesn’t completely solve the vote issue since most people don’t use it ( I assume), but I find my experience more enjoyable when I don’t know what scores a post or comment has
I hear that instances can disable downvoting in Lemmy's configuration. Maybe this is some solution to this issue.
but it's also about upvotes. /r/worldnews and many large and default sub is infamously crawling with upvote bots and they drown out everything unwanted and most people only read the "hot" section.
The main reason sites have upvote/downvote features is to create confrontation and conflict. They want us yelling at each other and insulting each other because that engages more people and makes them more money.
Social media companies are the scum of the fucking earth. Tech needs to be much more heavily regulated than it is. It's long past time to put these intentionally destructive fatcat sociopaths in their place.
I hear that instances can disable downvoting in Lemmy's configuration. Maybe this is some solution to this issue.
I hear that instances can disable downvoting in Lemmy's configuration. Maybe this is some solution to this issue.
what i fear is that reddit will take completely unnecessary but effective potshots at the fediverse and take down instances or fill them with bots just to punish those who made a point of leaving.
I expect it from reddit, Twitter and Facebook. This is a competitive service, and it's not backed by a rich person that can swing money around to discover their behavior and sue them. They'll likely be doing some shady stuff to make sure this either doesn't work, or is under their control.
it’s not even about suing - i was reading the instance owners post about the version upgrade and it struck me that’s truly just down to random volunteers to work out tech issues. debugging malicious actions of a bigger team is just unfair.
Even if they do that, I'm still not returning to reddit.
basically 😂
This is the future of corporate internet.
From what I've seen is all the shitty people remained on Reddit
Lmao I saw a 5 star review that said the official app was "better than any 3rd party app", that it had "non-intrusive ads", and asking for an ads toggle for premium users to be able to support reddit. I can't even tell if it's some sort of elaborate sarcasm. Wild.
Currently 2.4/5.0 on the Play Store. Wasn't that long ago when it was around 4.0. Their rating has taken a beating over the last few weeks.
Before the API pricing change, the Reddit app could be considered an internal hobby project made by a handful of employees on their spare time.
Now that this one is mandatory, it can be rated for what it is.
I for sure helped with the beating.
Not even surprised at this point
Can't say I'm even remotely surprised. It's unfortunate that even user reviews have become all but useless on most platforms due to corpo bullshit like this.
good things corporations are people too so their votes they paid for count right?
I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
Why am I seeing this response 6 times? This seems to be happening more often lately.
I posted on another thread earlier and got an error, so pressed submit again and found it was double posted. Also, I wasn’t able to delete my duplicate comment. I’m not sure if it was an issue with the server or with the Memmy app, which I’ve started using today.
I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
good things corporations are people too so their votes they paid for count right?
Wow, they're really spezzing it up!
This reminds to give reddit 1 star on Playstore.
Same here
Me too.
Anything to boost that IPO huh.
Just leave my first 1 star to reddit app
I'm going to leave my own review now too
That's how you know that they know that the vocal minority might become a vocal majority.
just left a 1 star review, because it honestly deserves it
Isn't buying reviews/fake users something a struggling new startup does, not something that has been around for > 10 years. This is kinda sad (if indeed these are bought reviews).
Is this screenshot from Apple or Google stores (I don't know what either look like to be honest). I wonder if the same thing is happening on the other store now too.
Older than that, my account is 16 years old…I came from the Digg exodus and it existed for a short while before that.
16 Year Club checking in!
Spez said that reddit has been around for 18 years
Founded in 2005, a few months after Digg
Just left a 1 star review and reported a bunch of their obviously fake 5 star reviews
No. It’s the new bot users rating their new favorite app.
I look forward to reading turf wars between Dominos, Pizza Hut, Coca Cola and Pepsi bots, all powered by ChatGPT, arguing their bot rage across Digg, Meta, Twitter and Reddit.
And I look forward to reading all about it through ActivityPub.
I just gave them a 1. Doing my part.
I was seeing this today too! I’m reporting all those comments to the App Store, I hope it does something
Ironic that the FTC is going to likely make these illegal soon. Anyone want to save screenshots?
They also blocked rating the app on mobile, I had to go online and rate it via google's site, and im not sure it actually stuck.
My negative reviews of any app are usually deleted, even if I take the time to write out a lot.
Done my part too, hope they get review bombed 💣
Am I confused, or isn't this a duplicate post in this same sub/instance?
OP posted in 2 different technology subs on different instances lol
My old 5 star review became 1 star this morning. And like this will remain. Spez can buy the whole Chinese review-farm black market, the end is the end, the corpse is now smelling and will smell until it's buried.
I gave it a 1 star review. I'm doing my part o7
I gave it also a 1 star review with the mention "One of the apps ever. Very popular and well-known". Also doing my part o7
Just left mine. Fuck u/spez
Would be weird if they didn't at least try to do this
Yeah, all big companies do this, to my understanding
Am I confused, or isn't this a duplicate post in this same sub/instance?
Anything to boost that IPO huh
Of course they are, can’t have the app they’re forcing people to use be judged fairly. Fuck spez.
Funny story I was gonna go make a 1 star review in response to this and found out I already submitted one over a year ago!
So I guess instead I'll go and mark only 1 star reviews as helpful (maybe also a few 5 star reviews in cyrillic script, just for fun.)
Haha. Same thing happened to me
Been happening for sometimes most new 5 star review don't even make sense there is one saying something like this app is surely a big bouncy ball.
They just continue to validate my decision to walk away
I have been continually surprised by how low Reddit is willing to sink.
I should stop being shocked at such despicable behaviour.
Installed reddit app to do my part 🫡
Same here and i actually was going to take a quick look, but, for my surprise, you can't scroll Reddit through it's own app without logging in.
Poor spez won't be able to afford his medium rated yacht! Oh the humanity!
My old 5 star review became 1 star this morning. And like this will remain. Spez can buy the whole Chinese review-farm black market, the end is the end, the corpse is now smelling and will smell until it's buried.
Your comment got posted a bunch of times. I didn't expect lemmy to glitch like reddit lol
Guessing they hit the post button a bunch of times because some of the UI controls really aren't visually responsive on many of the Lemmy instances.
Happened to me a few times
Sorry to all, I got gateway timeout a bunch of times yesterday with this post, now I see multiple same posts, will clean them, sorry again for the issue
How do we know the reviews are bought? They could just be from trolls.
The last time it was posted I investigated the reviews on Google play, and every rating was made by a real person, or a bot impersonating the real person. There is no way to tell appart except by contacting the person.
Avoid falling into a circle jerk, we are better than this.
Is that second one not what you would do if you were trying to generate reviews that would pass automated checks? The hard part is deciding if the fake reviews were requested/bought/generated by Reddit or if they're an independent bot network trying to establish legitimacy or mask directed action.
Or just when there is a movement a protests there is always a bunch of people against the protest.
Bunch of redditors are pissed off that we ruin their addiction.
In the account I checked, somes had a selfie of themselves that werent indexed on google yet. To me it point out it's more likely a genuine account
The real people I'm not commenting on, I'm commenting on the bots. The question is why they're reviewing the Reddit app, and that's basically unknowable without an investigation well beyond my skill level and pay grade. They could be a bot network trying to build credibility or a bot network cashing out and leaving paid reviews.
You seems to miss my point from the very beginning: I'm saying it's maybe not bots. Don't fall into confirmation bias.
You're the one who said some of the reviews were copies of legitimate reviews! What else would that be besides bots? I'm not making any definite conclusions about why those bots are there, in fact I was trying to be explicit about the fact that we can't assume intent, but the bots are there.
I did not said that. I said it was legit reviews OR bot impersonating users, and there is no easy way to tell.
AH, I misunderstood what this meant, then:
I read this to mean that you were finding duplicate reviews where one set seemed to be bots impersonating the other set. But, your comment clarifies what you meant. My bad.
I wonder if they will even have a IPO at this point
May want to archive the original if you have it, it's been taken down by this point.
How lame.