Considering that reddit is being swarmed by AI bots, I really doubt how hard they are pushing against them. Probably more like that they are inconviencing real humans with the excuse that they are doing it to prevent bots.
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
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Bingo. Bots outnumber humans on Reddit at this point, which in turn artificially inflates their userbase. Big number = good for investors.
And it's in line with how the site started off in the first year or so of it existing. The surviving founder has openly admitted to using tons of sock puppet accounts to make the appearance of activity until they attracted enough real users to keep the content flowing.
This seems quite likely, especially given they are now a public company so they are desperate to turn their content into some kind of potential for profit.
It’s why they don’t even want sarcasm any more or people defending against bullying. It won’t put money into the failing machine.
Reddit is just porn and bots.
Most* porn subreddits besides the most mainstream photos only ones are dying/dead too since the API rug pull too lol.
So just bots and intelligence agencies.
Video content in general is just dead across the board. I assume that's why /r/videos started allowing politics because the subreddit is dead.
And pornbots!
I can't wait for the inevitable bot-porn.
Sigh... Wish there was more alternatives for porn than lemmynsfw. Haven't really seen hentai artists on board either.
They're going the way of Facebook. Facebook has been "1 account per person" for a while and if you somehow get screwed on your account there's nowhere to appeal and no way to start over. They do tons of fingerprinting and even do facial matching across accounts to detect duplicate accounts.
This is just another nail in Reddit's coffin and descent into irrelevance.
Meh, you are probably right, but I personally have been banned 3 times from Facebook and by using a VPN and private tabs I still have an active account.
Dead Internet Theory.
Yep; same issue here. Does my absolute nut in. If you use a VPN or a cellular connection on a brand new Reddit account, it’s already doomed.
Reddit stinks.
Like you, I tried a making a new account a few times over the past 5 years. (I wanted to do local things like giving away/selling things before moving. I ended up using NextDoor or asking friends & family to post on facebook instead)
Shadowbanned every time, so I could never build up enough karma to post or comment in subreddits with those restrictions. Wonderful catch-22 you got there reddit.
Finally I just gave up and added a filter to my uBlock Origin reddit.com$document to block my habits from checking it when I'm bored. I still visit a handful of subreddits once a day through old.reddit.com/r/..., but otherwise I'm fully here on lemmy for comments and posts. Which is for the best because of all the bot generated posts and comments there, along with the shills and astroturfing. I remind myself of that every time I feel like I'm missing the old place.
I've accepted that at most I'll lurk in the niche communities there, and I'll do my part to build new ones here in the fediverse.
Be me
Decide to stop using an account to roll over to a new one and abandon any potential doxxing
A regional sub bans me from using a rename -> delete tool while doing this. Maybe one or two others do as well.
Start using other, old account. Start commenting in places... get random bans because 10 years ago I used it to comment in a sub they don't like which eventually became more toxic. Ok, whatever, I don't need mildly interesting anyway. Leave the affected communities and whatever.
Put a lengthy post on the community sub that banned me for removing old comments trying to help someone moving from another country... ban evasion site-wide reddit ban.
So now i'm up to at least 4 sub bans across reddit and I guess i'm never supposed to interact with any of the things that don't like old posts going away... but get this... multiple subs told me to delete old comments in a sub they don't like to remove the ban. Why is a sub dictating what people do in other subs again? shouldn't they not be brigading other subs by forcing people to delete content? Shouldn't I have the right to delete whatever I want anyway?
Next step: GDPR deletion request on all my accounts after going through several rounds of rename -> delete again on all of them. Might as well make them nuke my shit and if they can detect me as 'ban' evading then there's some real illegal shit going on.
This is precisely the reason I left Reddit and joined Lemmy.
Meanwhile, they’re banning old, established accounts in massive waves. I’m not sure who they want using the site. New accounts aren’t allowed to post anything, and old accounts get kicked out.
Seems like they're starting to realize the vast potential monetary value of this repository of human-created content. Countless times I've searched something hyper-specific and found the info on Reddit. It's surely the biggest place online for human-created responses on any subject or field.
They didn't want to put in the effort required to detect actual bots, so they just made it unusable instead. Reddit as it was is now dead and the vultures are starting to pick clean its carcass.
That's why it's filled with bots, I often see many weird comments, I check the profile and all comment history has the same standard, they don't seem like from a normal people, always polite, no typos, which isn't something normal for Reddit standard.
My guess is they want mostly bots on the site and no pesky users that contradict the bots. What counts isn't active human users, but that the website pops up in search results.
Yeah, nothing as fun as getting well over decade old accounts banned for reasons even though you haven't used it it for 3 months
I was randomly shadowbanned a few days ago. No idea why. I only visited fandom and gaming subs. Got along with everyone. It just seems like they don't want real users anymore. 🤷🏻♂️
At least now I'm back here and maybe it'll be the final push to leave that website.
Eventually, won't it be just bots on there? Dead internet theory prevails again.
Kind of sucks. There's really no other way for me to socialize.
Outside?
I can't. Am disabled.
Well, yes, you correctly described Reddit.
Yeah I tried making an account a while ago to post on /r/bushcraft and just got shadowbanned for it.
Using the official app (🤮) is the only way I think.
I did just fine on Infinity. It's one of the few third party apps remaining.