Bots don't buy goods and services, they only generate numbers on spreadsheets. I can see larger companies being OK with bad sales numbers because they can spread the blame around, show the board what great engagement they're getting for their spend, but that cannot last. Eventually your advertising dollar has to bring sales.

And imagine being the CEO of a smaller company where you have more control and leeway.

"What's our reddit spend over the last 4 quarters? How many views we getting? What percentage leads to a sale (forgot the word for that)? What?! Fuck all that!"

Saw an article the other day where the author did some digging, even wrote some software to help, came back with 72% of ad views being bots. Now what if I told you 72% of your advertising spend was for the privilege of having bots view your product? Aw hell no.

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Billionaires need their skin peeled off

[–] Ceruleum@lemmy.wtf 1 points 3 hours ago

Slowly.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 66 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Off the backs of the people still giving reddit free content for some reason

[–] foodandart@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, it was nice while it lasted. I mostly replied to comments but after I got banned, I managed to pull every post I made that was a "how-to" tutorial.

Will rewrite some of the VintageApple posts I made and put them on lemmy.zip shortly. Mostly stuff to tinker with old kit and logic board swaps and unsupported installs and the like.. I think I've worked out even better instructions now.

[–] MourningDove@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

We’d welcome the info!

[–] brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 4 points 23 hours ago

They are idiots, simple as that

[–] metallic_substance@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

It's the same with twitter (moreso really). I don't understand how people stay on these shit platforms

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The number of people I still see on Twitter, or having their Twitter link as their main social contact on their website, is insane. Not just conservatives either.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago

addicted to the platform, plus some businesses still rely on twitter.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 2 points 21 hours ago

People don't think about things. And when they do, they don't care. They're tired. And some of them are kind of stupid.

Like, imagine you'd only had two hours of sleep. Imagine that's your peak cognitive health. That's the best you ever get. That's a lot of people. They're not going to think a lot of deep thoughts.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 points 1 day ago

specifically content that allows right wingers to astroturf left wingers.

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

that's how social media works

reddit really hasn't changed much since all 50,000 lemmings left

[–] Tehbaz@lemmy.wtf 33 points 1 day ago

Fuck spez

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I mean, he has all the qualifications to be a billionaire. For once, he is a douchebag.

[–] Septimaeus 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

At some point I realized that I feel sorry for this guy. Even assuming he grows up enough to realize what he did, if he reforms, if he becomes like-able enough to make real human connections, if they’re disconnected enough to not know how he made his billions, still they will eventually learn the true story from someone and won’t ever see him the same again.

Try as he might, he will never escape his betrayal, because there is no next-town-over at such a scale of global connectedness. He is doomed to, at best, acquire friends that are like him, which is to say he will never have any real friends again until the day he dies. It’s a cautionary tale as old as time and yet he chose it. He chose the truest form of poverty we know.

[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 9 points 21 hours ago

Never feel sorry for a billionaire.

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't think people at that level have friends, more like business aquintences. And all they do is work; feed their net worth value must increase addiction.

[–] Septimaeus 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, we have “every great fortune” truisms to that effect. I just can’t help feeling that his case is special. Somehow even worse than Zuck. Haven’t put my finger on it.

Maybe it’s because what he fed into the monetization machine was community itself? Or because it was such a direct betrayal of the open ethos at the core of the original platform? I’m not sure.

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 2 points 19 hours ago

It's special bc Reddit had a lot of close-knit communities that felt like they were more than just another social network. Facebook was always just some company building things, but Reddit seemed like it really was about the people. Spez looked at that and said he'd rather just have a lot of money. I mean... has he even done anything interesting with his money?

btw I don't mean to bring you down, but billionaires always have hangers-on who honestly think the billionaire is some kind of genius and who genuinely want to be just like them, even apart from catching what few scraps they might get off the table.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

he looks like a humanoid alien though. plus he idolizes musk, and zuckerberg how they turned into a right wing profit-making machine through AI/bots.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 3 points 1 day ago

Thank you for sharing

[–] kokesh@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

Fuck you, Spaz.

[–] ook@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

Fucking hell