• FrostBlazer@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Did they change the way things are formatted? Such as the [removed] comments now just appearing as [deleted]? Deleted would imply the users removed their own content while removed would imply the mods or admins removed it, at least that’s how things have always been. However, I have only been seeing a sea of [deleted] lately.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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        2 days ago

        After the API kerfuffle, a lot of users who left also used tools to completely erase their content from the site, which explains the sea of [deleted] posts and users. You may also see comments and text body posts that are full of incoherent gibberish because one of the tools didn’t delete the content in the normal way, it simply edited the content to be a bunch of random gibberish.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          it simply edited the content to be a bunch of random gibberish.

          I used a tool that did this. I also used it on purpose because I figured it would make the content more difficult to farm. Lots of software doesn’t actually delete anything when you delete it, but it’s a lot more work to put versioning in and then you’d have to go search the version history to find a version that wasn’t mangled to farm it…so that’ll all theoretically make it more difficult for them to find what I originally wrote.

          • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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            2 days ago

            i just ended up deleted all my comments on my last 2 accts, so they cant be farmed, unless reddit undeletes them. wonder when reddit is going to pull a FB ressurection, revives your account but controlled by AI bots for right wing disinformation.

            • OpenStars@discuss.online
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              4 hours ago

              They’ve already been caught doing that - well, not for disinformation spreading but for engagement appearance, around the time Reddit was doing its IPO so needed to hike its stats to give to advertisers as quickly as possible. While entire posts, comment for comment, though with different usernames but the identical responses to the identical questions, and then deeper responses to those, and so forth.

              So they don’t need the appearance of older accounts - they can manufacturer whatever they need, from scratch already. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they created “10 year old” accounts at will.