• @boonhet@lemm.ee
      22•5 months ago

      nearly a decade

      It was the god damn 2016 election, wasn’t it? That’s the period when I noticed the rapid decline.

      • @undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
        11•5 months ago

        For me, it became undeniable after the gamestop fiasco. I used to sub to wallstreetbets way back before all that. It was one of the last genuinely funny places on the internet. I’m lucky, i got in on those shares at £45 and sold at roughly somewhere round about £420.69.

        After the day the price shot up to that, the place was just flooded with bots trying to get anyone to spend their money in any place but gamestop. You even had some mugs trying to short silver which, for anyone not in the know, you’d need about all the money in the world to do that.

        But yeah, now, everything going on there is going to be ultra analysed by every fund in the world. Oh, they also fired all the admins and replaced them just before the flood gates opened.

        I think its then that people saw the potential for flooding reddit with bots and shills.

        • @boonhet@lemm.ee
          5•5 months ago

          I remember there was an alt right leaning silver collecting sub shortly after. They were convinced it was going to shoot up a billion times in value. Like Gamestop was supposed.

          • @undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
            1•5 months ago

            I think you’re right. Sadly, none of them have any idea how ultra manipulated the price of things like gold and silver are.

            I mean, it has appreciated in value since then but if you caught it wrong, with a load of futures, expecting it to “shoot to the moon”, you’ll lose everything which was the plan. It was literally firms and funds trying to cover the losses they made on gamestop.

      • @Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
        3•5 months ago

        I think it was before that.

        Reddit is commercials disguised as content. Political parties use ads/commercials to spread their message. 2016 I think was annoying and helped people to see it for what it is.

        Like that one video of the girl jumping onto a trampoline. She drops down on it, comes up and when she comes up there’s an energy drink in the bottom corner facing the camera. Looks like a natural video but it’s a paid commercial that also didn’t pay reddit and therefore we all watched many commercials for free without the company paying for any server time, bug fixes or