• Brave Little Hitachi Wand@feddit.uk
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      9 hours ago

      The site makes most of its money selling ads. The value of that ad space is based on user metrics.

      Many users are now fake. They are actively hiding this fact.

      Apropos of nothing, the company has a $34 billion market cap.

      • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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        8 hours ago

        Why is anyone paying for adverts that no one will see though? Surely adverts only have value if it brings in sales.

        Would be amusing to see the entire advertising market crash tbh.

        • krooklochurm@lemmy.ca
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          5 hours ago

          You think that in 2025 companies with large media budgets are buying digital ads and just saying “well fuck it maybe we’ll make money on it”?

          They track EVERYTHING. From the impression to the click tot he purchase, and there are trackers and attribution platforms by the hundreds out there to help them understand what the ROI they’re receiving on those ads are.

          Companies are buying ads because people are buying products.

          Even if the site is 90% bots there are enough real people using the site to make buying ads profitable.

      • frog@feddit.uk
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        3 hours ago

        If you look a lot of new posts, they are actually highly upvoted old posts. So bots probably stay the same.

        • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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          5 hours ago

          The bots know what is bot content and what is not.

          Probably not. It’s way easier to generate bot content than to detect it. Unless they’re coming from the same group, but I find this unlikely.