I love reddit but these are its biggest cons

Reddit is the only social media app I use on a daily basis. But despite the fact that I love it, it has some glaring issues that detract from the overall experience.

1 Robot posts and replies

I am already convinced that generative AI is destroying social networks. Social media bots have been around for a long time, but creating fake posts and replies using bot accounts is easier than ever.

I often read posts on r/AITAH only to have many users express disbelief at the story and accuse the post writer of being a bot. Then there are times when a seemingly honest response is actually a bot-stolen comment.

The reason these bots exist is to farm reddit karma. These accounts are then sold to access exclusive subreddits that have a minimum karma requirement.

While I’m sure some of the people accused of being bots are actually real people using dump accounts, I came across an account actually called “Farm Account” that had all the hallmarks of a bot account. It was a newly created account with conflicting stories that turned another user’s existing post into its own. He also accidentally posted his fake story in a comment on another post on the wrong subreddit.

The frequency of these bot posts and comments is enough to make you question the authenticity of what you read on the platform.

2 The wrong content is displayed in the home channel

I understand that posts don’t go viral or get upvoted without being seen by users when they’re still brand new, but all too often I see poorly-crafted obscure memes or hyper-specific questions pop up in my feed that aren’t relevant to me at all .

These posts will often have less than a dozen likes or comments, despite being on subreddits with hundreds of thousands or millions of members. I would understand if these posts were from niche subreddits, but they are from major ones like r/meme. I would also understand if I saw these posts after scrolling through the pile during the day, but I see very few posts from my favorite subreddits.

It makes me feel like I’m missing out if I’m not visiting a subreddit and browsing its feed. Like I can’t trust Reddit to suggest my favorite content on its own.

3 Number of ads and promoted posts

Reddit is one of those apps that has gotten progressively worse in terms of the number of ads. You could argue that this is a way to get you to pay for a premium subscription. And while it’s not nearly as bad as YouTube, there are still too many ads. On average, I get promoted posts every seven to ten posts when browsing my channel.

I’ve also adjusted my Reddit ad settings to prevent any ads from sensitive categories and to prevent Reddit from using data from third parties to serve ads. While I appreciate the ability to do this, it comes with a downside: Reddit basically shows me the same ads over and over for days.

Every few posts in my feed and at the top of the comments I get recurring ads. Last week I was invited to vote in the US election. I am now invited to buy Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses.

4 Cannot opt ​​out of AI training

Social media companies use our data to train AI. When they don’t have their own AI products, they license our data to AI companies to train their products from our input. Since social media companies make money through advertising and subscriptions, I’m tired of our personal data being further commodified without our permission.

While LinkedIn lets you opt out of AI training, and even X now lets you opt out of Groka training, I wish Reddit would give users that option as well. But I’m not really holding my breath. Right now I’m trying to keep my Reddit as private as possible. I’m more of a lurker on the subreddits, only occasionally asking for advice. In 9 years on the platform I have managed to avoid adding my email address and have a total of five posts. But with 29 comments, that still means the AI ​​is using my words as part of its training data set.

While I’m an avid user of Reddit and won’t stop using the platform anytime soon, these issues detract from the overall experience. And if it gets worse, I may end up limiting my use of the app in the future.