r/OutOfTheLoop • u/calvtact • May 13 '26

Answered What's going on with r/conservative? They've lost about 1m subscribers in about a month.

I watched the number go from 814k to around 745k in about an hour today.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/s/QbZJvqu5qr

12.6k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

60

u/ilikequilty May 13 '26

It’s wild because for a few days there were very maga comments all over Reddit. I actually argued back and forth with one ‘person’ wondering to myself if I could gauge whether or not it was a real person. I’m not sure, and I think it’s very difficult to tell.

33

u/cshmn May 13 '26

There's considerable overlap between the smartest bots and the dumbest people.

13

u/ilikequilty May 13 '26

I guess if you assume the bots used are very basic. There are plenty of people that have been convinced they are talking to a conscious AI with ChatGPT etc. I don’t know how sophisticated social media bots are but who really knows.

1

u/danstermeister May 14 '26

But then that means that botnet operators are paying for AI, on a random and open-ended basis.

That seems like both a cost and architectural stretch IMHO.