At least one post was defending reddit in r/programming has been shown to be chatGPT, that's for sure. If they have one bot, who's to say they don't have thousands?
I can't tell you how many 1-2 year old accounts I saw with little to no post history that popped out of the woodwork to defend reddit/spez. It was crazy.
Same for spam/ shill accounts on iPhone/ Google play reviews.
They're definitely trying to plug the holes with bubble gum instead of fixing/ addressing the problem which is spez and the 3rd party app/api ban.
Only if you don't consider the core tenants of capitalism. Clear cut it all burn the rest to the ground. What you missed, steal from its owner to sell it back to them at the highest possible markup. Move on rinse repeat. Fuck sustainability. Most of the LLMs have what they want. Reddit could burn tomorrow for all they care. It being around for others to use and train on only makes competitors to them which they absolutely do not want. Destroying Reddit is a win-win-win for them.
I'm curious about this as well, because the lurkers in the montreal sub sure are quick to come out of the woodwork whenever the protest is mentioned. I can't see how it's not bots, but I'm curious about how that would work exactly and how you determine that