The 3rd party apps are closing at the end of this month, which means there'll be somewhere around a week or so of people realising just how bad the official app is, plus decreased quality content as the actually-motivated people who post things continue their gradual migration away from reddit and driving redditors to seek other places to gather.
A lonely guy playing a creepy hentai game gets some sexual gratification from his time spent interacting with a piece of software and is at least somewhat self-aware. He knows it's just software, even if he 'married' his bodypillow.
Meanwhile there are increasing numbers of people unaware they're regularly interacting with bots online, not realising one of the reasons social media is making them sadder is because they've atttempting to fulfill their need for social interaction with a facsimile thereof.
It's not unlike Idiocracy, where they give the plants Brawndo instead of water, then wonder why the plants are dying. Vast swathes of the world are feeding their social needs with social media brawndo.
Also you’re blaming the medium, rather than the malicious actors.
If AI text generative technology was around a century earlier you’d have people being penpals or print newspaper write-ins with a bot instead. Communicating through text is inherently risky, so best to blame the people who abuse that fact instead.
Yup. I'm Anarch157a everywhere (except Mastodon, for reasons), Steam, Lemmy, Discord, etc. Having my old - now deleted - Reddit account as a bot could spill over my identity in other services.
I'm guessing it's because it's a week after 3rd party apps shut down. A lot will change when that happens, and the 7th is far enough from the 30th to feel it.