The astroturfing is here is out of control. Fellow has bots in this sub that are just poorly restating their prompts. The accounts all have the same history and are just barfing PR points directly. I would be really suspicious about any positive sentiment about Fellow products here. If I were a mod, I would ban any discussion of them until Fellow releases an apology and a transparency statement about their marketing practices, but that’s just me.
In case the screen shots aren’t clear, they depict the bottom four comments on a recent post, including this obvious prompt.
I genuinely care about helping fellow enthusiasts. Focus on dialing in one coffee at a time, enjoy the consistent results, and expect software updates, many small improvements will enhance your experience.
The next comment from another account matches almost verbatim.
Sounds like you're enjoying it! Focus on dialing in one coffee at a time, and expect software updates, most issues you mentioned can improve ovre time.
One of the bots failed to generate text entirely and one of them almost kinda seems organic. All of the account histories share an obvious pattern though.
by Baketown
18 Comments
https://preview.redd.it/gpqjz4zmvxng1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=40cb377d5d3150909def803163e7efcac73e89a1
It’s not just Fellow, there are just bots everywhere. Look at this two 16d and 15d bots spouting almost identical comments.
Your reasoning is complete and utter trash and my sarcasm is palpable. But how do we actually stop this…. serious question…
Hard to know whether they’re originating from Fellow, that feels like a pretty large accusation. Just as likely some of the many shitty bots on this forum are just taking the content of the posts they’re spam responding to and being way too obsequious. Totally agree that this, and the bot problem in general, need mod attention.
Its like, “Well FU if I can’t buy RAM I’m going to flood the world with crappy AI”
I genuinely care about your experience here. I’m happy to see you’re having a great time. I would love to see more pictures and any tips you have. What a wonderful post you made. I really love coffee.
/s
I see this comments all the time made on everyone’s posts, and they totally piss me off. But where is the evidence they originated from Fellow?
ban all of them mods should be more active and give no mercy in here
It’s not just fellow. Last year I found evidence that was highly consistent with Outin leading an astroturf campaign ahead of their AMA even purchasing stolen accounts. I did send that over to the mods but received no response
Fellow is absolute sham tier now. I don’t think they make an electric product meant to last 1 day longer than a warranty.
Yes an apology is necessary, over an espresso machine. Maybe you should stick your head out the window and realize we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
“That’s okay, you’re not a complete failure because you can’t pull good shots. Just grind finer.
Would you like me to tell you 5 ways that you can learn to grind finer? “
Edit: typo guess I should have used some sort of tool to write this properly.
Thanks. Mods really need to start handing out the botting bans.
What proof do you have Fellow is behind these bots?
I saw the Fellow post from a few hours ago, early on in its life; of the ~half-dozen comments there, I guessed that two-thirds or three-fourths of the comments were bot-posted. All polite, and even on-point; but the utility not near what I find in the typical “human” comments here, and it kind of felt like falling into a fluff-dom of cotton balls..
That being said, I started seeing a major, general (not limited to Fellow) uptake here in bot posts starting 1-2 weeks ago; at the level of infection and invasion (really). I don’t think that this is (or is just) a Fellow issue. Interestingly, 2 other popular subreddits in which I participate have not been so hit, as far as I can tell.
I still don’t understand the purpose (assuming that it is not reddit trying to churn up numbers, and is general/not limited to specific products). It almost feels like a test case for some unknown future purposes. But sadly, there is an immediate affect: if you don’t know if the comments are real, from real people, there can be a lesser impetus to want to participate.
Reddit is unusable for product recommendations now because of this. Look up any product, you’ll find a two year old reddit thread with a bunch of comments from a few months ago all recommending the same products, all with dozens of upvotes. Reddit obviously doesn’t care.
Fake comments like that from Fellow about the Series 1 is not instilling confidence in me about that product.
I’ve seen this issue happen in other niche communities and the brands were banned. Anything short of banning is disappointing
Reddit is flooded with bots and astroturfing accounts for everything. Like, you might expect it to be only government & PACs but it’s all sorts of agendas and things. I’ve seen astroturfing for pro-urban development, some tea vendors, and now coffee kettles.
Various platforms want me to verify I’m not a bot but do very little to curb the use of bots on their platforms. They want to prove I’m Firstname Lastname at a certain IP address so they can sell my data to gawd knows who. They aren’t anti-bot, I strongly suspect they encourage them.
And now you have governments and corporations wanting your govt ID to use platforms or operating systems, foreign and domestic. ***Alles klar, herr Kommisar?***
I’m close to logging off the internet altogether.