>Maybe 81 of the 84 comments were either third party bot comments, or a Reddit-run LLM designed to make the sub look more active than it really is
Even if this was true (which I seriously doubt), how can you prove that, and what makes you think the subredditstats website cited above would be able to tell the difference?
The operator freely admits his/her stats probably underestimate real traffic due to the expense of collecting data, and they make no claim to having software to detect real commentors from fake. Meanwhile the real internal reddit stats available to mods show numbers that are both much higher and much closer to the live traffic we can see for ourselves as readers.
Even if this was true (which I seriously doubt), how can you prove that, and what makes you think the subredditstats website cited above would be able to tell the difference?
The operator freely admits his/her stats probably underestimate real traffic due to the expense of collecting data, and they make no claim to having software to detect real commentors from fake. Meanwhile the real internal reddit stats available to mods show numbers that are both much higher and much closer to the live traffic we can see for ourselves as readers.