I think scam generally implies that someone was swindled, told they'd get A and get Q (or nothing at all). Sold a bill of goods (but not the goods).
In the case of something like Reddit, you come to read content, and once you've readit, you write it, and then read some more. I'm not sure you're ever really sold that you're even engaging with actual people.
These days, I frequently wonder what percentage of comments on any of these sites is genuine (although I happen to believe it's still a pretty high percentage). Its good to assume noble intent, but to also carry around skepticism.
> I think scam generally implies that someone was swindled, told they'd get A and get Q (or nothing at all). Sold a bill of goods (but not the goods).
It's much more broad than that. A common sales tactic is to pretend there are other folks interested in what's being sold; maybe this is to make it seem popular, maybe this is to push Buy It Now for a limited (maybe one) item. Some folks will have a fake interested party show up in person.
I would call all of that a scam, even if I'm paying the listed price and get what was promised.
As a sibling commenter suggested - to me, in order to have been scammed I need to have lost something (or, equivalently - been induced to pay more for something than I would have otherwise considered a fair price). You can certainly make the case that Redditors were "buying" entertainment with their time, so it's reasonable to describe a transaction as having taken place. I don't, however, believe that the content and comments they were consuming would be devalued if they found out that it was being submitted by a small number of people using multiple accounts. The entertainment value derived was the same.
Dishonesty is not sufficient to render something a scam - the scam-ee needs to "lose out" in some way. In this situation, I don't believe they did.
