Empty accounts, large scale botters, and just sell me your items. Where is the everyone

[Onetwo]

I'm just musing in a grumpy mood here. Take my comments with a grain of salt.

I recently returned to Neopets after a decade. I came back in December. The community feels so different than I remember. One thing that I've noticed is there is a decent amount of site activity... but very little site interaction compared to the activity level.

I've noticed that my stamps tend to not sell for periods of time. I'll build up 3-7 copies, and then one account will buy all of them. The account never buys all of more than one stamp type, but this happens enough that it's an obvious pattern. The thing about these accounts is that they are empty. No trophies, few avatars, no designs... an obvious bot account. It's the type of account that's obvious it's not a normal person. If any of us had a bot, we'd take the time to make it look at least a little like a real person and not obviously a bot account.

I'm trying to collect stamps, and I'm at the point where I'm buying UB stamps. Often there will only be one copy, and the owner is another empty account like the above. They won't respond to neomails, and they take forever to accept my offer... Just sell me your item!

I've had a FFQ for over a week now. The item I need is a 1m item with only one copy on the TP, and the owning account is another empty account. I've had a good offer for over a week, and I've neomailed the account to radio silence. They aren't accepting the offer! Just sell me your item!

I'll often build up a large number of UB stamps from restocking that aren't selling. And then out of nowhere, I'll get one offer on most of the stamps for exactly the asking price. Again, all the accounts are empty bot accounts. It feels so lonely getting these offers. Like I'm just playing Neopets with a bot as my only companion. I want to see the stamps go into an album! I want the buyer to neomail me that they are a collector and ask for a discount! I'll give it to you!

Overall, it 'feels' to me like there are an incredible amount of bots manipulating the economy and its resources. And to me, an observer just trying to play the game and enjoy the community, it's obvious that bots are all over the place. I know a lot of people here have bots, but they tend to use them in ways that won't directly impact me. I won't notice the lack of humanity in the account (lol).

Honestly, TNT knows. I bet they could even handle the bots if they wanted. New captchas for restocking, automation prevention, bot bans, crawl prevention, close the food club, etc. You get it. But that might impact site traffic by reducing bots. That would reduce the site engagement and ad revenue. To me, it all feels like the death throes of an aging site held together by duct tape. I don't have any suggestions for change. I don't even know if I want TNT to crack down on bots. Maybe it really would kill the site. I want more onsite engagement and less inflation. And sell me your item!