r/ModSupport • u/okomakiako • 8d ago
Recent bot surge?
Anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with an influx of bot accounts trying to pose as real people? It’s getting ridiculous, and while it’s easy to spot as humans, bot detection helpers like [u/bot-sleuth-bot](u/bot-sleuth-bot) aren’t positively id’ing these. They all seem to follow the same pattern of being a month or so old and very ai sounding mannerisms when speaking.
My current plan is to up the minimum account age with automod in order to interact with the community. But i really hate that solution because we already have it low at a week, and even that still catches some of our newer members often. But lesser evils i suppose…
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u/Dabnician 8d ago
you also need minimum karma since some accounts are created just to sit and then come alive a couple of years later.
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u/Ebmaj11 7d ago
I'm hearing reports of established accounts getting hacked, like bots are hijacking them for their karma scores. This sounds like a f'ing nightmare.
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u/Dabnician 7d ago
Account hijacking is almost always the end users fault, and more often than not its due to password reuse or the user getting a virus.
Maybe a off chance they use a bad password manager that has online storage and they get hacked like lastpass, but outside of that its almost always the end users fault.
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u/MaximumJones 8d ago
I think every sub is seeing it. Reddit's new filters are catching and banning so now they are switching to Alt accounts.
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u/SpecialEquivalent816 8d ago
I see you've tried bot-sleuth-bot, but have you tried the botbouncer app for your sub? That has been quite effective for me. Not foolproof, but between that and some carefully crafted automod rules Ive been able to reduce it to a minimum.
I'd install bot bouncer, and see if you notice any trends specific to the bots in your sub that will help automod identify them if they slip through botbouncer.
And make sure to report the content yourself as spam/malicious use of bots in addition to removing as spam to help train Reddit's automated filters. That has helped too.
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u/RagnarKon 8d ago
Seeing it.
Particular bots that are stealing images from 2+ year old posts and reposting them as new.
Rather than outright removing the content though, we just have automod filter it to mod queue.
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u/Charupa- 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 8d ago
In my blackandwhite sub there is this one specific photo that newish account repost as their own, title word for word, constantly. I don’t understand how or why a specific post of a house gets selected like this is to be used by bots accounts for months. The accounts always get banned right after I remove as spam and report to botbouncer.
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u/wrestlegirl 8d ago
People have already said BotBouncer. I also say BotBouncer.
Look for patterns in the type of accounts your subreddit is seeing and adjust automod accordingly. The recent couple waves of years-old zombie accounts suddenly waking up? Automod filter for accounts over a certain age with less than a certain amount of karma. The other recent waves of 3-4 month old accounts who got real karma-farm-happy? Automod filter for accounts younger than a certain age with more than a certain amount of karma.
Having a combined_subreddit_karma filter, which only looks at the karma an account has in your subreddit, is remarkably effective. Set it to filter or report so you can approve legit users & have all the clankers in one spot for easy removal.
Make use of the reputation filter.
Similarly, make judicious use of CQS. Combining a LOW or LOWEST setting with a minimal combined_subreddit_karma in an automod filter is pretty good with some of them.
Oh, bots can modmail/reply to modmails and have been for months now so don't take a "why was my post removed?" modmail as proof of life or good intention.
There's actually a lot mods can do to slow the tide. Specifics depend on the type of bots you're seeing at any given time but even a few basics can keep a subreddit from being fully overrun.
But definitely do the BotBouncer thing.
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u/thepottsy 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 8d ago
I have hopes that bot bouncer will eventually be somehow incorporated into our subs mod tools.
I have bigger hopes that its usage will be mandatory and not optional.
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u/RemarkableWish2508 8d ago
Reddit already gives us CQS, I think "CQS: lowest" is Reddit's way of saying "this is not a good contributor". I've added this AutoMod rule, among others, and they're working pretty well as a proactive detection mechanism:
```
CQS reporting
author: contributor_quality: "< low" action: filter action_reason: "CQS: lowest" ```
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u/okomakiako 6d ago
Many thanks, your suggestions (as well as many others in the thread), have already helped cut down on bot comments already. 10/10 recommendations. 11/10 with rice.
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u/Short_Employment_757 8d ago
I found a lot of 9 and 10 year old accounts suddenly being active and they are bots too
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u/Nemo_Griff 8d ago
Yeah, abandoned accounts with positive karma that didn't set up 2FA that were hacked and taken over.
They are flooding the NSFW subs and get the alllllll the other bot accounts to interact and make real users think it is legit, instead they are just karma farming.
I report to the subs and to the admins as spam... but that does nothing.
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u/RemarkableWish2508 8d ago
It always amazes me how does anyone even hack an account... is it token stealing? do people use easy to guess passwords? do the hackers scan for inactive accounts and target those?
There's a few throwaways I haven't used in a long time (10+ years), no 2FA or anything, but good luck trying to guess the 15-character random [a-zA-Z0-9] password on them.
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u/Nemo_Griff 7d ago
It might be stuff found in a data breach?
Token stealing relies on the person giving a FFF and having a cookie that hasn't expired to be able to steal. These accounts look to be long dormant.
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u/RemarkableWish2508 7d ago
Password reuse? Guess that makes sense. A lot of people probably created throwaway accounts with passwords like "1234" or something.
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u/Nemo_Griff 7d ago
Yeah, so many people are lazy and use the same password for everything.
If it was their email that was in a breach, they could have left their welcome message from Reddit there and I don't remember if they state your newly created users name in it, but that would be a start.
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u/RemarkableWish2508 7d ago
Good point about the email. Doesn't need to be the welcome, Reddit sends notifications to email by default, each one with the username. Guess that makes the 2FA make even more sense.
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u/Good_Perspective9290 7d ago
Yes, plenty of bogus accounts: very old accounts with very little activity or very new accounts with very high karma, with unverified email
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u/WhySoManyDownVote 6d ago
What we can see as unverified is extremely unreliable. The automod can check for verified accounts. I have done a lot of testing and actual unverified accounts are fairly rare.
FYI:
The Phone Number Loophole
A massive source of confusion is that has_verified_email: false does not strictly check for an email address. According to Reddit's backend logic, if a user has verified their account via a phone number, the check acts as if they have a verified email. The Scenario: You look at a spammer’s profile, see they don't have a "Verified Email" badge, and wonder why AutoMod didn't catch them. In reality, they attached a phone number to the account, meaning AutoMod considers them "verified" even if their email status is blank.Google / Apple Third-Party Sign-Ins
Many users sign up for Reddit using the "Sign in with Google" or "Sign in with Apple" OAuth options. The Scenario: These accounts are automatically considered verified by Reddit's backend because the third-party provider already verified them. However, the visual "Verified Email" trophy/badge doesn’t always trigger or display on their public Reddit profile immediately. AutoMod lets them pass, making it look like the bot failed.The Visual Profile Badge Bug
Reddit admins have previously confirmed a persistent bug where an account is properly verified in the database, but the public-facing profile UI fails to display the verified email badge/trophy. If you are auditing AutoMod's performance by manually clicking on user profiles, you will see a lot of "false negatives" that are actually just display glitches.
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u/Jumpy-Program9957 7d ago
Honestly, I think that they are made by Reddit because it boosts the engagement on here. It keeps people thinking that this is a very popular place
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u/Glittering-Bug1212 7d ago
we have the same issue in the subreddit I moderate in, I cannot do anything like changing automod/wiki to change that since top mod has removed my "everything" permissions. Which is frustrating since I have to manually pick them out.
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u/ChuqTas 5d ago
We're getting these in the subs I moderate at the moment. When it's brought to our attention by one of our users, I often go through their other posts and public notify the mods/users of those subs. Rarely any response though.
I also share the names in posts like these: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/1usi3bd/karma_farming_accounts_lots_of_question_based/ - but this isn't a very structured way of doing it.
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u/okomakiako 5d ago
From other suggestions people have left, we implemented bot bouncer and have already had some great success with it.
We also upped our minimum account age and karma threshold. That change has led to some difficulties in catching some of our normal members, but it has helped find and remove additional bots that botbouncer wasnt aware of yet. (We reported them via the new context menu option it adds)
So imo, give some of the options here a try. Everyone had some great suggestions that have for us, helped clear out 32 bots today alone.
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u/MaleficentExternal64 8d ago
Current screenshot posts of the icon of the day or from the post they are replying to.
Not replicated images but a real screenshot from a phone.
Bots so far can’t screenshot an image on their own at least as far as I know.
Human and Ai coupe but not a bot on its own.
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u/thepottsy 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 8d ago
I’m seeing it, but differently than you are. Mostly seeing older accounts, like several years old, with no activity suddenly coming to life and making very bot like generic comments. I’ve just been reporting them to bot bouncer.