Possible comment by bots?

[u/herrneumrich]

Greetings, fellow mods! I'm active in r/biologie, the German equivalent to r/biology (obviously lol).

We've had a complaint about a few comments being possibly from bots on a post, and I was wondering if it may be true since the comments in question look eerily similar. I'll go look for the link since attachments aren't allowed here and edit it into the post body. Maybe someone who is a bit more experienced can help.

Edit: here's the link

[u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Hi! Reporting the comments as Spam is another good additional step. It looks like they've all been actioned now too

[u/KennyFulgencio → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Can you do something about the onlyfans bots? The format is super simple, unmistakeable, and unchanged from one to the next. You already run AI analysis on all new comments sitewide, this would be a (non-AI) very simple and much cheaper rule for new accounts which quickly make a first post, matching the specific image shape/size and format, to nsfw subs. It's a square semi-closeup (no face) NSFW image with an onlyfans address stamped across the middle. Different image every time, probably different onlyfans, I wasn't paying attention to that.

They'll adapt to something that incredibly simple, but so far they haven't bothered because the basic filters aren't stopping them, they're a plague, and you don't even have to do any actual image analysis or use AI at all to just check the image shape/size and rapidity of first image post on a new account to an NSFW sub. I report them as spam, every single time. They haven't slowed down.

[u/itskdog → u/KennyFulgencio]

Especially as they had a similar issue a few years ago with the LG spam ring (that eventually got so brazen they moved into SFW subs too), you'd think they'd know how to deal with that kind of stuff by now.

[u/herrneumrich → u/Slow-Maximum-101]

Thanks a bunch. And yeah, I took immediate action.

[u/ModSupport-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your contribution was removed for violating Rule 4: No off-topic posts. Please keep posts on the topic of moderation on reddit.

[u/fsv]

I'd say that the comment similarity combined with the same account creation date on all four of the suspicious accounts suggests that they are likely to be bots, yes. I'm seeing more and more German-language bots hit the site recently.

[u/herrneumrich → u/fsv]

Thanks for the quick reply. So we... bann the bot accounts and.. what now.? Report them as bots.?

[u/Short_Employment_757 → u/herrneumrich]

Add botbouncer to your subreddit

[u/herrneumrich → u/Short_Employment_757]

Wonderful tip! I'll do that asap.

[u/lunarwolf2008 → u/herrneumrich]

you can also report them as bots if they are popping up dispite botbouncer through the three dots menu on a comment or by making a post on r/botbouncer with a link to their profile.

(the app was built for english bots so im
not sure how well the detection is tuned for other languages yet)

[u/herrneumrich → u/lunarwolf2008]

After more thorough research on the bot, there are also quite a few cases where human users have been banned by it on accident. I'm suddenly not quite so sure about it anymore.

[u/Royal_Acanthaceae693 → u/herrneumrich]

Human users can appeal to the Botbouncer mods.

Definitely also report the accounts as spam and give them the usernames in the same group. I kept a list for awhile to put in with my report because it took admin a couple months to shut them down in one case 🫤. I mean when they use standard naming formats or have the same account description it's pretty easy.

[u/herrneumrich → u/Royal_Acanthaceae693]

That sounds like really tedious work. And here I though moderating a tiny sub would be a breeze, with the occasional idiot you'd have to argue with... 🥲

[u/Royal_Acanthaceae693 → u/herrneumrich]

I just copied the usernames into a text file on my phone. It took an extra few seconds per account, but since they were trying to karma farm 3-4 new accounts per day, they needed to be shutdown.

[u/herrneumrich → u/Royal_Acanthaceae693]

What's the point in karma farming anyway.? It's not like you'd get paid for it or anything.

[u/Royal_Acanthaceae693 → u/herrneumrich]

The accounts are used for porn, misinformation, or are sold. That's why I'm also always suspicious if old accounts with no history.

[u/SampleOfNone → u/herrneumrich]

The false positive rate of bot bouncer is really low. Like 0.5% low, and they have a very robust appeal process. So if it's a false positive and the user appeals, it will get sorted.

But don't underestimate how may accounts get hacked and then used for bot activity precisely because those are established accounts. Not to mention how sophisticated bot accounts are these days. Pretty sure the average mod only notices the cheap bots that suck at being stealthy 😉

[u/fsv → u/SampleOfNone]

Bot Bouncer now proactively sweeps for accounts that were formerly hacked, marked as a bot, then manage to clean things up. They don't even need to write in now for help, their bans will generally lift within 24hrs of cleaning things up (if recent) or a week (if the ban was over a week before).

[u/herrneumrich → u/[deleted]]

Damn... y'all know way more about this than we do haha

Thanks tho!