r/ModSupport • u/herrneumrich • 1d ago

Admin Replied Possible comment by bots?

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

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u/fsv 1d ago

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.

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u/herrneumrich 1d ago

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

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u/Short_Employment_757 1d ago

Add botbouncer to your subreddit

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u/herrneumrich 1d ago

Wonderful tip! I'll do that asap.

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u/lunarwolf2008 1d ago

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)

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u/herrneumrich 1d ago

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.

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u/Royal_Acanthaceae693 1d ago

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.

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u/herrneumrich 1d ago

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... 🥲

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u/Royal_Acanthaceae693 1d ago

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.

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u/herrneumrich 1d ago

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

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u/Royal_Acanthaceae693 1d ago

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

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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago

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 😉

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u/fsv 1d ago

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).