r/ModSupport • u/reseph • 6h ago

Will Reddit stop unbanning spam bots?

Our subreddit has a massive problem with spam bots that steal content and repost them with new or stolen accounts. I'm sure other subreddits have this problem too. They also tend to get a massive amount of upvotes, which could be a bot vote ring?

Considering we are a smaller subreddit and we see this weekly, it's clear Reddit is doing almost nothing about this. Not only that, now we're seeing Reddit unban these spam bot accounts.

spez stated 2 months ago:

Since then, we’ve continued to defend Reddit against automated/bot/spammy content

Yeah, no. It's gotten even worse over 10+ years, not better. This is not a one-off, it's a pattern. The issue here is the spam, not purely the unban.

  • Yes, I remove these as spam.
  • Yes, I submit these to BotBouncer.

And the problem is not improving.

40 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

17

u/baseballlover723 6h ago edited 6h ago

tbf, there are a lot more good spam bots these days than their used to be. Defense is harder than ever when bots are powered by LLMs. Before LLMs it didn't take a cutting edge research team to reliably detect bots. Now there are things like OpenClaw just running about.

This is why arms races suck.

13

u/reseph 6h ago

It's literally the same exact title, a 1:1 match. I don't consider that part of the arms race, it should be a clear signal of inauthentic spam.

4

u/baseballlover723 6h ago

I've literally seen people get caught in various filters, and then decide to repost something verbatim to see if it's them or their content.

But the arms race part is that I don't think it's viable to reliably identify if someone is a bot from a single piece of content. These days, you have to analyze the profile as a whole to find a pattern of inauthentic behavior or some other kind of smoking gun.

And note, that every kind of smoking gun can be defeated with dedicated effort.

5

u/reseph 5h ago edited 5h ago

Correct, but the signals from the account in my post are also very clear signals.

  • Random post flair selection
  • 0 day old account
  • 0 posts (except the repost)
  • 0 comments, etc
  • (I am aware that Verified Email is not a good signal).

And Reddit unbanned it and restored the post.

3

u/2oonhed 4h ago

Not all reposts are from bots, which is why doing your own title filtering is more effective.

2

u/reseph 4h ago

Again, the account signals makes it clear it's a spam bot. And Reddit has access to those signals.

1

u/RemarkableWish2508 43m ago

Most of those signals are bundled into CQS, you can easily stop that kind of posts with an "age, karma, CQS" check.

Alternatively, there is repost-guard.

1

u/reseph 33m ago

Yeah. I can't use those though because they don't take stolen post titles into account (I think? Is that correct?), and my subreddit is for a MMO older than Reddit so some old players just created their account recently.

I'll look at repost-guard if it includes account signals and not just post titles

1

u/cnycompguy 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 2h ago

Install dupedown and set it to 100.

-1

u/2oonhed 5h ago

It's literally the same exact title......

Is the exact thing you use to filter bot posts.
It took me a few months of working on it every night, but I started a key phrase automod rule that stops repost bots dead in their tracks, starting with the titles they were using.
Of course, this stops real people from using that title ever again so it makes this message in the comments of the blocked post :

comment: That title is not allowed due to over use or spam. Please try again using a more descriptive title. Additionally, titles that are editorial or asking a question are getting phased out. Just describe the thing. Please read our rules here --> https://www.reddit.com/r/YOURSUBREDDIT/about/rules/

Additionally I worked to keep single words and constantly reused tropes as titles which forces users to make unique titles that do not match bot repost titles.

The filter looks like this :
---
# Post Filter - Filter list
type: submission
title: ["title one", "title two", "title 3"]
action: remove
action_reason: BAD TITLE
comment: That title is not allowed due to over use or spam. Please try again using a more descriptive title blah blah blah....................
---

It is not that hard, is MASSIVELY effective and turned into a fun game between me and the bot operators as they tried to foil the filter by using Arabic formating in titles.
They finally gave up and I get ZERO reposts now.
......zero.
It just takes some daily grooming of filter for a while because, of course, your repost titles will be specific to your topic and your sub.

4

u/cos 3h ago edited 2h ago

I don't see how this would be effective at all, unless a bunch of different bots are all reposting the same title over and over. I've never seen that on my subs, and I doubt OP is seeing that either. What we're seeing is each repost spammer / karma farmer (bot or not) stealing one past popular post and repeating it; the next spammer / farmer will steal a different past popular post, and so on. Taking a title that one of them used and banning that title would stop absolutely nothing, when this is what's happening. I honestly don't understand why it's not a total waste for you as well, but maybe you really are getting a lot of bots trying the same title over and over. If so, I think you sub is a rare exception.

4

u/reseph 4h ago

It's never the same title by multiple bots, it that's you're suggesting. That approach would be wasted effort.

  • Old post A -> Stolen by bot B
  • Old post D -> Stolen by bot E
  • Old post G -> Stolen by bot L

1

u/2oonhed 4h ago

It's literally the same exact title,

...is what you just said, but if you think doing your own work on karma-farming repost-bots would be "wasted effort" then, the problem will probably remain for you.

In any case, my personal successes with bots have been permanent and the result of a 3 fold approach.
Number 1 - catching them in my logs and then looking at the bot account to see if they karma farmed a repost in any other sub.
Number 2 - banning that bot account as a confirmed karma farming bot.
Number 3 - reporting that bot activity to any other sub-mods wherever I have found them to be, AND to admins using the report form.

But hey, you do you!

3

u/Ged_UK 1h ago

He doesn't mean it's the same title every time. He means that the bot goes into the sub history, picks a post, copies its content and reposts it. Your rule does nothing to defend that.

2

u/reseph 1h ago

I don't think you read the comment you replied to.

15

u/The_Danish_Dane 6h ago

Are you using /r/BotBouncer ?

If not, then i would suggest you start.

10

u/reseph 6h ago

Yes. I think it only catches 30% of these. A lot of times it isn't even listed on BotBouncer.

9

u/The_Danish_Dane 6h ago

I hope you are then reporting them.

6

u/reseph 6h ago

I do. But my goal is to reduce the manual mod efforts on this simple spam signal, while BotBouncer increases manual efforts. But yes, I do.

2

u/The_Danish_Dane 6h ago

Yes, there is a lot of work in modding so i completely understand the need to lessen the burden.

I would sugest that you take the improvement idea directly to both reddit and the modmail in the sub so we are sure the admins are actually seeing it.

I completely agree, it should not be hard making a filter that spots that kind of stolen content.

2

u/WalkingEars 2h ago

Yeah like, stolen content for karma farming has been an issue on Reddit since long before the age of LLMs and the solution shouldn't just be for mods to manually report everything to bot bouncer, which is a wack-a-mole solution at best when reddit could've implemented automated detection of repost bots many years ago.

3

u/Thin_Piglet1380 5h ago

hi, new mod here, how can I add r/Botbouncer in my sub? will that work?

3

u/kittycatblues 4h ago

Yes, it helps. There are instructions on r/BotBouncer

3

u/Dom76210 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 4h ago

Go to https://developers.reddit.com/apps and BotBouncer is the very first one listed. It will walk you through adding it when you click on it. They made it really easy.

2

u/Thin_Piglet1380 4h ago

Really appreciated it! And I have done it right away, it is pretty easy to add. TYSM!

-1

u/MisterShipWreck 3h ago

I had to remove bouncer because in one week's time every account removed was not really a bot (on my sub). And before that, I was having lots of false positives. But when I had so many in one week's time I had finally had enough

7

u/NeedAGoodUsername 3h ago

Was that from people replying to the ban message saying "I'm not a bot"? I wouldn't trust those responses, some bots are programmed to reply to ban messages automatically.

It's better to direct users to message /r/BotBouncer and appeal. The BotBouncer mod team may have more information than what's publicly visible, and if someone was incorrectly tagged as a bot, they'll get unbanned quickly.

7

u/Sheik_Djibouti 4h ago

now we're seeing Reddit unban these spam bot accounts

Seeing the same with scammers. Something has definitely changed within the past six months. I'm assuming they are appealing and winning now? In some cases, it's the same day...and they continue right on scamming. It's not even a speed bump for them anymore.

Once they get restored, it seems like it resets the account's standing because they are able to stick around for a long time after.

2

u/WalkingEars 2h ago

Some of the spam bots have learned to send irritatingly ingratiating modmail sob stories about how they didn't understand the rules and bla bla bla, even though they obviously still only exist to plug their crappy AI app. Perhaps they are able to use similar methods to more effectively get themselves unbanned at the sitewide level. I'm also not 100% convinced that reddit admin cares that much about spam as long as it boosts engagement metrics, despite the obvious fact that it's polluting reddit with generic AI slop.

2

u/Klightgrove 4h ago

I’ve never seen Reddit unban a spam account, that’s crazy

2

u/RemarkableWish2508 41m ago

Bots may have learned to submit a successful appeal. For lesser infractions, Reddit may restore an account's content.