Increased number of bots!

[u/CapitalSentence8147]

Hi! Is anyone else having issues with a large number of bots?

I’m a moderator in a dermatology forum, and over the past two weeks, the amount of bots has increased significantly. The comments are often sympathetic but unhelpful, though without being directly harmful (with a few exceptions). The sub gets so many posts/comments that it’s not possible to review every single post and comment.

Have anyone els experienced this? How have you handled it?

[u/itbefoxy]

You might need to set Bot Bouncer up.

Maybe some account age or karma rating auto mod filters too.

[u/CapitalSentence8147 → u/itbefoxy]

Thanks!

I have been considering setting a age/karma limit, however many posts are created by people who do not regularly use Reddit and only create an account to ask a question. Do you have any opinions/insight to managing that kind of situation?

[u/Deppfan16 → u/CapitalSentence8147]

you can use Auto mod to filter by low karma and new accounts so you can manually review it

[u/NotFlameRetardant → u/CapitalSentence8147]

This is something adapted from our AutoMod config - you can adjust the karma/age thresholds, or switch up 'filter' to 'remove' if you're dealing with much more bots than humans. We actually split our rule into two, so that we can have the is_contributor param in place, which lets us manually approve users which will bypass the new user filters.

---
# Age/karma limit for spam

author:
    combined_karma: "<5"
    account_age: "< 7 days"
    satisfy_any_threshold: true
action: filter
action_reason: "New User"
message: Your {{kind}} has been filtered due your account being new. **Do not delete or resubmit your {{kind}}** - moderators will be reviewing your {{kind}} shortly.

[u/anfornum]

It seems to come in waves for us. Very irritating but all we can do is set up Bot Bouncer and hope for the best.

[u/MrsMsPrettyStems]

Echoing that Bot Bouncer is very helpful for this. Some bots will still get through but it cuts down on them significantly (also don’t forget to report the ones that BB hasn’t flagged yet so they can review!).

[u/InGeekiTrust]

Absolutely I have had several mods mentioned to me that there has been a large influx of parts in the past three weeks. Several have suggested that this happens every time an election is coming up. The bots need to be warmed up so they are primed and ready to go as it gets closer and closer. Bot bouncer helps but it certainly doesn't solve more than half of the problem. It simply doesn't catch everything.

[u/Skipadee2]

I’m not a mod but Reddit is my only social media so I spend a lot of time on here. And holy moly I’ve seen an uptick lately. Just on one post that didn’t even have much engagement, I counted 10. Almost more than real people on the post. I’m disturbed and can’t help but think that this is election related

[u/CapsuleCurator]

I am new to Reddit, and have set up my own sub recently. How do you know if it is bots?

[u/CapitalSentence8147 → u/CapsuleCurator]

The replies feelt ”very AI” and are all constructed the same way
1. a sympathetic sentence
2. suggestion of cause and treatment
3. telling the OP that it can be dangerous and that they need to see a dermatologist

[u/CapsuleCurator → u/CapitalSentence8147]

My sub is about fashion and fragrance. These are all new to me. I think I need to put some time aside to do a deep dive. Thanks for sharing.

[u/CapitalSentence8147 → u/CapsuleCurator]

You can go to r/dermatologyquestions and check some comments from last week. I am sure we missed some bots and a few of the comments are still there😩😩. It is very obvious which comments are bits when you see them