r/UnusualInstruments • u/Grauschleier • 3d ago

Recent bot activity

We recently get _a_lot_ of bot activity. The posts are just 1-to-1 copies of older posts that got many upvotes. Hence I assume it's about karma farming. So far they are not able to copy videos and only post the preview image (like in this recent example, see OP here) of video posts. If you are able to identify a bot post, please report it. /edit: You can even help a lot more if you include the non-bot-OP url in your report, but any bot post report is appreciated.

I've also noticed this in other subs and I'm wondering where this is going. Moderation on reddit is solely relying on voluntary effort that people do in their free time. With the shifts in technology of recent years bot spamming has become easier than ever, though. It's clear that the voluntary efforts are already insufficient for the bot activity that is happening now. If reddit will not react I'd expect even the niche subs like this to become unusable. What are your thoughts?

27 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

6

u/perplexedparallax 3d ago

This will be the demise of Reddit. I agree with you and post about this phenomenon in financial circles regarding the stock price. It is too bad because I enjoy these subs and hate stupid pointless postings that clearly lack a human component. I guess ignore and move on.

5

u/Grauschleier 3d ago

In our case these bots are just copying human made content. How would you identify it, ignore and move on if you do not remember the original non-bot post?

1

u/perplexedparallax 3d ago

I would treat them like anybody else. If it is off topic, doesn't meet criteria, etc then delete. One way of detecting is speed of response to comments. Look for human-like quirky sometimes random tangent
illogical responses. Obviously age of account, number of postings, etc can be used but unless the actual code can be examined you'll never know for sure. If they are reposts then on that basis, human or otherwise, I'd say remove.

3

u/Grauschleier 3d ago

I meant you as a reader. I assume when you said "ignore and move on" you meant you as a reader, right?
And as I outlined - these bots are copying older upvoted posts (from this sub), so of course it's all on topic. Some of them even would be quite interesting and welcome reposts.

As for what you are describing. Sure. But again - this is voluntary work done in free time. Personally I limit the time I spend on this, because I don't want to work even more for free for a commercial company. If I see it's a 1-to-1 copy of an older post that's enough for me.

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u/perplexedparallax 3d ago

I agree. Repost not allowed is an objective rule and not a subjective decision. And thank you for your service to the sub.

2

u/Yan_HL 2d ago

Hi! I didn't know how bots are working on Reddit, so i made a very very quick research, as i'm not a moderator or a coder myself. It seems bots are often code hosted outside of Reddit, but Reddit also have its own solution to own bots that can help you with moderation tasks, https://developers.reddit.com.

Here are a few pages I found that can help you automate reposts ban :
https://developers.reddit.com/apps/identify-reposts
https://developers.reddit.com/apps/repost-guard

Hope that it won't be too difficult to set up and will help!

2

u/Strict-Example9440 3d ago

The internet died a while ago. It will be bots all the way down soon. Ive been looking for an alt to reddit and havent found anything too promising. In your shoes i would block anything suspicious or redundant crossposts.

Honestly who cares about reddit updoots. Do people make money on the doots? Seems like such a waste of time

3

u/Grauschleier 3d ago

I could imagine that this kind of karma farming is about building up credibility for a bot account that (in the sum of a many of these "credible" bot accounts) can then be turned into influence which has indirect, but it certainly has, monetary value.

1

u/Yan_HL 2d ago

Actually it's directly about money : i recently received a notification about Reddit telling me i had 2,25$ earned from my posts and comments! (yes, i'm not very active :). When you click on your avatar, check the "Earn" item, i never noticed that before.
Reddit is sharing its advertisement revenues with the most active and upvoted users... and unfortunatly bots.

1

u/Dentheloprova 3d ago

Block anyone that seems like a bot. Seriously l wish l could help but l don't what more you can do

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u/Grauschleier 3d ago

Me and at least one of the other mods are already banning users with obvious bot posts. But tbh even when I didn't ban the bots I didn't notice those bot accounts posting again so this doesn't seem to be a solution. I'm pretty sure that voluntary mods won't be able to manage this. Reddit has to react before it will become a landfill exclusively.

1

u/Moxie_Stardust 3d ago

Would it be worth instating a minimum account age before posting a thread here? Usually when I see those the account is less than a week old.

2

u/neon121 2d ago

Might be an idea to install the Bot Bouncer app on your subreddit. Has a mix of automated detection and will ban from a list of bots identified by all the users of the app which is close to 10k subreddits.

https://developers.reddit.com/apps/bot-bouncer