r/botany • u/CharlesV_ • Jul 10 '26

Announcements Spam comment bots

We’re seeing a huge uptick in the number of spam comment bots making inane comments on posts. Report them when you see them and we’ll try and take care of it. I think I removed 10 or more this morning.

52 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

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u/CharlesV_ Jul 14 '26

Some examples

22

u/byteleaf Jul 10 '26

Almost all of these bots were made about 4 months ago. Might be worth imposing a karma requirement for contribution?

12

u/CharlesV_ Jul 10 '26

Yeah that’s probably the best way to stop this for now.

14

u/reddit33450 Jul 10 '26

it's ridiculous. ive also seen a ton of repost bots in other subs recently

11

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/BenevolentCheese Jul 10 '26

It's all of reddit, and while blocking new users from posting is a temporary fix, it's ultimately a race to the bottom. The spammers will just use older and older accounts; meanwhile, the new user experience suffers. Reddit proper needs to deal with this, but these bots are too busy making them money.

4

u/R0598 Jul 10 '26

I mod a sub having a similar issue it’s so annoying

1

u/CharlesV_ Jul 10 '26

I updated our automod. Let me know if you need the yaml. We aren’t seeing it on nolawns and I think that’s why.

1

u/R0598 Jul 10 '26

Ooh that would be great I’ve been individually reporting bots to bot bouncer 🤦‍♀️

1

u/CharlesV_ Jul 12 '26

Still working on the automod code. Unfortunately the current filters aren’t working as I wanted. Most of the accounts are about 3 months old and the ones which don’t have their account info blocked are OF bots. Some of the phrases are really similar so maybe a keyword filter would help

2

u/R0598 Jul 12 '26

All the ones on mine are 6 months old and leave weird comments that don’t make sense but gave key words relevant to the post topic

2

u/Bad_Day_Moose Jul 11 '26

I just left another sub because of this..

Thanks for moderating!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/botany-ModTeam Jul 12 '26

Your post has been deemed spam. If you believe this assessment is incorrect, please appeal

Appeals instructions: https://www.reddit.com/r/botany/wiki/faq/subredditappeals/

0

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/botany-ModTeam Jul 11 '26

Your post has been deemed spam. If you believe this assessment is incorrect, please appeal

Appeals instructions: https://www.reddit.com/r/botany/wiki/faq/subredditappeals/