this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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I was a bot hunter on reddit and was asked to mod /r/kittengifs because of my ability to find them. There were like 5 legitimate posts in 6 months
So, tangentially related to this, you know r/kitty? The subreddit where every post was a picture of a cat, and the only word permitted in the title and any comments was "Kitty"?
I'm convinced that was being used for covert communications. Run those pictures through Outguess or something.
Ah yes, the famous Russian ~~Number~~ Kitty Stations
There was r/catsstandingup(?) as well that just responded "cat." Never considered the conspiratorial angle there...
If I cared about reddit anymore, I'd dig into that
I mean I can think of worse ways to send messages to my sleeper cells across the surface web. I used to watch The Modern Rogue.
Do you mind share tips to know how to spot them?
It:
The stock photo sites are watermarking AI-generated images now?
That's their txt2img thank you very much
This right here is a bot comment. Everyone take notes.
How do you track down the sheer number of them so efficiently? You could obviously dig through each one's profile, but that wouldn't work for hundreds or thousands.
Lol. There is no way to do it efficiently. I did it in the way you described every time, and I reported literal thousands to reddit's admins (and never got a single response) and was banned by multiple subreddits because I was "annoying" when I reported bots to sub mods. I also called bots out in comments and provided evidence when I did. Nobody cared.
When reddit killed 3rd party apps, I rolled out. I didn't realize how bad reddit had become and how much I hated the site. I'm much happier here with less content and without a bot infestation. Additionally, I'm sure users, mods, and admins WOULD care if I reported that sort of thing on Lemmy
Oh man, I used to see you around constantly. I believe you posted about your methods at one point and I started following them. Hunted down quite a few bots as well!
For the subs I modded, my main strategy was to just ban any NameName or NameName## accounts that could post, and remove any comments from them that were super short or contained a link. That cut down on a ton of those assholes.
I actually got to talk in person with one of the admins at Reddit in charge of spam prevention. I basically gave the bastard a lecture in all the ways the spammers were spamming and scamming. Got told they'd follow up with me soon for more. Never got that follow up and I gave up caring once the API changes went through. I actually deleted all my anti bot code from the subs, but they're still all private anyways
Tbh I always ignored users like you because they added nothing to the conversation and were annoying.
My usual response was "Neat. Now report it and stop posting and bragging" or people callung the sleuth bot for reposts.
Considering how often Lemmy has posts reposted (I can see the same meme twice or thrice per week in the same community instance. My default sorting is 'rising').
I generally agreed with this sentiment, but the fact that admins and mods didn’t care makes me understand why they felt the need to point it out in the comments.
As long as the mods and admins care about removing bots instead of just wanting an inflated user base I think the comments about bots should stay confined to posts like this one where they are on topic.
That is EXACTLY why I did it. I thought that if I could get more users to report those accounts, and if they did, the mods and admins would do something about it.
Not coincidentally, /r/wholesomememes was the worst of all the subs. The overwhelming majority of obvious organized bot rings were operating there. The mods told me they knew and didn't care because it was an opportunity for users to see content they hadn't seen before (completely missing the point)
NameName# eh? @[email protected]
That's funny. It's a play on an album name and motel 6
Okay what was kittengifs, because I'm ashamed to admit my first thought was not short videos of baby cats.
It was baby cats
Okay good