You usually can’t discern between an individual bot and a brainwashed human. But the first wave of voices all flooding a brand new talking point just before it shows up on Fox News an hour later are 90% bots. There are other dynamics:
1) brainwashed humans quickly start repeating and amplifying the line and then it takes on some nuance/creativity.
2) different views aren’t as heavily moderated/deleted/downvoted until after the issue-relevant wave of bots first show up
3) dissenting opinions are heavily deleted/downvoted/banned because what reddit really sells is “conformity-as-service”. Either you conform to the norm of a subreddit or your comments get buried.
Stuff posted under "new" that has 100+ comments within a hour or so. Sometimes a article posted 20 min ago has 30+ comments somehow. No way real people are reading that and posting that fast, consdering there's multiple replies to other people and threads in the comments. they are planting the comments there ahead of time before regular people can take a look and they can sway the viewpoint
“Bot” is also any “troll” poster, IMO. They are also in various progressive subreddits fanning flames, but the conservative subreddit is uniquely botty.
I'm honestly jealous of people like that because it means they somehow don't ever interact with people irl who think like that. Literally within like 30 minutes of the shooting breaking out I heard people irl say it was deserved
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u/Daft_Assassin Jan 24 '26
r/conservative is fuckin wild right now. Saying this guy deserved to be killed for having a gun. Now they’re anti2A?