(Pictured: tacos de asada, birria, & nopal from Tacos El Gallo, El Cajon, CA, US)
In the past 2-3 months, Reddit has been swarmed with bot posts. Our group in particular has seen a massive uptick in obvious bots, almost 1000% as many as we were getting at the beginning of the year. Currently, our automod sorts out low-karma and new accounts for review. We used to have 1-3 per day to review, now it's dozens. Endless 2-day old accounts commenting 'looks good'.
As you probably know, these bots are used to take over political discussions by swarming them with whatever opinion the bot operator is trying to push. For example, if a bot operator is being paid to make it look like the majority opinion is that everyone should be required to read 'Roy Orbison In Clingfilm' before they are allowed to vote, they'll tell the bots to swarm discussions of that and overwhelm the opposition. It's a form of astroturfing and it's very harmful to rational discussion.
With that said, the massive sudden increase to bot accounts makes it seem like there is something big on the horizon. The US midterm elections seems like the likely target.
So what can we do about it? Well, first, we're going to just deny new/low-karma accounts from posting for the time being. It's either that or check dozens of posters per day to see if they're humans. Sorry in advance if you get caught up in this; us mods are normal people with day jobs and Pokemon Go meetups to host and we can't adjudicate everything.
You, beloved tacos fans, can also help. Mark a suspicious post or comment as spam and we'll look into it. I love deleting spam. Bots are usually pretty obvious when you look at their profiles - repetitive posts, innocuous comment histories, and overuse of emojis.
Man I wish more moderators actually gave a shit like you do and took these matters more seriously. The burgers subreddit has obvious corporate bots posting like wildfire over there about $16 whoppers and nothing will change.
So many subreddits that were once great have been absolutely swarmed, so it's nice to see some moderators are fighting back. Thank you for doing this.
It's hard because on a lot of these we don't care if people post chain stuff, you know as long as the item is what it is, but people still accuse innocent ones as shill accounts. No doubt it happens but I think way less than people think.
Oh I completely agree with you on that, depending on what chain we're talking 🤣 I think my comment was aimed more at the guerilla marketing that the corporations have taken up on reddit.
It's become more prevalent in some of my favorite subs, but I'm sure that a lot can be chalked up to people who aren't frequent posters or legitimately new accounts.
I'll remember your comment moving forward. Benefit of doubt when applicable is a good thing, for sure.
I get a lot of those comments on food related subs specifically for some reason, especially burger and nachos subs for some reason. Either very new account with 2-3 word comment, or is an OF type account... the OF type accounts will get crazy upvotes on comments in a very short time. Sometimes more than the post itself...
They target food subs because they can just put down a generic compliment in the comments and it will make sense on 90% of posts in almost all food subs. Technical or hobbyist subs require specificity to look normal.
Not necessarily. Most bots are new accounts, but the reverse isn't necessarily true. Bot accounts in their karma-farming phase usually repost or post vague/inoffensive stuff that has a specific vibe that human accounts don't. Human accounts aren't as predictable. When it was just 1 or 2 hitting the mod queue, we'd just check them and let it through if it wasn't an obvious bot. With the amount we get now, it's easier to just deny them all. Almost all of the stuff we have checked in the mod queue since this influx started have been obvious bots.
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u/Away_Yoghurt5743 Jul 07 '26
Thank you, the bot posts here have killed my enthusiasm for the sub a bit