BlazeReddit if full of bots: thread reposted exactly the same, comment by comment, 10 months later
Anti-Face WeaponMy understanding of how this works is that that left one is real accounts making real comments, at least in the majority.
Then when the link gets reposted, either by a bot or naturally, potentially depending on the title, the bots scrape the old comments and post them.
It’s content farming. And Reddit is probably okay with this.
The right one is the “real” accounts. Notice how the left one is newer and all the accounts have names ending with four digits, except where they aren’t copies from the right.
The list of names at the left creeps me the fuck out.
I saw this exact same style of bot account years ago on Tumblr. They always follow the same naming scheme: one word or two words combined and then a string of 4 digits. I bet if you go to any of their profiles, you’ll find like 4 comments that are all copied from old threads and a bunch of upvotes on completely random subs, possibly even all of them being on other bot accounts’ posts and comments.
The real question is whether they’re being used to fake activity on Reddit, sway public opinion by posting this sort of political slant, or will they later be used to advertise scams and this is just to make them seem legitimate.
Why not all of the above? If you have a service, you want to sell it to as many customers as possible.
Very good point.
I thought the names followed that format because that’s the format reddit used for suggestions when signing up.
I think the accounts are kind of “warmed up” this way to make them harder for reddit to identify as bots when they’re used for vote manipulation.
Like a bot that just voted in /r/politics threads world be easier to identify than one which comments here and there and gets a few upvotes itself.
No, the left one is older and most the names in the right contain four numbers.
What’s going on here?
Maybe op updated the picture?
BlazeI did, because other people complained in another comment that it was confusing to not have the older thread on the left.
Anyway, it’s pretty obvious which one is which one
Thanks
I almost thought I’m delusional
I also thought you were, lmao.
Hey, you’re not op! Is another bot!
…
Oh right, I’m on Lemmy.
yeah they did for some reason it seems