• MorrisonMotel6@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    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

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • MorrisonMotel6@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        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

    • Starbuncle@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • MorrisonMotel6@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        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

        • kboy101222@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          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