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There are a couple subs I believe that try to track bots. I say try because they don't exactly do any profound research due to most bots telling on themselves.

There are a couple subs I believe that try to track bots. I say try because they don't exactly do any profound research due to most bots telling on themselves. But you get to see what patterns emerge from these bots: usernames are a big tell, a lot of them seem to be relying on the same script to generate usernames (probably pulled from the first reddit account creator repo they could find), and they repeat themselves a lot even if some nouns are changed (again indicating very primitive understanding of scripts). Another really huge tell, that only works if you're actively on reddit when it happens, is they reply to your comment instantly[1]. It also seems some are using these bots to change course of a subreddit [2], where they are upvoting/downvoting on mass (evading Reddit's usual bot trappings, which IIRC mostly stem from IP?). It's going to be very very interesting to see how easier access to bots is going to affect a lot of social sites. There are two funny things about this entire situation: A) by attempting to call out these bots in some subs, you'll be warned/banned for brigading or being uncivil, and B) some subs have tried to be proactive about the situation but wound up being chastised[3] for various reasons like relying on AI detection tooling which produces a lot of false positives, and a general nonchalance as long as bots "post quality". So basically, outside of external verification and pattern matching, you can't. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/12ssfdq/wow_its_another_amazing_ai_bot_allowing_us_to_see/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/12ssf... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/botwatch/comments/125iurb/me_and_others_downvoted_for_calling_out_the_spam/ https://www.reddit.com/r/botwatch/comments/125iurb/me_and_ot... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/11vw6qp/posting_aiwritten_content_will_result_in_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/11vw6qp/post...

circuit10 3y ago
I was one of the people who said that using AI detection is a bad idea on that last link. Really, those AI detection tools are extremely unreliable and it’s a bad idea to use them for anything import like moderation decisions. I’m not against trying to stop bots or anything but doing it in a way that will harm real users more than bots is a bad idea
- waboremo 3y ago
  As in you were in that very thread? Cool coincidence if so! But yeah generally I agree about the tooling, they're relying on methods that seem to be even more superficial and random than username pattern matching, and we really should be turning to the likes of Bard and OpenAI to instead implement solutions to make that easier.
  - LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
    Embeddings are great for this, capture all posts by all people in the sub and embed them, then cluster users by their overall position and the distances between their posts, etc, to profile them ideologically and single-issue wise, and then graph the links between similarly located users. Do they post in a web, or a tag-team way that differentiates them from other users? And then also color these by the average response time, etc. But don't rely on these types metrics because they're the easiest to avoid by simply delaying responses based on their length and complexity, plus a random discovery time, plus a time-of-day dependent offset. And then, potentially just issue warnings. "You've been detected participating in a brigading fashion, and bot or not, may be banned if this continues" and see what changes.
    - kranke155 3y ago
      How can you do this on Reddit ?
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    > As in you were in that very thread? Looks like it. https://old.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/11vw6qp/posting_aiwritten_content_will_result_in_a/jcv8h9o/ https://old.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/11vw6qp/post...
    - circuit10 3y ago
      Yes, that’s me!
- godelski 3y ago
function_seven 3y ago
> usernames are a big tell, a lot of them seem to be relying on the same script to generate usernames Regarding this, I also noticed a pattern in usernames once, but realized that Reddit itself generates these usernames for new users, who often just accept it because they don’t care about their nicks. So usernames like Green-Biscuit398 are often real users! I don’t know if that’s the pattern you’re referring to. But for me it makes it even harder to make any claims about the user from the obvious artificial name.
- waboremo 3y ago
  Yeah Reddit autogenerates names now, somehow they thought signing up for an account was too difficult and wanted to make it easier. That policy is why a lot of posts on the linked subs try to avoid purely going off username unless there's another larger pattern linking them such as all of them repeating the same comment, or sharing the same link across subs in short time. Ignoring the scripts that generate names like elizabeth99057524 that exceed Reddit's username pattern (which seems to limit itself to two words, optional symbol dividers, 2-4 digits, and properly capitalized). One of the more odd patterns, is dormant/hacked/purchased accounts. Reddit has a somewhat aggressive commenting policy for new accounts and the community at large seems to treat them differently - so you'll see in those bot tracking subs that a lot of accounts highlighted aren't new but quite old and were likely purchased or hacked. I suppose someone sees value in doing so, and I guess with enough of them purchased you can plant enough votes to encourage Reddit to do the rest (ie upvote a thread enough to get it to the front page of the sub, but not enough to alert people, letting actual users mindlessly upvote it as well).

circuit10 3y ago

I was one of the people who said that using AI detection is a bad idea on that last link. Really, those AI detection tools are extremely unreliable and it’s a bad idea to use them for anything import like moderation decisions. I’m not against trying to stop bots or anything but doing it in a way that will harm real users more than bots is a bad idea

waboremo 3y ago
As in you were in that very thread? Cool coincidence if so! But yeah generally I agree about the tooling, they're relying on methods that seem to be even more superficial and random than username pattern matching, and we really should be turning to the likes of Bard and OpenAI to instead implement solutions to make that easier.
- LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
  Embeddings are great for this, capture all posts by all people in the sub and embed them, then cluster users by their overall position and the distances between their posts, etc, to profile them ideologically and single-issue wise, and then graph the links between similarly located users. Do they post in a web, or a tag-team way that differentiates them from other users? And then also color these by the average response time, etc. But don't rely on these types metrics because they're the easiest to avoid by simply delaying responses based on their length and complexity, plus a random discovery time, plus a time-of-day dependent offset. And then, potentially just issue warnings. "You've been detected participating in a brigading fashion, and bot or not, may be banned if this continues" and see what changes.
  - kranke155 3y ago
    How can you do this on Reddit ?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  > As in you were in that very thread? Looks like it. https://old.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/11vw6qp/posting_aiwritten_content_will_result_in_a/jcv8h9o/ https://old.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/11vw6qp/post...
  - circuit10 3y ago
    Yes, that’s me!
godelski 3y ago

function_seven 3y ago

> usernames are a big tell, a lot of them seem to be relying on the same script to generate usernames Regarding this, I also noticed a pattern in usernames once, but realized that Reddit itself generates these usernames for new users, who often just accept it because they don’t care about their nicks. So usernames like Green-Biscuit398 are often real users! I don’t know if that’s the pattern you’re referring to. But for me it makes it even harder to make any claims about the user from the obvious artificial name.

waboremo 3y ago
Yeah Reddit autogenerates names now, somehow they thought signing up for an account was too difficult and wanted to make it easier. That policy is why a lot of posts on the linked subs try to avoid purely going off username unless there's another larger pattern linking them such as all of them repeating the same comment, or sharing the same link across subs in short time. Ignoring the scripts that generate names like elizabeth99057524 that exceed Reddit's username pattern (which seems to limit itself to two words, optional symbol dividers, 2-4 digits, and properly capitalized). One of the more odd patterns, is dormant/hacked/purchased accounts. Reddit has a somewhat aggressive commenting policy for new accounts and the community at large seems to treat them differently - so you'll see in those bot tracking subs that a lot of accounts highlighted aren't new but quite old and were likely purchased or hacked. I suppose someone sees value in doing so, and I guess with enough of them purchased you can plant enough votes to encourage Reddit to do the rest (ie upvote a thread enough to get it to the front page of the sub, but not enough to alert people, letting actual users mindlessly upvote it as well).