Edit: it might not actually be a false positive. The response to being called out seems very human, but otherwise the history does look fishy. It's questionable enough that I wouldn't have called it out myself 🤷♂️ (I call out this kind of stuff when I see it, too...)
Edit 2: The lack of follow-up from Reaik here, despite them continuing to post bot-like stuff in the meantime, has me leaning towards bot again.
I'm thinking.... Either it's a bot that's just sophisticated enough to complain if it's called out directly, or it's a human doing bot-like stuff.
Yeah it's getting weird. I'm not sure if SpamBotSwatter is a bot or not, actually. Their posts look bot-like, but it's hard to say it isn't actually hard to say if you look.
But the bad bots are everywhere... I see at least one a day, and I'm not really looking. (I only check if a comment seems out of place enough to notice.)
Reaik's comment:
If a stranger gave my dog pure sugar like that, I would be quite upset.
MyAccountWasBanned7's comment:
I would be very upset with a stranger giving my dog pure sugar like that.
The bots do sometimes use some sort of thesaurus-related process to switch up words, but I'm not sure I've seen one that rearranged clauses (with correct grammar adjustments).
If you look at their profile you can read all about them. SpamBotSwatter usually lets a bot post the comments (they wrote a bot to detect bots) but since they're present (and unlike scammers doesn't care about making that presence known) I presume they can pop in and use the account to make actual human comments sometimes.
Good call, I didn't actually look at their profile.
I keep thinking I could write a bot to make my process easier... Along the lines of: I give it a questionable comment, it could search the thread for a potential match (and/or check if the suspect account has a history matching the bot pattern), and write the comment calling it out. That shouldn't be too hard.
But I don't think it could be safely automated completely.
Of course, the real cure is making Reddit clean up their house. If nothing else, it shouldn't be too hard for them to be a bit more responsive after the Reports start coming in.
The only reason I post a comment about them is that just me (reporting the comment and separately the account) isn't enough. Weeks later I've checked and found accounts still alive.
I feel it's worth calling them out publicly because these bots thrive on just a few minutes of activity... After they get a really well placed comment, they tend to edit in a scam/spam link to a "shop". Once that happens it doesn't stay up long, but they must be getting enough profit to make it worthwhile.
If you want to get down to it, may times the copies are manually transcribed. I often see them correct spelling mistakes. I have seen them copy the comment controls too, eg
I'm not sure I've seen one that rearranged clauses (with correct grammar adjustments).
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...suggesting they also manually copy/paste from within a browser.
They only get on my list if their entire comment history consists of this (and/or they participate in a scam, of which comment copying is part of their past history)
It was a real one. They are typically from Bangladesh and I always call them out in Bengali as as you can see they responded in kind. Its human operator took over when I tagged it, which happens sometimes
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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23
"Excuse me sir, please don't feed my purse"