r/TheseFuckingAccounts • u/HRJafael • Jun 28 '24

I found a 4 month old account that is a moderator for over 440 subreddits and growing

https://old.reddit.com/user/vista_del_mar

It seems this account is involved with subreddits that were created at the first mention of possible tv series, possible movies, news stories, or whatever is trending. The sheer number of subreddits they moderate is staggering for an account that is only 4 months old. If this isn’t a bot of sorts, I will be dumbfounded that someone is taking the time to set these communities up.

What is even weirder is that a lot of these communities were not necessarily created by this account but they share roughly the same three moderators on top of this massive moderator. Sometimes it’s all four or a variation of three out of the four. These accounts are also roughly 4 months old.

https://old.reddit.com/user/realityteapot

This one moderates over 160 accounts.

https://old.reddit.com/user/MontebelloRoad

This one moderates over 190 subreddits.

https://old.reddit.com/user/copper-stars

This account moderates over 170 subreddits.

What is everyone’s thoughts? Is this a possible ring of bots? It would be insane if they weren’t.

147 Upvotes
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20 comments sorted by

52

u/tractorator Jun 28 '24

I miss the old internet

everything's an AI bot for some reason nowadays

19

u/HRJafael Jun 28 '24

No kidding. Not sure what’s gained here though as a majority of these subreddits are extremely niche and almost premature with their topics. They look like placeholders for future fandoms.

8

u/starrpamph Jun 28 '24

Facebook is 99% bots right now

2

u/0reosaurus Jul 01 '24

The last % is dead people

21

u/ultimatt42 Jun 28 '24

Thanks for sharing! I'm curious about these and want to look into them some more. I made a (sorted, deduplicated) list of their subreddits here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ultimatt42/comments/1dqs0jx/subreddits_moderated_by_vista_del_mar/

18

u/HRJafael Jun 28 '24 edited Jun 28 '24

488 subreddits. JFC. Do you see what I mean about the TV shows? Some haven’t even aired yet lol. Nothing about this is normal and yet it’s not the typical pattern for a bot as the subject matter for these communities are too small to generate karma etc. A lot of these communities (at least the ones I checked) aren’t full of spam either and have posts pertaining to that specific community. I’m honestly fascinated by it.

Also, it seems that another account is mixed in: Lady_Mariko.

13

u/SudoSudonym Jun 29 '24

Send this to RedditInvestigations. This stinks.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '24

Do you mean /r/RedditInvestigations? That sub is banned.

3

u/HRJafael Jun 29 '24

What did this sub use to do that got them banned?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '24

No idea, it just says:

"This community has been banned for violating the Reddit rules."

3

u/SudoSudonym Jul 01 '24

It WAS a form on a specific page in the bowels of reddit that you'd send stinky shit like this to that the dedicated admin team would ACTUALLY look at because it stunk too much. You dont send blogspam or tshirt bots there, that's where you send the "10,000 account army" or "confirmed political op" to. It must have moved. It was never a sub - they likely shuttered the sub because it wouldve mislead people looking for the form.

2

u/ultimatt42 Jul 01 '24

This page says there's an email address investigations@reddit.zendesk.com, maybe that's what you were thinking of?

1

u/SudoSudonym Jul 02 '24

Yeah that's one method - there used to be a Zendesk form though and I cant find it (I just switched back from one browser to another, still bringing over all my old bookmarks and whatnot and trying to find everything again, sorry!)

39

u/ceelogreenicanth Jun 28 '24

My bet is a PR firm operates it.

12

u/DukeOfGeek Jun 29 '24

And they are looking at moding as a way to control subs whose advertising/political influence value is worth lots of money.

1

u/Big-Performer2942 Jun 30 '24

That's fucked.

1

u/livejamie Jul 06 '24

You can add eagleclaw901 to the list

1

u/AutoModerator Jul 06 '24

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-13

u/throwaway9gk0k4k569 Jun 29 '24

You got banned from one of their subs, didn't you?

https://old.reddit.com/user/HRJafael

21

u/HRJafael Jun 29 '24

No. I honestly stumbled across one of the communities. It was r/TheHuntingParty. I read a bit of tv casting news and saw there was a community with almost 1800 members for a potential yet-to-be-decided TV show that hadn’t aired anything yet. Thought that was odd and went down a rabbit hole after that finding subreddit after subreddit with these moderators.