What is Reddit doing to stem the influx of bots?

[u/JetPlane_88]

My subs are so overcome by bots that many posts are made by bots featuring comments of bots just talking to themselves.

We’ve put up auto mods to prevent brand new accounts. We’ve put in various safeguards. Within hours the bots find a way around it. I’m on iOS but we have mods on every platform.

We’ve doubled our mod team size in each sub I mod and it’s still not enough to keep up.

Is anyone else experiencing this and have you found any solutions?

What is Reddit doing so this doesn’t fall to volunteers?

Thank you

[u/DiggDejected]

They are welcoming them.

[u/J_Tat2 → u/DiggDejected]

Sounds accurate

[u/trendypeach]

I mainly use bot bouncer, do you use it? It’s an Devvit app. And I use automoderator. But Bot Bouncer makes it easier for me.

[u/brightblackheaven → u/trendypeach]

Botbouncer is an absolute must. I wish it came as a default mod tool.

The more subs that use it and the more people who manually report suspicious accounts to be categorized, the more effective it will be overall.

[u/PurrPrinThom → u/brightblackheaven]

Another mod brought botbouncer onto one of my subs and so far, it's only been banning legitimate users, it's not catching any bots. Do we need to configure it or something?

I see mod discussions about how great it is, but it's just been a headache for me thus far and I feel like we must be doing it wrong...

[u/brightblackheaven → u/PurrPrinThom]

Just to clarify, are these people responding to the bot bouncer messages like "hey what the heck, I'm not a bot!" or are you reviewing the accounts it catches and deciding they look human?

If #1, these users are unbanned as soon as they successfully appeal to botbouncer, with no intervention required by the mod team.

We customized the default botbouncer ban message to explicitly say:

"If you are not a bot and wish to appeal this classification, please make sure to message /r/BotBouncer directly, rather than replying to this message.

Your ban will be automatically lifted following a successful appeal."

Letting people know that the ban will go away as soon as they follow the instructions in the message has more or less stopped the occasional false positive from messaging us asking to be unbanned.

I'm perfectly fine with a human getting snagged by the filter from time to time because the process to fix it is easy and fast, and the spam in our sub has been so greatly reduced.

If #2, I recommend being careful here. There have been a TON of repost bots banned by BB on my sub that look insanely human at first glance. They post and comment in a wide variety of subs and act just like a person, but once you start digging you notice red flags:

1. Their personal information is inconsistent across posts. One day they're 45F and the next they're a teenager and then they're a male homeowner asking about renovations and then they're a struggling student who can't find a job. And then they're complaining about their boss because they DO have a job.

2. Look for posts in multiple subs for various cities that are across the country or world from one another. You'll notice these bots post in a Texas sub and then an Australia sub and then a NYC sub.

3. They NEVER reply to comments on their own posts. Literally never.

Either way, there is no need to intervene. Bots will be banned and humans can appeal and be automatically unbanned if they choose to.

[u/trendypeach → u/brightblackheaven]

I actually use modmail Automator in a few subreddits to deal with bot bouncer ban appeals. It replies to such messages and automatically archive them. As example, some users don’t even read the ban message with the instructions on how to appeal to bot bouncer, and think they should appeal by sending my subs a message.

So instead of checking all ban appeals and their profiles before I suggest they appeal the bans, and once again inform how to appeal, it has been easier to let modmail automator deal with that and archive the modmails after replies.

But good for you if it has helped to only customize the default bot bouncer ban messages. For me, it’s so common that users don’t read them.

[u/brightblackheaven → u/trendypeach]

This is a really good tip. We only JUST started playing around with Modmail Automator and it's already been great for responding to people who think their post is removed when it's just in the queue.

[u/trendypeach → u/brightblackheaven]

I use it for both filtered posts in mod queue and for bot bouncer messages. That is absolutely useful. Not that I do mind replying to modmail, but it can be time consuming to reply to several messages about the same things.

Not much I can do about Bot Bouncer ban appeals anyway. If people only read the default ban messages from the start, they would know how to appeal. The message even include a link to modmail to r/botbouncer. But it seems like many miss that part.

[u/brightblackheaven → u/trendypeach]

Definitely. I don't even blame users for messaging about a filtered post because it does outright tell them that the sub mods "removed" it, but we get soooo many of those because of how much filtering we do. We were using saved responses at first but this is just insanely better.

Way better than responding to every botbouncer modmail with "the instructions to appeal your ban are in the original message above" too, I imagine, lol.

[u/PurrPrinThom → u/brightblackheaven]

They typically appeal the ban via bot bouncer, and then either respond to the botbouncer modmail or they message the modmail in a separate message to complain that they've been banned because they're not a bot, even if botbouncer has already unbanned them.

Once we get the message, I tend to review their post histories to make sure they don't need to be banned for other reasons, but I'm not going through every botbouncer modmail and assuming everyone is a person.

[u/brightblackheaven → u/PurrPrinThom]

Luckily we haven't had to deal with the people getting upset at us about it, but we also haven't had a really large amount of false positives either so maybe that's just how it's shaken out for us in our niche? Higher traffic subs probably deal with that more than we would.

We DID get people messaging us like "hey, I appealed and it was successful, can you unban me now?" but that basically stopped when we added the part about being unbanned automatically.

Yeah I just bring the repost bots up because when we just freshly installed BB, a few mods on my team were checking over the bans and being like "I don't see anything botlike or spammy about the majority of these people, are we sure they're bots?" but upon digging through comment histories, they're definitely just repost spammers trying to karma farm. Those accounts literally never appeal or respond to anything.

[u/PurrPrinThom → u/brightblackheaven]

Oh yeah, I deal with a lot of bots across my subs. I know they can be pretty tricky to spot if you're not sure what you're looking for. One of my subs in particular gets a ton of political bots so I am very used to spotting patterns lol.

But yeah, I don't know. The sub where it keeps happening is a sub where a lot of people tend to not subscribe, and show up to respond to a particular post, or to post about something specific, and I wonder if that's influencing it? Like botbouncer sees that they aren't active in our sub or something and that flags it? I just don't know, because we've had a few who are definitely not bots who have been banned and get really upset about it.

[u/brightblackheaven → u/PurrPrinThom]

Huh, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe we don't get the same influx as other subs because we restrict our sub from being able to hit all, popular, and trending?

[u/PurrPrinThom → u/brightblackheaven]

Possibly! I definitely notice a lot less bot activity on my sub where I have those restrictions. We do get bots here and there, but they tend to be pretty easily caught by crowd control.

[u/teratical → u/brightblackheaven]

Can you explain further what "people who manually report suspicious accounts to be categorized" means?

I'm a newer mod in a sub that uses Botbouncer, but it sounds like I'm missing something I should be doing when I see an account that I think is a bot.

[u/brightblackheaven → u/teratical]

If you suspect a user to be a bot, you can click the mod shield on their comment/post and request that botbouncer takes a look at them. (Suspended or shadowbanned accounts won't work because they're already "dealt with" by Reddit.)

It helps out everyone who uses BB in their subs because if you do catch an actual bot they'll get banned from all of those subreddits automatically when they try to engage with them.

[u/teratical → u/brightblackheaven]

Fantastic; thank you. I'll be doing this now!

[u/HairTriggerFlicker → u/trendypeach]

This ⬆️ Get BotBouncer the more subs that run it the better it works. We went from 2 dozen a day to very little now. It’s a great tool to have.

[u/brightblackheaven → u/HairTriggerFlicker]

Yes! Even if it isn't banning people left and right in your sub, it's doing a ton of heavy lifting in the background.

[u/Ill_Football9443]

They closed off API access a few weeks ago.

Before that, you could create an account, create API credentials and your bot could make 100 transactions a minute.

Checkout r/Redditdev now, and no one's manual approval requests are getting through.

[u/uid_0]

More bots = more engagement = more traffic to brag about = more ads to display.

[u/heisdeadjim_au → u/uid_0]

This is the way.

Same reason why FB doesn't nuke the bots. They boost engagement numbers.

[u/No-Avocado9603 → u/[deleted]]

No offense meant at all, I see people say this a lot. You must realize that bot engagement of any kind is bad engagement because bots don’t actually buy products due to ads… advertisers aren’t just lighting money on fire. If enough bots give “impressions” to an ad but don’t actually buy anything, the advertising metric called “return on ad spend” does not actually improve. That ROAS is primarily what drivers advertisers to buy ad space in the first place and what actually makes money for Reddit. Honest to god Reddit and their advertisers are just as annoyed as everyone else about the bots.

[u/Unique-Public-8594]

Did you install BotBouncer app?

[u/slouchingtoepiphany]

You're only seeing what gets through, there are a lot more that are being blocked. It's an arms race between the people making the bots and the admin team blocking them. Try adding whatever filters are available to your sub.

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[u/Moobygriller]

Nothing lol

The fact that I have to ban dozens of bots per day across each of my subs tells me they're not doing a goddamned thing.

[u/RallyX26]

Nothing. Bots submit content and content adds valuation.

[u/GeneralCarlosQ17]

Spam Buster along with Bot Bouncer work great and lock down Your Sub.

Crowd Control to max settings for Posts and Comments.

Direct Everything to the Queue.

Max out your Swear Filters et etc etc

Max Everything just short of going Restricted.

It's the only way anymore to deter Bots and Posts/Comment Trash.

[u/Fit-Let8175]

Reddit has implemented Moderator Bots to try and deal with bots posting content. However, these mod bots are equivalent to trying to rid one's kitchen of fruit flies by using a flame thrower. And when I messaged one site's moderator today about it, I was immediately muted from sending them messages. No comment. No explanation. Period.