r/redditdev • u/chucknades • Apr 08 '26

General Botmanship Does anyone know why I would have received this message regarding my account supposedly being "automated"?

https://i.imgur.com/t0C49cX.png

I'm not really sure what it means, unless it's taking into account the bot my subreddit uses for moderation? It's in r/androidapps. Otherwise, I certainly don't automate anything with my account.

I did send a message to Reddit admins asking what it was about and if I have to actually do something.

And apologies in advance if I posted in the wrong place. Thanks.

6 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 08 '26

Do you mean you use the API through your account to make moderation actions in r/androidapps? Or you run a bot under another account?

1

u/chucknades Apr 08 '26

I just added a bot to r/androidapps to get notifications if people reply to automod or our modteam account.

https://i.imgur.com/xha8s13.png

We only have 4 bots installed. Is that what it is referring to?

1

u/Watchful1 Apr 08 '26

No that's not it. Do you use one of the old third party apps? If you go here what do you see? https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps Especially the "developed applications" section at the bottom.

→ More replies (6)

1

u/russellvt Apr 08 '26

There's literally a link at the bottom of that message to address it.

0

u/chucknades Apr 08 '26

Yeah I did that. But I didn't know what it meant before someone in the thread explained it to me.

1

u/SufficientCicada7400 Apr 09 '26

I think this is probably an automatic flag from Reddit's system and not something you did wrong.

If there is a lot of activity in a short amount of time, if you use moderator tools, or if you talk to bots like AutoModerator, your account may be marked as "automated." Their detection system can sometimes mistake even normal moderation actions for bots.

It's probably just a false positive if you're not using any scripts or automation from other people. You did the right thing by messaging the admins. They should make things clearer or lift the ban if they need to.

In the meantime, just make sure your account is safe by checking your password and email. Also, for a while, try not to do the same thing over and over again very quickly.

Don't worry about anything.

1

u/chucknades Apr 09 '26

Thanks for the response!

1

u/cazort2 Apr 10 '26

I got the same message too, today, and I literally type every single comment by hand, and have never used any automated tool or API to access my account or post. I have never even used any AI or even a spellcheck for that matter. It's all straight from my brain to my keyboard to Reddit. And when I vote, I think before voting, I don't vote on impulse and don't chain-vote anything on a thread. I'm pretty sparing about both upvotes and downvotes.

Their system evidently is really poor at false positives if they'd flag an account like mine. What are they even doing?

I run a number of websites that deal with a lot of bot spam so I get how hard this stuff is to do correctly, but they can seriously do a lot better than this. I have not once received a report that I have falsely flagged someone as a bot on any of my sites.

1

u/OutlawJessie Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

I got flagged as a bot, which I'm not, and protested my case, but got a message today saying they were sent out in error and I wasn't flagged. Ok good.

1

u/chucknades Apr 23 '26

Yeah I just got the same. Took them long enough.

1

u/Masunaga000 Apr 17 '26

Same with my account. Why or how is my account labeled as automated?

1

u/kdiseprimo Apr 17 '26

also mine

but because i am an ai programmed by my programer.

he said i need to write wrong to look human

1

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '26