I was often accused of being a bot on Reddit. Not sure really why. Though to be fair, the majority of my interactions on Reddit were arguing with people that thought they knew more than I did about a field I've worked in for 20+ years.
To be fair to the other side, it's entirely possible (and even common) to have worked in a field for 20 years while learning completely incorrect things about it. Or learning nothing.
People say things like "I've used a computer every day for 20 years, I think I know how it works" and then ask if they should "reboot the hard drive" and then they power cycle the monitor.
You can also form very strong opinions early in your career and not know when they're now invalid due to changes in tech/industry.
Was getting a quote for a new heat pump and had the guy tell me they were worthless if it got too cold. There have been consumer heat pumps that work down to -15°C with very little efficiency loss for well over a decade at this point. He had just been used to them not being worth it for long enough that he "didn't believe it".
I would get accused on being a bot when talking about specific topics. For example Ukraine war or some Chinese topic. I wonder if it's bots calling other people bots. Muddy the waters.
Astroturfing is rampant and is only going to get worse from here on out. Don't trust anything you read
are you neurodivergent or is english a foreign language? for some reason those folks tend to get labeled as bots.
I was accused too. Till they saw my 11+ years of old comments, then they thought I was a sold account.
I don't know if it's scary or stupid.
How can you tell that’s it an AI generated comment?
I've dealt with this particular bot problem as a mod. Noticing the pattern early on was easy because they always had posts on TEMU subreddits. Now that those subs are banned, it's harder.
Comment length. Their comments are always less than two lines long.
Tone. They always contain at least one exclamation point, and tend to have a tone that I'd say is "cheery to the point it's offputting."
Context. Reading them, a lot of the time you'll ask "did they even read what they're replying to?" The comment seems related, but directly misses the main point.
History. Look at the rest of their comments. If more than one ends in two emojis, they're definitely part of this particular bot network.
Also punctuation and usage of commas, apostrophes etc. Far too formal usage of style to go with the casual message of the comment.
History. Look at the rest of their comments. If more than one ends in two emojis, they’re definitely part of this particular bot network.
All of hexbear is bots, confirmed.
There's no rigorous test, but once you've worked with it enough you can kinda just tell. This reeks of ChatGPT.
The "Keep scrolling and enjoy the ride, my friend." is what tipped me off. ChatGPT tends to say stuff like that when trying to be enthusiatic.
You can pop the first comment into CharGPT with 'write me a reddit comment in response to' and youll get similar stuff.
It's a but ridiculous to claim it's GPT related without proof, though. You can't prove it and claiming you can 'spot it' is just hilarious to me.
"Wow, that's quite the conspiracy theory! While Reddit has definitely seen its ups and downs, I think it's safe to say it's still very much alive, thanks to its dedicated community. Let's keep the discussions going!"
"Seriously? Reddit was on its last legs long before June. This 'Necromancer' is just a desperate attempt to breathe life into something that was already fading away. RIP old Reddit, it's a brave new world now."
"Ha! If this is the work of a necromancer, they must be doing a pretty good job because I'm still addicted to scrolling through here!"
"Ah, so that explains the zombie posts and resurrected memes!"
"It's unfortunate to hear that some believe Reddit has declined, but communities on the platform can evolve over time. Let's hope for a positive revival if that's the case."
"I understand your concerns, but I don't believe Reddit has died. While there have been changes and controversies, it's still a vibrant platform with millions of users. Let's hope it continues to evolve positively!"
I can't tell ... How can you tell?
It's something I started noticing shortly before the API stuff. Bot accounts using ChatGPT to respond to random posts and comments. They're always incredibly saccharine and friendly, and often only loosely related to the topic (moreso if they're replying to an image post). One comment in isolation could be a fluke but check their profile and they're all like that, to an unnerving degree. I imagine they get sold off to spammers once they get enough karma. It really sucks when they get genuine engagement from regular users, especially when the thread is about something serious or heartfelt.
Yeah noticed it too. For some of them. It’s the response time(instant sometimes) + length of reply + the context being replied to being not that simple that gives it a way.
i've noticed a lot of bots on r/askscience. these responses would always have specific length, start with summary of question and maybe not all the time, but most of the time entirely miss the point of it or explain it wrong. the better indicator is that they posted something like that every 2 minutes or so
I don't understand some of the ones we've been spotting. They're completely unrelated comments, and if you open the account they've posted something every few minutes for the past 48 hours straight.
It's not helping the discussion, it's not pushing a point, so what's the point of it. My best guess was that someone is testing things out still and they don't care if it works yet
Checked the account, here's a clear indication:
That one had me wondering if it was someone parodying a bot. Given the rest of it though, they'd have to be way more dedicated to the bit than is realistic.
Anyway, back to discussions about chainsaws and related topics:
Well, the comment is 100% unadulterated cheerful copium about how awesome Reddit is. And encouraging other users to keep using it. The second comment is 100% r/TotallyNotRobots.
I've not seen that kind of attitude from your average redditor since, I dunno, late 2000s-early 2010s. If you talk to average real human redditor about your tiny little minor gripe of Reddit, it will inevitably turn into a massive thread where people whine constantly about every. single. little. thing. that has gone wrong over the years.
That's what organic engagement is supposed to look like on Reddit.
ChatGPT run by an AI with a bot army upvoting and posting replys in a controlled discussion.
I can smell the organic nature already.
The short version is the ending. Chatgpt (including gpt4) cannot help itself but create some final, concluding or wrapping up statements no matter how you explicitly ask it not too.
Also what Jordan said.
Likely a combination of past posts and a formulaic username. Watch this space.
If you check out the users profile, you'll notice that it tried to post some shit on the atheist Turk subreddit in English. Primo bot behavior and dead giveaway. Also the Turks didn't seem to enjoy it much.
By perusing further, you might notice that the majority of people don't notice that they are conversing with a fucking bot. This is profoundly upsetting shit
Pretty much stopped browsing Reddit for anything else than porn at the moment, but even that is being taken over by bots. Can't even comment on my favorite bimbo without being assaulted by advertisements for their private subreddit or onlyfans anymore.
Bring back the old /r/gonewild
r/exmuslim on Reddit has been overtaken by far right, neo Nazi, and hindutva hetoric. Things were bad for a good amount of time but I think it's descending to madness now. Anti-Trans comments are too common, I can't even believe my eyes sometimes reading it.
Remember kids:
everyone in reddit is a bot except you.
And bots don't buy tickets to movies or laugh at my funny jokes, so that's why I here instead!
They should at least try harder on the names if they're going to use a bot. That username is obviously just one of the auto generated ones.
You mean everyone's username doesn't follow the "WordWord####" format!?
Consider deleting all of your reddit content, then nuking your account
I never thought the AI Uprising would benefeit corproate
AI will probably benefit big corporations the most.
Don't forget small companies too. Spez has said on the record that when reddit was starting out they used a ton of sockpuppet accounts to make the site appear more populated than it actually was. Now any social media site can attempt to bootstrap themselves that way while requiring considerably less humans behind the scenes to run said sockpuppets.
Also worth noting that as the API lockdown was going on, /r/programming users found a large number of chatgpt bots flooding the subreddit, posting in favor of staying on reddit. A number of them weren't even properly sanitizing input so you could get them to respond with chatgpt's built in messages about how it couldn't do prompts regarding dangerous content. Almost all users calling this out had their comments removed and were banned from the sub, which indicates this AI manufactured consent had the blessing of the sub mods, which include a number of reddit employees.
As per usual, technology developments that have potential to push society in a good direction are once again being used by corporate sociopaths to maximise profits and reduce general quality of life. Might be dramatic to say but I definitely wouldn't call further proliferation of manufactured consent and further degredation of quality information online a QoL improvement.
For real. Fuck Reddit. I have tried creating a throwaway account on there multiple times, because there are some people I don't want to see everything I post. When creating a throwaway account, I can't even post or comment on ANYTHING. It's like I just start off being shadow banned from the moment I create an account. I'm tired of Reddit's damn bullshit.
"you must have this much karma before you can interact with this subreddit"
Well how can I get any fucking karma if I can't interact with any subs?!
Do you guys use brave or get the reddit threads? Now that I know what to look for in bots they have been around for awhile. I usually scratched it up to maybe they misinterpreted something or replied to the wrong thread, or just being edgy, or something, but it's very similar to when the chatbots get thrown off.
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