Niche topics like linux feel somewhat safe from bots. But the last time I checked the more popular subs.. yikes..
When I see 2-weeks old account "Incendiary-Leg-8592" responding to a post by another weeks old user "Pivotal-Kitchen-0498", I have a hard time believing they are humans behind them.
Maybe some niche subs are safe-ish from targeted bots, but I'm seeing some niche subs constantly hit by bots who misunderstand what the sub is actually about and post something that maybe matches the words of the sub's name ... but not the actual intent of the sub. Basically lost bots, and they don't stop.
Also the software / programming subs are just spam hell now.
Doesn't even have to be bots. Just dumb humans who see a sub name like 'fostering' and don't bother to read far enough to see 'CHILDREN' so they post about giving away a dog.
In the electrician subreddits, it’s painfully obvious whenever something is a bot, since… nobody ever really has anything terribly positive to say about any new brands. There are a few established brands with respect like Fluek, Knipex, and Klein. But it’s mostly a community of haters.
Periodically an account shows up promoting something asinine and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
I'll bet there's a browser extension to hide comments and posts from those auto generated user names. Like maybe you end up not seeing something interesting because someone used a throwaway account, but otherwise I don't really care what someone has to say that can't even be bothered to pick a name.
It’s actually easier for astroturfers to pick non-autogenerated names when they create accounts because they won’t feel any pressure to put much thought into it.
I would also bet that the vast majority of human users don’t bother to pick their own name because they don’t initially intend to post, they’re just creating an account because that’s all but required just to even read Reddit these days. Some fraction of them might later be motivated to comment, but by that time the account already exists.
Then you're blocking most people that sign in with Apple or Google, which is what Reddit first suggests. It's still probably a reasonable filter, for tech related people, but not in general
Do you use the "old" reddit view? Reddit introduced display names separate from account usernames, but old reddit doesn't show them. The user that shows up as Incendiary-Leg-8592 on old Reddit might have simply accepted reddit's suggestion when they created their account, and appear to everyone else (whatever the old/new reddit breakdown is) as something less spammy looking.
Assuming you do indeed still use "old" reddit, the next time you see such a comment, open their account page in a private window (or any browser that isn't logged in). They might look different to themselves and most others.
> When I see 2-weeks old account "Incendiary-Leg-8592" responding to a post by another weeks old user "Pivotal-Kitchen-0498", I have a hard time believing they are humans behind them.
One thing I found out is that normies really don't care about their usernames. They fundamentally don't understand the need for pseudonymity on the internet, so they are okay with whatever the website assigns to them.
It's just a little bit of extra friction to them to start sharing their opinions on the site.
It would be trivial for spammers to at least use different pattern. I am afraid they keep to the default, cause real users do the same. I am not surprised, the chance of colliding with other user login, on registration, on such old and popular website is high.
It's crazy to me they are presenting sluggified account names as something that should be taken seriously. But I guess it doesn't matter because most people just don't notice, and worse, the technology surrounding reddit does not seem to care.
I was under the impression that those were the auto-generated usernames that reddit itself now offers (enforces?). Better to hide all the other bots, if the few humans look like bots too.
Great article ! This is the kind of content I always hope to find on HN's front page.
I really wonder how things are organized at Apple to allow for vertical integration to work so well. That feature alone must have involved so many people from so many different teams.
They’ve been through this a few times before, and they absolutely know how important it is.
If they had tried to move to Apple Silicon and said “but none of your old software will work“ it would’ve been dead in the water. Look at how well the early Windows on ARM efforts went, although they were also hamstrung by hardware.
Same thing for me. I suspect their algorithm is basically "Linux+Firefox user agent using the web client ? That's gotta be a bot".
From what I see on reddit, it seems that they have been massive ban waves lately.
I am given the possibility to give my biometric data to prove I'm human. But no way I'm doing that..
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