• Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s not even new tho. At least in the sub I was the most active in, you couldn’t go a week without some sort of repost bot grabbing memes, text posts, art or even entire guides from the “top of all time” queue, reposting it as alleged OC, and another bot reposting the top comment to double dip on Karma. If you knew what to look for, the bots were blatantly obvious, but more often than not they still managed to get a hefty amount of traction (tens of thousands of upvotes, dozens of awards, hundreds of comments) before the submissions were removed.

    … and just because the submissions were removed and the bots kicked out of the sub, did that not automatically mean that the bots were always also suspended or the accounts disabled. They just continued their scheme elsewhere.

    • B21@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The bots and reddit inaction towards them made me stop using reddit. The UAE is using Reddit to spread its propaganda and I reported the accounts several times and no action was ever taken. You can even visit the sub uae_Achievements to see the bots in action.

    • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      They’ve even gotten to the point where they’ll steal portions of comments so it’s not as obvious.

      I called out tons of ‘users’ because it’s obvious when you see them post part of a comment you just read, then check their profile and ctrl-f each thread they posted 8n and you can find the original. Its so tiring…

      • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Its so tiring…

        Completely agreed. Especially if you have to explain / defend yourself calling them out. It has happened way too often for my liking, that I called out repost bots or scammers and then regular unsuspecting users were all like “whoa buddy, that’s a harsh accusation, why would you think that’s a bot/scam? Have you actually clicked that link yet? Maybe it’s legit and you’re just overreacting!”

        Of course I still always explained why (even had a copypasta ready for that) but sometimes it just felt exhausting in the same way as trying to make my cat understand that he’s not supposed to eat the cactus. Yes it will hurt if you bite it. No I don’t need to bite the cactus myself in order to know that. No I’m not ‘overreacting’, I’m just trying to make you not hurt yourself. sigh

        (Weird example but I hope you get what I mean)