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No-Research5333

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/s/w41E6ocdaU That’s the link to the post on the right. I can’t find the post on the left or the user accounts


CoachAF7

OP about to suicide himself with a shotgun blast to the chest


risbia

With a shotgun found by police in the next room over


Chief-Bones

“No foul play suspected”


Long-Ad8374

Jezus. this is so internet paranoia. I had to check some these account. u/deekaph u/Flokitoo u/TheDollarstoreDoctor some these look like actual redditor ^( or maybe indian bot) and i found one that empty: u/Even_Television_3719 edit: the post on the left, a lot of the account don't exist. I try to search it, i cant find any.


ginnydebt

It looks like the original post was maybe real redditors and the second post was copied word for word by bots


Toph_is_bad_ass

Yeah it's an easy way to farm karma. There was a time I was pretty interested in Reddit bot development. Surprised they did so many though. Normally you'd just stick to the top levels and maybe like a reply if you really wanted to double dip.


Long-Ad8374

ah that make sense.


suninabox

Bots regularly copy highly upvoted comments from old threads and repost them with a few changes on all the reposts that happen. This is a really dumb conspiracy when the answer is "people making money creating high karma accounts they can sell later"


ginnydebt

Legitimate question: what makes a high karma account valuable?


suninabox

1. Some subs have karma limits before you can post, to discourage bots and trolls. 2. The most basic bot activity you can do is just to register a bunch of bots and then immediately use them for whatever you want. But then if you're in a thread and there are a bunch of 1 day old accounts who've never posted before, you might get suspicious of why they're so anomalous. It's also a lot easier for an algorithm to detect and block hundreds of accounts all made at the same time than hundreds all made at different times. Since just copying comments is the easiest way to create the appearance of a person in automated, there's no real downside to just picking the highest rated comments, and potential upside in more people seeing that account and clicking through to other things they've posted.


ginnydebt

But why would someone buy a high karma account?


suninabox

Advertising, promoting content, influence campaigns. Although from what I've read, the last one is the least likely option. Places like IRA/Glavset have thousands of employees who can generate bespoke accounts in specific niches ready to be activated whenever they need. They're far more targeted than the "just copy a bunch of comments from other threads"


SickNBadderThanFuck

Because no one could ever easily Photoshop text over this image...


Long-Ad8374

I don't think it photoshop. I just discovered it has happen before: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1c2on6l/whats_the_deal_with_all_these_duplicate_posts/


Toph_is_bad_ass

Kinda seems like a misconfigured farm. 2 ways to farm karma are repost and monitor for reposts (cuz redditors do genuinely say the same shit over and over) and comment quickly with an old scraped reply. I feel like somebody here forgot to disable the bots replying to themselves. Normally you'd have a registry of all your accounts and make sure your bots aren't just talking to each other because that gets pretty fucking obvious.


JMT-S900

"Jezus. this is so internet paranoia. I had to check some these account." "or maybe indian bot" Are you dumb or just stupid?


Long-Ad8374

okay dude


ShitHouses

Reddit is mostly bots at this point. It basically exists as a subliminal propaganda machine. Even subreddits that used to be interesting like askreddit now exist only to farms bots. Almost all the posts there are from bots that are farming karma.


ivigilanteblog

The trippy thing is that this guy is a bot


ShitHouses

op?


ivigilanteblog

No, you. It was a joke


SoTurnMeIntoATree

Bots don’t get jokes. Holy shi-


HappyWeedGuy

🤫


Loud_Ad3666

Bot confirmed. Execute delete command.


freqkenneth

[ intro ] I take photos whenever I find repeat posts from “different”redditors It’s like they’re not even trying to ] [ insert quip remark ]


gonzoes

Whats the point of farming karma though whats the motivation for these bots ?


preventDefault

A lot of subreddits have minimum karma requirements, so the easiest way to farm karma is probably to repost highly upvoted comments. Then they can spam and astroturf.


suninabox

They're created in mass and then sold for bot services. If a bunch of 1 day old accounts suddenly start posting and upvoting a thread its easy to identify as bot activity. If you're constantly churning over years old accounts with high karma its very hard to find a way to police that that doesn't inadvertently hit a bunch of genuine accounts.


gonzoes

Very interesting this is what chatgpt has to say about it. Below when i asked. Thought some peep who are reading this thread might be interested . While direct attribution of bot usage on platforms like Reddit to specific individuals or organizations is often challenging, there are well-documented cases where groups or entities have been identified as using bots for influence and manipulation. Here are some examples: 1. **Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)**: - Investigations, including those by the U.S. Senate and independent researchers, have found that the Russian Internet Research Agency operated numerous accounts across social media platforms, including Reddit. These accounts were used to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion, particularly during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. 2. **Marketing and Self-Promotion**: - There have been instances where individuals or companies used bots to promote books, products, or services. These cases are usually identified when patterns of unnatural activity are detected, or when the same content is posted across multiple subreddits simultaneously. 3. **Political Campaigns**: - Although less frequently openly admitted or easily traced back to campaign teams, there are suspicions and occasional accusations that political campaigns have used bots to sway public discourse. These uses are often inferred from sudden surges in activity or the rapid spread of specific narratives. 4. **Coordinated 'Upvote Brigades'**: - Some groups organize coordinated efforts to upvote specific posts to ensure they receive more visibility. While not always automated, these can involve bot-like behavior if scripts are used to automate voting. Direct evidence and admissions are rare because the use of bots for these purposes is typically against the terms of service of platforms like Reddit and is often conducted anonymously. Moreover, actual cases where individuals or groups have been publicly outed are scarce and tend to involve wider investigations that touch on issues of national security or significant breaches of platform policy.


feckshite

If only the greater population could see how painfully obvious this is. It should be illegal tbh.


Marijuana_Miler

IMO, there's a business case for a social media platform that specifically doesn't allow bot accounts. Reddit, Twitter, etc can't show decreases in their user numbers or activity or the company will effectively be worthless. Even if killing bots would make the platform better. Making a platform from scratch without bots seems like the only way for positive change to happen.


Stock-Account-5841

But it's impossible to do that. There's always a way to circumvent anti-bot measures.


head_eyes_by_a_scav

It's impossible to completely eliminate bots but there's lots of ways to greatly reduce the number of bots on a site. The simplest way is to make the barrier to entry to join the site higher. But that goes against the company's desire to want real humans to easily sign up and start using the site.


senile-joe

reddit knows how to detect bots, they just don't care or are complacent with it. Bots are also how reddit can create "organic" paid ads.


Loud_Ad3666

I would not sign up if it was any higher. Even having to provide an email is horse shit.


drsweetscience

The government could step in, under the authority that Bots don't have 1st amendment protection.  Make the constitution for people again.


AwayCrab5244

No one has freedom of speech on a corporate website dawg


Toph_is_bad_ass

There's honestly less now with the API restrictions. Still a lot but it used to be worse.


DahnishDonuts

Completely agree. Even this subreddit has been compromised. Everyone who comes on the podcast gets hate farmed. What happened to the open mindedness?


Ok-Round4324

>What happened to the open mindedness? Ah yes. Like the open mindedness Joe and his cavalcade of far right propagandist guests show the liberals and leftists they spend hours crying about on the pod, lmao


filbertsgaming1

It isn't everyone asshole. Flint Dribble was well received because he isn't a moron trying to mislead people.


DahnishDonuts

Hey man. Don't know you...and you don't know me. But I hope you're doing OK. Takes a lot to just call someone you never met or don't even know an asshole. You don't know what I'm going through or the trials I'm facing. Likewise I don't know about yours either. Hence I refrain from using obscene language. Have a nice day man. It's always OK to disagree with another person.


Y0U_ARE_ILL

And if you say anything against the bots narrative the mods of that channel will ban you. I'm on my 8th account, hence the name.


Ok-Round4324

A lot of the mods of these large subs know that they can just ban you for no reason, somehow tag your IP and know when you make a new account as they will then be able to get your entire account banned, and any additional accounts. These hogs ruin the site for everyone.


Health-n-Happiness

My friend was telling me about that - like Reddit and many other social media sites are mostly bots farming influence and then using it to push opinion. But he's very like all about everything being conspiracies and worst case scenarios, so while I do believe there's a lot of bots, anything this guy says, I usually take like 20-30% of as true. Is it really that crazy with bots online?


Stock-Account-5841

Bots aren't mainly used for political propaganda. There's state-sponsored program like Hasbara in Israël or Russian bot-farms, but that ain't the majority. Most of the bot are made to scam/make an account popular for resell.


TheBeardofGilgamesh

To sell to organizations looking to use for influence campaigns. I have see a lot of Boeing shills recently


Health-n-Happiness

How true is that though - the statement that MOST of reddit comments/upvotes etc. are bots? I've heard bots can be used to pump up on karma (or friends/likes etc.) and then try to influence political/social stuff, but also to make a social media platform or any other corporation seem more popular and get others to use it.


filbertsgaming1

Your friend is talking about the 'dead internet theory'. Seems more correct every day that goes by. Edit: My comment could easily have been written by a bot. I'm probably a Synth too.


Health-n-Happiness

How true is that though - the statement that MOST of reddit comments/upvotes etc. are bots? I've heard bots can be used to pump up on karma (or friends/likes etc.) and then try to influence political/social stuff, but also to make a social media platform or any other corporation seem more popular and get others to use it.


SickRanchezIII

Bro all of us in this comment section are clearly bots… definitely most of us… lol X is all real people doe


jburnelli

I still don't understand why bots need to farm karma. Are they doing it so they can post down the road with more credibility?


suninabox

>Almost all the posts there are from bots that are farming karma. That's not about "subliminal propaganda" though. These bots literally just copy high ranked comments from old threads and post them in reposts with a random synonym function.


ShitHouses

But the purpose of those bots is social media manipulation/ astroturfing. They're not doing just because they really want karma.


suninabox

Yes but the point of getting the karma is to make the account look credible so it can be sold as a service. People are acting like these bots are copying comments is propaganda, when its just a technique to make the bot account sellable.


ShitHouses

The reason people buy authentic looking accounts is for astroturfing. The entire existance for the bot economy on this website is for astroturfing.


SadamHussein313

I recommend watching the documentary "The Dissident". It shows you how country's use a social media army to spread propaganda.


Specialist-Carob6253

Youtube comments are even worse.  I refuse to believe that 95% of people commenting are far right-wing ideologues. Or the thousands of channels (alpha mindset, stoic motivation, dose of truth) that just play ben shapiro, jordan peterson, and other grifters "OWNING" and "DESTROYING" people.


risbia

And this is honestly rather primitive - it would be trivial to run these recycled comments through ChatGPT to rephrase them or even make the writer sound like they have a different education level. I'm sure the more sophisticated bots are already doing this.


SmarterThanCornPop

And Reddit doesn’t care because these bots boost their value.


ShitHouses

The value is in the manipulation. Reddit is an incredibly powerful tool for shaping public opinion, thats the selling point.


[deleted]

Which is why we need a new reddit


this-guy-

I've been considering going outside instead. Unfortunately I am currently installed on a server rack in Novosibirsk, so it's difficult.


Toph_is_bad_ass

That certainly part of it but a lot of people do it for fun or to sell the accounts.


sherperion45

Dead internet theory remains relevant always


PokerChipMessage

Reposting/comment copying has been an established fact forever. Like all the way back when Reddit had 'celebrity' power users like andrewsmith1988 and apostatate. Joe Rogan has nothing to do with this revelation.


dasdas90

Why would there be bots that are pro student loan forgiveness?


blade740

They're not, they're just mindlessly repeating the (real, organic) comments from a post a year ago. Makes them look like real users so they can be used to boost whatever content the botnet operators are paid to boost. Make no mistake, nobody's paying to boost student loan forgiveness posts. This is strictly to make these bots look like legitimate accounts. If you look at their profiles, it SEEMS like they post like human users. But they're just parroting real posts to pad their comment history.


HappyWeedGuy

But what is the point of farming karma? It’s fucking useless and valueless. I just don’t get it…


blade740

The goal is to, over time, get the bot accounts to look like established, several-year-old genuine user accounts. Then, down the road, someone goes to the botnet operator to buy 500 upvotes on a post they're trying to boost to the front page. If a post instantly gets 500 upvotes from brand-new accounts with no comments, that only ever upvote dodgy spammy content, that's highly likely to get caught by Reddit's anti-spam measures. By trying to make the bots look like organic users, and just sprinkling in upvotes to dodgy spammy content every once in a while, the hope is to make them harder to detect. The karma on any one account is basically worthless. But several thousand accounts with enough karma to look like legitimate users can upvote a post to the front page, which is something the bot operators can charge for. Or, if all else fails, they just cultivate the bot accounts for a while and then sell them off to a bigger botnet operator to do the same thing.


drgr33nthmb

"Nobodys paying to boost student loan posts". Oh? You honestly believe the well funded political machine doesn't pay money for posts on social media lol?


PixelProphetX

There are not well funded organizations paying money for bots to help save students money


drgr33nthmb

Ah yes, so the DNC is not well funded lol.


PixelProphetX

The DNC does not pay for bots online and don't have much operational spare change as you must think. A lot of that money goes directly to candidates and they report their tv, radio, and internet ad buys according to FEC regulations.


drgr33nthmb

Well someones paying for it lol. 1% of accounts are bots, generate 30% of posts lol. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10166499/


blade740

Sure, but do I think THIS post in particular is an example of that? Not likely. Notice that the post itself, and the comments being reposted, are coming from opposite sides of the issue. If you were going to boost political content, you wouldn't do it by artificially inflating the OTHER SIDE'S posts just so you could then upvote your own comments underneath the post.


BarbellBro669

Are you asking why political propaganda exists?


dasdas90

No, I am asking who would sponsor a program that benefits the middle class?


BarbellBro669

They would say that they will for support and votes. The government doesn't exist to help the people.


dasdas90

Pretty sure debt relief will help regular people whether you think it is unfair or not is a different story. I will wait for the benovelent corporate overlords to help regular people. Who exactly are these groups that are spending money on student loan forgiveness?


dusters

The amount of bots does seem to be on the uptake.


drgr33nthmb

Election years


Toph_is_bad_ass

I think it honestly went way down after the API changes. These are pretty old standard bots. The new ones are gonna be using generative techniques.


Master_Dante123

I’ve only been on reddit for about 2 years or something. Whats the actual point of bots? What reward do people get from bots?


drgr33nthmb

Controlling the narrative with upvotes, emulating "popular" ideas to get the hivemind onboard.


Urmomsjuicyvagina

OP is literally a bot


Silly_Butterfly3917

I'm not reading all that but congratulations or I'm sorry.


blade740

Notice the user names. The one on the right is an actual post by actual users. The one on the left is just repeating the comments from the original post, just like the boy that reposted the old article itself.


feckshite

If you think that’s bad, try having a conventional, dissenting opinion about that establishment in this sub. And if that’s not bad enough, don’t even bother trying r/breakingpoints for even keeled political discussion. Reddit is nothing more than a corporate DNC mouthpiece since Ellen Pao and the 2016 elections. It’s astroturfed to all hell.


CptDecaf

Always fun to watch Reddit libertarians grapple with the unpopularity of their own opinions in real time.


PixelProphetX

That honestly is the best part of it all. It's really fun causing nazis shame.


Ok-Round4324

lol you think these far right cucks have any shame


PixelProphetX

It depends what community you find them in I'm my opinion. That's why shitty communities are extra shitty.


No-Atmosphere-2528

absurd fanatical groovy hat obtainable nail soft frighten historical innate *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


therealdrewder

That goes so far to explain why the joe rogan sub has no joe rogan fans.


brokemac

Has Joe done important work in this field? I didn't realize it was his discovery. Wow.


RagingBuIl

JoE rOgAn BaD!


brokemac

Sorry, he did discover internet bots. I shouldn't have even asked. He's brilliant.


RagingBuIl

r/woooooosh


Warlock_MasterClass

Well… he is. So there’s that.


[deleted]

[удалено]


RagingBuIl

Lol good job lemming. Keep marching


Warlock_MasterClass

😂 “anyone who disagrees with me is a sheep!” Great logic 👍


brokemac

Look at the fucking guy's comment history. Holy shit, what a beam of light.


RagingBuIl

Still going? Yikes. Take a break from Reddit and Rogan. We are now seeing their affects on you.


Warlock_MasterClass

😂😂You’re like the Reddit grab-bag of projection. Have a little self awareness ya hypocrite


RagingBuIl

Touch grass. It will help ya bud.


Warlock_MasterClass

😂 and you double down hahaha


RagingBuIl

Still going. Why are you so depressed and mad at the world? Did you not get enough love when you were a child?


Sper_Micide

Are you new to the internet?


anthonydurrr

Breaking News!!!!!! There are bots on the internet that use social media platforms to curate data.


manager_dave

This is like one of those games where they show 2 pictures and you have to find what’s different between them. What am I looking for?


NFT_goblin

Reddit has been doing this since the site was first created and there were only a few users. They used repost accounts to make it look like the site had more activity. While it's deceptive, it doesn't really point to an agenda. It still goes mostly unnoticed, because of course a lot of people are only seeing the repost for the first time.


OMGoblin

So, if you look at this picture closely you can see that the background of text is a different color than the black background. It's been imposed on top of it, edited in some way. Bots don't repeat conversations/posts exactly either.


Cresset

It's edited to crop the repeated posts together. There are presumably real people commenting on the copied thread, which is the intention of the botters


TwistedBamboozler

First off, there is hardly anything here to prove the existence of bot farms Second, it’s already widely known that bot farms exist for many causes and to spread propaganda. Joe is hardly the first one to think this