• ooterness@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    edit-2
    13 hours ago

    They’re indistinguishable because they’re copied from top-voted posts that are a few years old (title, text, and image if applicable). It’s guaranteed to produce a post that fits the community and gets a lot of engagement, so it’s a cheap and effective way to mature a bot account. Once you start looking for it, it’s everywhere, and Reddit admins don’t care.

    • Yardy Sardley@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Have you ever noticed those low effort reposts also getting the same top 10 comments as the original? It’s slop all the way down.

      • ooterness@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        10 hours ago

        I’m speculating, but my guesses are:

        • Gathering enough karma to post on subreddits that have a minimum threshold.
        • Getting enough post and comment history to pass a casual inspection, either by human moderators or spam filters.
        • Maturing the account to the point where it can be sold to another shady company.
        • Generally having a lot of bot accounts ready, just in case.

        Once mature, it’s usually used for spam or astroturfing. There is a noticeable uptick around big elections, wars, etc.

        I saw one repost-bot that metastisized into the most vile porn-spam-bot you can imagine, but they’re usually more subtle than that.

      • EldritchFeminity
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        11 hours ago

        Advertising or scams usually. A high amount of posts, comments, and karma makes an account look trustworthy.