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View submission: A Guide to Reddit Lingo
- Spambots
Firstly, what is a Spambot[1]? Ok, so now you know they’re bad news. Spambots on Reddit are not always easy to spot[2], and are becoming more prevalent as time goes on[3]. r/KarmaCourt dealt with a case about spambot accounts which makes for fascinating reading[4].
1: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/bots/what-is-a-spambot/
4: https://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/dbg7im/myself_ukarmabotkiller_and_the_fine_folks_at/
Our spambots come in several varieties:
There are some Spambots that have hijacked legitimate Reddit accounts or have even come through Karmafarms[5] to bypass our Karma restrictions. T-Shirt shills will repost a relevant picture from the sub they are in[6] often with the name of their website embedded or even posted back to front to avoid the spam filter. Those shirts do not exist and it is highly likely that you’ll be led to dodgy advert, phishing, dropship or credit-card scam sites. Why you should not buy T-shirts/hoodies/mugs linked in comments.[7]
5: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/lw4gp4/a_guide_to_reddit_lingo/gx5a5ij/
6: https://www.reddit.com/r/CatSlaps/comments/noeft6/cat/
7: https://www.reddit.com/r/httyd/comments/cl3el6/
Be wary of any posts displaying mugs, incense holders, teapots, pins, stickers, *Starry Night* style wall posters[8] - in fact basically anything saying “my GF bought me this today”, “look at my cool stuff” or similar and never ever reply to ask where you can get one as some subreddits will instantly permaban you as an accomplice of the shill even if you aren’t.
These will be newer accounts which use the Follow option to spam the Chat inboxes of huge tranches of Redditors in one go with the promise of “chat” or porn. It often works by sending a provocatively posed semi nude photo, then asks you to click a link to check out more. The link then leads to fake video calling apps or other dodgy websites with the intention of phishing, credit-card scamming, offering “limited time offers” that aren’t, or spreading malware or ransomware. Another scam involves accounts that pretend to be sex workers, usually to resell stolen pics or pretending to be them. Discreetly report incidents of this at r/pornscam.
There’s so much to say about karma bots, they’ve got their own category here: Karma Farming: Special Note[9]. To avoid being mistaken for one, never post or comment in subs offering upvotes or karma. Those subs aren’t just regular new people looking for affirmation; they’re widely used by marketers and political groups with things to promote illicitly on Reddit. Many of the higher scoring posts will be bot or Alt accounts engaged in a “voting-go-round”; anyone innocently blundering into them get many promises but very few actual upvotes.
9: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/lw4gp4/a_guide_to_reddit_lingo/gx5a5ij/
- Spambot Spotting
Spambots try to look like real Redditors, but typically they aren't sophisticated enough for the disguise to be totally convincing. Or are they? Because Reddit is a global community, they often rely on hiding behind the stilted “Google Translate” language of our many non-English speakers to help in their deception. However, there are still some clues to their identity to be found.
By now, most people know that e-Mail scams are actively seeking gullible people, and most contain deliberate spelling mistakes to filter their target audience. If you are clever enough to realize it is a spam, you are too clever to fall for the ensuing scam and they don’t want to waste any more time with you. Spambots can use the Reddit Hivemind to the opposite effect, triggering a spectacular transformation of normal unassuming everyday Redditors into a force of Mighty Grammar Police with just one slip of a letter in a kind of Streisand Effect[10]; a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequences of further publicising it.
10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Is the post a “hit-and-run” or is the OP actively engaging in the comments? Most Redditors love a bit of engagement and new Redditors even more so. One of the questions I often get asked are along the lines of “is it weird to want to reply to every single comment on my post?”. So, when a fairly new account or even a fairly dormant old account makes a post that blows up, it would be fair to expect the OP to say more than a few extra things in the comments. If the OP has vanished or just says one vague, poorly worded reply to one of the first comments, they may never have been an real OP in the first place.
Reddit hates Reposts. So much so that they will come out in force with repost copypasta[11] to argue vociferously about something that isn’t even against the rules on Reddit (however, individual subs will have their own rules). Again, by using Reddit’s Hivemind against itself, a repost can easily get more comments than original content and are such a problem on r/humansbeingbros they now have their own spam detector[12].
11: https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/aavpoy/the_perfect_reply_for_every_repost/
Here’s another one that’s often seen on Reddit with exactly the same title and spelling mistake[13]. Those who Sort by New will upvote such lovely stories, and along with those who are unaware - or simply don’t care - that it’s a repost, the Spambot’s user history is now full of comments that are relevant and on topic, enabling its comment history to appear real.
Some spambot accounts go even further and repost old photos but add captions or random questions from entirely unrelated posts[14] to try and combat identical image & text searching.
The undead hordes of unused accounts grow larger by the day as Reddit pushes upward past 52 million daily users. Sometimes dormant accounts are reanimated by their owners, but an old account suddenly becoming alive again with a different posting style is more likely to have been bought on the grey market where they sold as “very active, verified, 25k+ post karma, 225k+ comment karma, 7 gold, natural name, organic only.” These are then used for crypto scammers[15] and leakgirls spammers[16].
15: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/ld4a2u/spam_bots_btcdiscusscom/
There was a phishing scheme[17] where scam hyperlinks were posted in comments, leading to a fake Reddit login page. This collected information so that the phisher could go into the user’s account and lock them out by changing the password. This allowed them to use the accounts to spam NSFW posts, and the genuine users lost their accounts completely. If you’re asked to log into anything from a link whether it be Reddit or a website you want to visit, leave the post and go to the app or site directly instead.
If you are sure you have come across a spambot or shill, use the “Report” button. If you aren’t quite sure, see if anyone else mentions them at r/botwatch or r/TheseFuckingAccounts. This next section details other Reddit resources and campaigns that try to combat this scourge.
- Spambot Resources
If you come across a Spambot, do not engage with it. Use the ‘report’ option below the post or in the in the three-dots Hamburger Menu to alert the mods of the sub you spotted it on and move on. The only reply you should legitimately make is to post a link or one of the other initiatives currently fighting against these shills from this list:
r/TheseFuckingAccounts - This is the main place to submit and track suspicious Reddit accounts.
u/_dorfl_ - Include this in your comment by typing this sequence without spaces: u / \ _ dorfl \ _ I know it looks strange but trust me on this, it will be fine in the comment.
r/botwatch - This sub is dedicated to the continued discussion and study of the bots that dwell in Reddit.
r/KarmaBotKillers - They have a useful Wiki[18] about accounts that display karma farming bot-like behaviour.
18: https://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaBotKillers/wiki/index
u/WhyNotCollegeBoard - Has a Spambot detector to summon by posting !isbot <username>.
r/spambotdetector - Sometimes responds when the comment Good bot is given in response to a Redditor.
u/BlogSpammr - Also reports bots
u/exponant - Also reports bots
u/risbot - Performs a Google reverse image search which is useful to find a suspected repost.
19: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/lw4gp4/a_guide_to_reddit_lingo/gt6ptml/
There's nothing here!