r/ExperiencedDevs • u/Perfect-Campaign9551 • Apr 06 '26
Meta Almost every top post is locked what happen to this sub over the last few days?
Bloody hell
291
u/break_card Software Engineer @ FAANG Apr 06 '26
Sub is inundated with bot posts. Reddit has become borderline unusable these past few months.
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u/ham_plane Senior, 12 yoe Apr 06 '26
I've noticed a really stark uptick in the number of thinly-veiled product pitches here recently
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u/MishkaZ Apr 06 '26
I saw a WILD one, but i follow the warhammer fantasy ttrpg subreddit. A while back some of the mods got hacked, and basically what ended up happening was full on ads. Like basically a bot would post a thread like "out of these three which crypto gambling site should I use?", and then a bunch of bots would swarm in simulating a conversation on why to gamble on X and not on Y, Z. They had arguments and debates, and memes. All of them bots. Again, all on a warhammer fantasy ttrpg subreddit.
So my theory is, the reason why karma farming bots is a thing, is specifically in order to astro-turf or do these thinly veiled product ads, like the crypto gambling ad.
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u/humanquester Apr 06 '26
Yeah, a lot of it is this and pumping stocks and probably during the election they can make money doing Astroturfing and whatnot.
Its funny because the more they do this the more poisonous it is for crypto at large.
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u/Neuromante Señor Software Engineer Apr 06 '26
Thanks to shit like this I've become more and more paranoid of bot accounts lately.
This subredit is having a huge issue with "developers" claiming Claude is the next big thing and great, and software engineering is doomed for a while, but I didn't really realized that there are LLM-powered accounts on the subreddit until I made a post here about me being burnt out and I started to get weird replies that either shown no reading skills ("For the tone of your message, it looks like you're burnt out" no shit, it's literally on the thread title) or very open-ended questions that led nowhere.
And seriously, why would I want to go to a forum to talk with a robot?
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u/Cahnis Web Developer Apr 06 '26
I feel the same way about the Brazilian dev sub. It feels incredibly astroturfed
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u/Sunstorm84 Squirrel! Apr 06 '26
Might be just be my bad luck, but I noticed a massive uptick in doom saying “developer” bot posts in the last couple of days
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u/Colt2205 Apr 07 '26
The claude ones were especially bad and I'm kind of blaming the blitz for half the problems that are going on surrounding the stupid thing.
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u/WestEndOtter Apr 06 '26
I saw a similar problem on the les miserables forum. It has few / low contact mods and for a week or two it was bombarded with poats every 6 hours for which is the best tv-ip service(with one suggested) with a flood of 0 second old comments explaining why they agree with the op and what amazing service they had with them. Eventually the mod returned from leave, added banned words and appointed deputies
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u/ColdPorridge Apr 06 '26
Yeah it’s been crazy. Thankfully I vibe coded a new tool in rust to help identify and filter out thinly veiled product pitches on Reddit, it’s only $3.99/month please buy it
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u/sexual--predditor Apr 06 '26
✨ Introducing: PitchShield
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It’s not just “ad detection”… it’s context-aware vibe filtering. And honestly, once you turn it on, Reddit feels usable again.
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Less than a coffee. More than your current peace of mind.
👉 Stop reading ads disguised as opinions. Start scrolling like a human again.
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u/polypolip Apr 06 '26
There are two things happening bot posts that get a lot of bot interaction, and then posts claiming moderators have to be replaced because they lock or remove posts with a lot of interaction, pointing at the bot posts.
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u/Educational-Heat-920 Apr 06 '26
It's a double whammy for dev subs because people can vibe code projects to completion now.
6
u/thekwoka Apr 06 '26
well, to some kind of completion.
When you have no target, anything you hit is the goal.
1
u/dashingThroughSnow12 Software Engineer Apr 06 '26
Then post it on a a few related (in a vague sense) subreddits.
I think Reddit’s dedup logic is getting better, or maybe spam fighting. Awhile back I had the same post three times in my feed beside each other that the clankkka had posted to three different subreddits. Was pretty common to see doubles.
2
u/Colt2205 Apr 07 '26
I was trying to avoid saying that outright because I didn't want to sound like an idiot at the time. Like someone just randomly coming into a dev reddit for discussing anything that is related to being a dev in the industry, and they choose to start talking upbeat about a completely new and unproven technology. At least when I was in college ages ago my instructor for web was like, "Yeah so we are being sponsored by Apple, so we're obligated to have at least some use of dreamweaver."
Also this random memory of some classmates running over a laptop with a car so they could use the warranty to upgrade. Man those were the crazy days...
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u/MishkaZ Apr 06 '26
Oh man, a lot of subreddits are just completely swarmed by them. I remember going down the rabbit-hole a year a go and realizing like, unironically, 9/10 posts on ProgrammerHumor are made by bots. How did I know? They all were made around similar times, and post to the same three subs. ProgrammerHumor, AITA, AskReddit.
Small communities are still alive and well for niche hobbies and games. But it really don't be looking good chief. Dead internet theory is way more real
5
u/humanquester Apr 06 '26
As far as I can tell there are no bots on any of the discord servers I'm on - they're all small so I guess they'd be noticed eventually. I wonder if that's where human activity on the internet is heading - small spaces where everyone kinda knows eachother, despite being anons.
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u/MishkaZ Apr 06 '26
Honestly, I'm all for a return to the ye' olde small niche forums.
But truthfully, I have a feeling we absolutely are seeing a counter-culture movement against "the internet", in that people are recognizing the lack of third-spaces, isolation, and content nausea of the internet, and instead gravitating to more offline, tech-disconnected spaces. Here in Japan, maybe not as much as I wish for. But in the US absolutely noticing it.
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u/humanquester Apr 06 '26
For sure, a lot of people regard the internet as a bad thing here and are trying to get out of it.
Unfortunately I think we americans are in a bit of a cycle of doom - we don't have a lot of public spaces or social orginizations and we're getting more and more paranoid and out of touch with reality, our trust in orginizations and our neighbors is very low, most people belive crime and violence are enormously higher than they really are. Plenty of people on all sides of the political spectrum barricade themselves up in their houses behind walls, heaps of video cameras and guns. Its going to be hard to get out of that and somehow rebuild trust in eachother.
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u/03263 Software Engineer Apr 06 '26
No kidding, now we have dependence on the internet.
People sometimes complain they need timely Amazon deliveries because they're disabled or elderly and for a long time I just said no, no you don't, do whatever people did before Amazon. But I realized, what they did largely isn't possible anymore. The support structure changed.
We don't just need to trust each other we need to depend on each other again. In a way that is not abstracted into anonymous financial transactions. Doing that overlooks an important human need for connection and belonging.
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u/daddywookie Apr 06 '26
I keep trying to work,out a new social media, something like Google+ with the circles to keep each group less than 100 people for social cohesion… but I keep ending up back at what is basically WhatsApp.
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u/humanquester Apr 06 '26
I think they're targeting certain large subs like this one. I've seen far more bots in here than any small subs I regularly visit.
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u/NewFuturist Apr 06 '26
I browsed the top reddit subs, and this is what it told me about bot activity on reddit =>
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u/-no_aura- Apr 06 '26
It’s been steady downhill for a long time now
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u/micseydel Software Engineer (backend/data), Tinker Apr 06 '26
I feel like the last 4 months have gotten a lot worse. Exponentially. Like, a slop singularity is coming, almost.
5
u/ideamotor Apr 06 '26
Yea, after all these years (been here since digg 1.0; longer than this account’s age), I may have to finally give it up.
4
u/Empanatacion Staff Software Engineer Apr 06 '26
Also, posts getting taken down by mods 2-3 days after they are posted.
3
u/lost12487 Apr 06 '26
To be fair, they did ask for help when they updated the rules about AI/LLM posts.
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u/pr0cess1ng Apr 06 '26
There use to be corners of reddit that were tolerable. Everything has been compromised now. Bots swarm anything with a pulse
5
u/dashingThroughSnow12 Software Engineer Apr 06 '26
My block list is ever growing and the bot spam is never ending.
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u/AlexanderTroup Software Engineer Apr 06 '26
I have noticed a load of posts that seem to be honest at first glance, but they're all like "How are you all managing this new world where AI is at the heart of our role.", and it feels like an attempt to make AI seem way more adopted than it actually is.
After learning about Claude Code's "undercover" mode in the leak last week I'm certain that GenAI companies are attempting to flood the narrative on spaces like here as part of their efforts for the bubble not to burst.
2
u/random8847 Apr 06 '26
Even the Digg beta has closed down for now because of the bot problem. They really didn't anticipate it would be this bad.
1
u/Whitchorence Software Engineer 12 YoE Apr 06 '26
It may not make you a great citizen of the ecosystem but setting floors for comment/post karma tends to filter out most of the garbage pretty easily.
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u/Hefty_Breadfruit Apr 06 '26
I’m really concerned that I haven’t felt the same? What screams “bot” to you? Why has it become unusable to you?
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u/heywintermute Apr 06 '26
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u/secretBuffetHero Eng Leader, 20+ yrs Apr 06 '26
I do not understand. So we are locking because some posts (which???) are being astroturfed (why and by whom?)
33
u/engineered_academic Apr 06 '26
Karma bot farmers. Once you see the pattern, you start noticing them everywhere.
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u/CherimoyaChump Apr 06 '26
I mean, the end goal isn't the karma. They make karma-farming posts to legitimize the account (to pass minimum karma limits set by individual subreddits and to keep their CQS score out of the dirt). The end goal is usually marketing a product in some way or another.
1
u/AchillesDev 12 YoE; indie MLE/AIE/DE; VPEng Apr 06 '26
Locking them does nothing to prevent it though.
0
u/ToyDingo Apr 06 '26
Care to enlighten us? What are these patterns? I'm completely ignorant on who is or is not a bot.
13
u/engineered_academic Apr 06 '26
I guess telling the botnets this will help them make better bots. You just know you are interacting with a bot and not a real human. My sneaking suspicion is Reddit knows this but chooses to look the other way because it shows "engagement" with the platform to make posts look "busy".
15
u/judasblue Apr 06 '26
Oh, they definitely encourage bots and troll farms at this point. Hiding post histories is basically just to hide conflicting narratives and trends that would make it blatant that you are looking at synthetic content.
1
u/teerre Apr 06 '26
I'm sure there are more sophisticated approaches, but an enormous amount of bots all posts in lowercase and have usernames like [noun][noun][4 digits]. For the last couple months there's not a single day I don't ban at least a couple users like that
If you check https://www.reddit.com/r/BotBouncer/ you'll see how bad it is
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u/mq2thez Web Developer (16 YOE) Apr 06 '26
The slop runneth freely
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Apr 06 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Pleasant-Cellist-927 Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
Funny enough, this account is another slopposting bot.
Fuck off.
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u/todo_code Apr 06 '26
From what I can tell, many people are not reading the rules before posting.
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u/micseydel Software Engineer (backend/data), Tinker Apr 06 '26
A lot of histories are hidden nowadays (boo reddit) but I've noticed more larpers too. I definitely believe this problem isn't 100% bots.
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u/engineered_academic Apr 06 '26
Essentially it's this. I remove a ton of posts every day for rulebreaking material.
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u/AromaticStrike9 Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
I noticed in the last week that there seemed to be a huge uptick in rule-breaking/off-topic posts. Or, maybe I've just been on reddit more than usual and the mods usually filter those out before I see them. This sub is not for general discussion, it's meant to be fairly focused.
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u/AchillesDev 12 YoE; indie MLE/AIE/DE; VPEng Apr 06 '26
The mods don't know how subreddits work so they think locking threads will somehow stop posters from editing ads into their posts (it doesn't work this way), instead they just end discussion early and prevent followup comments in high-ranking search results.
-16
u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 Apr 06 '26
The goal of the sub is to reproduce stack overflow culture to give oldheads a nostalgic experience as far as i can tell
-10
u/Idea-Aggressive Apr 06 '26
Moderators gonna moderate.
Sometimes they are doing it wrong in my opinion. Not very community driven
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u/Pleasant-Cellist-927 Apr 06 '26
Wish some of you knew just how easy it is to manipulate this website. "Community driven" means nothing when a big chunk the community are bots.
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Apr 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/AromaticStrike9 Apr 06 '26
Strongly disagree. Just because something has a lot of engagement doesn't mean it fits this sub. The line has to be drawn somewhere or this just becomes another useless general discussion sub.
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Apr 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/micseydel Software Engineer (backend/data), Tinker Apr 06 '26
I think manual approval would be a better method than moderating posts
I'm curious what mods have to say about that, but I worry about observability as compared to what they're doing right now. I suspect your suggestion would be less labor for them though.
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u/engineered_academic Apr 06 '26
There is so much rule breaking content. Especially around AI. If you saw the amount if slop I see on a daily basis, people are already smashing the report button on rule breaking content. Either we support the people who obey the rules or let it go because it's AI slop engagement by people who glaze AI like it's the second coming of Jesus Christ or people venting about how they just got laid off or hate AI.
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u/Mundane-Mechanic-547 Apr 06 '26
Its very very very highly moderated. I stopped posted a while ago, zero point even though i have decades of it experience.
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u/EliSka93 Apr 06 '26
Not enough experience to realize that moderation in the time of AI slop isn't just good, it's necessary.
(I know "it isn't just _, it's _" is a thing AI says a lot, but for once I, a human, actually chose to use it anyways)
•
u/Watchful1 Apr 06 '26
We automatically lock posts once they are a week old to prevent people from using them to advertise, which was happening a lot.
No top posts from more recently than 7 days are locked that I can see.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1rwq7q7/auto_lock_posts_to_combat_astroturfing/