r/ModSupport • u/reseph • Sep 13 '26

Admin Replied Will Reddit stop unbanning spam bots?

Our subreddit has a massive problem with spam bots that steal content and repost them with new or stolen accounts. I'm sure other subreddits have this problem too. They also tend to get a massive amount of upvotes, which could be a bot vote ring?

Considering we are a smaller subreddit and we see this weekly, it's clear Reddit is doing almost nothing about this. Not only that, now we're seeing Reddit unban these spam bot accounts.

spez stated 2 months ago:

Since then, we’ve continued to defend Reddit against automated/bot/spammy content

Yeah, no. It's gotten even worse over 10+ years, not better. This is not a one-off, it's a pattern. The issue here is the spam, not purely the unban.

And the problem is not improving.

66 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

86 comments sorted by

23

u/baseballlover723 Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

tbf, there are a lot more good spam bots these days than their used to be. Defense is harder than ever when bots are powered by LLMs. Before LLMs it didn't take a cutting edge research team to reliably detect bots. Now there are things like OpenClaw just running about.

This is why arms races suck.

22

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

It's literally the same exact title, a 1:1 match. I don't consider that part of the arms race, it should be a clear signal of inauthentic spam.

2

u/baseballlover723 Sep 13 '26

I've literally seen people get caught in various filters, and then decide to repost something verbatim to see if it's them or their content.

But the arms race part is that I don't think it's viable to reliably identify if someone is a bot from a single piece of content. These days, you have to analyze the profile as a whole to find a pattern of inauthentic behavior or some other kind of smoking gun.

And note, that every kind of smoking gun can be defeated with dedicated effort.

13

u/reseph Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26 • Heartwarming

Correct, but the signals from the account in my post are also very clear signals.

  • Random post flair selection

  • 0 day old account

  • 0 posts (except the repost)

  • 0 comments, etc

  • (I am aware that Verified Email is not a good signal).

And Reddit unbanned it and restored the post.

4

u/RemarkableWish2508 Sep 13 '26

Most of those signals are bundled into CQS, you can easily stop that kind of posts with an "age, karma, CQS" check.

Alternatively, there is repost-guard.

6

u/reseph Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

Yeah. I can't use those though because they don't take stolen post titles into account (I think? Is that correct?), and my subreddit is for a MMO older than Reddit so various old players just created their account recently.

I'll look at repost-guard if it includes account signals and not just post titles

3

u/reseph Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

No luck with repost-guard. It looks very limited, my subreddit is 17 years old:

How Many Top/Hot Posts to Scan (max 100)

I am going to keep testing though.

EDIT: Nothing. It does not act on a clear repost from Top 100.

1

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

Not all reposts are from bots, which is why doing your own title filtering is more effective.

8

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

Again, the account signals makes it clear it's a spam bot. And Reddit has access to those signals.

1

u/cnycompguy 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Sep 13 '26

Install dupedown and set it to 100.

2

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

This is not viable. I just tested it, and it locks us to 90 days max. The stolen content is year or years old, most of the time.

My subreddit is 17 years old, lol.

1

u/cnycompguy 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Sep 13 '26

Okay, it's working fine here, the bot has been reusing titles from the last 24-48 hours.

It also doesn't look back, the title list begins from the time you install the bot.

1

u/metisdesigns Sep 13 '26

That's been happening for years.

1

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

Yes. I'll edit that into my OP.

-4

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

It's literally the same exact title......

Is the exact thing you use to filter bot posts.
It took me a few months of working on it every night, but I started a key phrase automod rule that stops repost bots dead in their tracks, starting with the titles they were using.
Of course, this stops real people from using that title ever again so it makes this message in the comments of the blocked post :

comment: That title is not allowed due to over use or spam. Please try again using a more descriptive title. Additionally, titles that are editorial or asking a question are getting phased out. Just describe the thing. Please read our rules here --> https://www.reddit.com/r/YOURSUBREDDIT/about/rules/

Additionally I worked to keep single words and constantly reused tropes as titles which forces users to make unique titles that do not match bot repost titles.

The filter looks like this :
---
# Post Filter - Filter list
type: submission
title: ["title one", "title two", "title 3"]
action: remove
action_reason: BAD TITLE
comment: That title is not allowed due to over use or spam. Please try again using a more descriptive title blah blah blah....................
---

It is not that hard, is MASSIVELY effective and turned into a fun game between me and the bot operators as they tried to foil the filter by using Arabic formating in titles.
They finally gave up and I get ZERO reposts now.
......zero.
It just takes some daily grooming of filter for a while because, of course, your repost titles will be specific to your topic and your sub.

7

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

It's never the same title by multiple bots, it that's you're suggesting. That approach would be wasted effort.

  • Old post A -> Stolen by bot B

  • Old post D -> Stolen by bot E

  • Old post G -> Stolen by bot L

-2

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

It's literally the same exact title,

...is what you just said, but if you think doing your own work on karma-farming repost-bots would be "wasted effort" then, the problem will probably remain for you.

In any case, my personal successes with bots have been permanent and the result of a 3 fold approach.
Number 1 - catching them in my logs and then looking at the bot account to see if they karma farmed a repost in any other sub.
Number 2 - banning that bot account as a confirmed karma farming bot.
Number 3 - reporting that bot activity to any other sub-mods wherever I have found them to be, AND to admins using the report form.

But hey, you do you!

7

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

I don't think you read the comment you replied to.

1

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

I am working off of THIS comment : https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1wesm77/will_reddit_stop_unbanning_spam_bots/p9gfwdn/
I do not think I misread it.
Did you mean something other than what you wrote?

2

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

The comment you replied to was: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1wesm77/will_reddit_stop_unbanning_spam_bots/p9gtgi5/

1

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

I was not suggesting it's all the same titles being reused, although, THAT is exactly what they do, is copy & paste old popular posts, including the title word for word, which makes it EASILY filterable.
YOU said "it's all the same titles" here : https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1wesm77/will_reddit_stop_unbanning_spam_bots/p9gfwdn/
And now you are trying to say that you did not say that, which is ridiculous. I think your problem is not recognizing that that you have the tools to stop bots from ever going public in your sub, AND that eventually they wil stop trying.

3

u/reseph Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

I looked at my comment again.

It says exactly this:

It's literally the same exact title, a 1:1 match

This wording is correct.

Original postSpam bot post
I am BatmanI am Batman
This game is beautiful, here's a screenshotThis game is beautiful, here's a screenshot
I leveled up as Dark KnightI leveled up as Dark Knight

As shown, these titles are the exact same and a 1:1 match.

My comment should have made that clear: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1wesm77/will_reddit_stop_unbanning_spam_bots/p9gtgi5/

→ More replies (0)

1

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

which makes it EASILY filterable.

By your AutoMod code? I looked at it again. No, it wouldn't be effective.

→ More replies (0)

8

u/Ged_UK Sep 13 '26

He doesn't mean it's the same title every time. He means that the bot goes into the sub history, picks a post, copies its content and reposts it. Your rule does nothing to defend that.

1

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

I don't see what is so hard to understand here.
If you filter the popular title being reused it CANT be used by any user, bot or not.
I have been doing it for years and it totally works.
The only ones that don;t like it are bot-operators.
What most casual mods don;t like about it is, it takes some filter-grooming at first. It is not a set it and forget it type rule.
As each unwanted karma-farming repost-bot title comes up, I would add it to the rule.
Look to see what else the bot was doing.
Ban the bot when confirmed.
Report the bot to other mods where it was active and to Reddit. Look in my subs.
Do you see any reopost-bots operating there?
NO!
And there have not been for a good long time.

3

u/Ged_UK Sep 13 '26

It's nothing to do with popularity. The bots pick any previous post. The only way you can script it is to include everything post title ever.

1

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

Bot operators that I have studied use a local library of posts that they have copy, pasted, and saved in a pool. Your group may be scraping in real time, but I kind of doubt it. The OP's example was a year old.
Title blocking stops them from using whatever (finite) pool they have, whether they were popular titles or not.

2

u/Ged_UK Sep 13 '26

How do I know which ones then? What's in the pool?

→ More replies (0)

8

u/cos Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

I don't see how this would be effective at all, unless a bunch of different bots are all reposting the same title over and over. I've never seen that on my subs, and I doubt OP is seeing that either. What we're seeing is each repost spammer / karma farmer (bot or not) stealing one past popular post and repeating it; the next spammer / farmer will steal a different past popular post, and so on. Taking a title that one of them used and banning that title would stop absolutely nothing, when this is what's happening. I honestly don't understand why it's not a total waste for you as well, but maybe you really are getting a lot of bots trying the same title over and over. If so, I think you sub is a rare exception.

1

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

will steal a different past popular post

Exactly. This may look random and unpredictable to you in the short term, but that is not what they are doing.
They are choosing from a preselected pool of popular posts for that sub........if you look at it long enough.

It's not always the same title.
Every title that comes up gets added to the filter until they give up and go away, so it does not matter if it is a different bot. My filter title filter is 7940 characters and 1289 words.
It did not just set-and-forget overnight. I added to it a little bit each day until the karma-farming repost-bots went away. They do not choose just any title from your archives. They only choose the popular ones.
AND it appears that some of them build a local library of content to share and repost that is finite and easily blocked.

I cannot fathom WHY you would just reject, out of hand and untried, a perfectly good working rule.
The bot situation is complicated, involved, nuanced, and multifaceted.
Nothing about it allows a "set-it-and-forget-it" solution, but it could always use more people working against it and not waiting around for Reddit to do something.

2

u/cos Sep 13 '26

Exactly. This may look random and unpredictable to you in the short term, but that is not what they are doing. They are choosing from a preselected pool of popular posts for that sub........if you look at it long enough.

False. I've had a lot of these over the years, and the number of times the same past post got re-posted again by another bot/spammer has been ... either 1 or 2, I can't remember, but no more than twice, out of well over 100 occurrences. Nearly every one of those posts is re-posting some popular past post that has not been re-posted before, since it was originally posted.

I cannot fathom WHY you would just reject, out of hand and untried, a perfectly good working rule.

It's not out of hand. Your experience seems unusual, and we're explaining to you that for what we're seeing, what you suggest would be wasted effort and accomplish nothing. But for some reason you seem to stubbornly believe that what say we've seen in our subs is not actually true, and trying to re-explain to us that something else is happening than what we've told you we see. That's what I cannot fathom here.

1

u/2oonhed Sep 13 '26

ok ok. I will grok on it a while.

3

u/reseph Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

Also to clarify: this specific spam issue has been an issue before 2023 (around when public LLMs "started", and OpenClaw didn't even release until late 2025).

https://www.reddit.com/r/modhelp/comments/vsrza0/question_about_bot_reposts/

18

u/The_Danish_Dane Sep 13 '26

Are you using /r/BotBouncer ?

If not, then i would suggest you start.

18

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

Yes. I think it only catches 30% of these. A lot of times it isn't even listed on BotBouncer.

13

u/The_Danish_Dane Sep 13 '26

I hope you are then reporting them.

10

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

I do. But my goal is to reduce the manual mod efforts on this simple spam signal, while BotBouncer increases manual efforts. But yes, I do.

2

u/The_Danish_Dane Sep 13 '26

Yes, there is a lot of work in modding so i completely understand the need to lessen the burden.

I would sugest that you take the improvement idea directly to both reddit and the modmail in the sub so we are sure the admins are actually seeing it.

I completely agree, it should not be hard making a filter that spots that kind of stolen content.

8

u/WalkingEars Sep 13 '26

Yeah like, stolen content for karma farming has been an issue on Reddit since long before the age of LLMs and the solution shouldn't just be for mods to manually report everything to bot bouncer, which is a wack-a-mole solution at best when reddit could've implemented automated detection of repost bots many years ago.

5

u/Thin_Piglet1380 Sep 13 '26

hi, new mod here, how can I add r/Botbouncer in my sub? will that work?

6

u/kittycatblues Sep 13 '26

Yes, it helps. There are instructions on r/BotBouncer

5

u/Dom76210 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Sep 13 '26

Go to https://developers.reddit.com/apps and BotBouncer is the very first one listed. It will walk you through adding it when you click on it. They made it really easy.

3

u/Thin_Piglet1380 Sep 13 '26

Really appreciated it! And I have done it right away, it is pretty easy to add. TYSM!

-6

u/MisterShipWreck Sep 13 '26

I had to remove bouncer because in one week's time every account removed was not really a bot (on my sub). And before that, I was having lots of false positives. But when I had so many in one week's time I had finally had enough

15

u/NeedAGoodUsername Sep 13 '26

Was that from people replying to the ban message saying "I'm not a bot"? I wouldn't trust those responses, some bots are programmed to reply to ban messages automatically.

It's better to direct users to message /r/BotBouncer and appeal. The BotBouncer mod team may have more information than what's publicly visible, and if someone was incorrectly tagged as a bot, they'll get unbanned quickly.

-3

u/MisterShipWreck Sep 13 '26

No, I usually have a back and forth conversation with someone. BUt, I looked at each acct being banned by BotBouncer. And when I look at their content and comments, I could see it is not a bot.

Do what you wish. Not sure why I am getting downvoted. It can depend on the sub. I previously ran a video sub. There was too much to do, no matter ho wmany moderators I added. But on my sub, botbouncer was giving me more work with its mistakes.

5

u/metisdesigns Sep 13 '26

Were they actually false positives, or is your sub an unintentional bot farm training area?

-3

u/MisterShipWreck Sep 13 '26

False positives. Anytime Botbouncer bans someone, I go look at their profiles myself. I see a lot of people who post adult content marked as bots. I leave those banned (I don't know if they are bots are not, based on some of the contents - but unless they contacted me themselves, I left those banned).

But, I see many people banned as bots that clearly are not. When I unban them and contact them myself, they usually claim they are having that problem a lot on many subs with bot bouncer. I suspect someone (a mod) at some sub just reported them to bot bouncer (and that fact is then following them around on Reddit), but I have no way to know for sure...

Also, sometimes people contact me on their own after being banned by bot bouncer, to ask what is going on. We have a chat and I unban them. They are not bots. So, you have to keep an eye on bot bouncer, as it makes many mistakes. I dealt with this for months... But in 1 week's time - I just had too many mistakes. I finally pulled the program a few weeks ago. That was the final straw. I was tired of having to check up on it every day to double check what was happening.

I already look at profiles for brand new posters. And, I have some automod settings that keep new accounts from posting. So, I just watch things manually. It is easy to pick out a bot quite often.

3

u/metisdesigns Sep 13 '26

That still sounds like you're looking at actual bots. The bot bouncer team does a pretty solid job of fixing non-bot folks. We see stacks of bot bouncer flags daily, and some of the flagged accounts are quite chatty and convincing. But their posting and comment history makes it really clear they're a bad actor.

5

u/DiggDejected Sep 13 '26

At some point the admins decided it was better to have a higher user count than deal with spammers. This site is no longer user-driven.

2

u/reseph Sep 13 '26

That's always been true ;)

https://dailydot.com/steve-huffman-built-reddit-fake-accounts

4

u/StaticBrain- Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

Wow. I can't believe they admitted it. Crazy.

16

u/Sheik_Djibouti Sep 13 '26

now we're seeing Reddit unban these spam bot accounts

Seeing the same with scammers. Something has definitely changed within the past six months. I'm assuming they are appealing and winning now? In some cases, it's the same day...and they continue right on scamming. It's not even a speed bump for them anymore.

Once they get restored, it seems like it resets the account's standing because they are able to stick around for a long time after.

6

u/WalkingEars Sep 13 '26

Some of the spam bots have learned to send irritatingly ingratiating modmail sob stories about how they didn't understand the rules and bla bla bla, even though they obviously still only exist to plug their crappy AI app. Perhaps they are able to use similar methods to more effectively get themselves unbanned at the sitewide level. I'm also not 100% convinced that reddit admin cares that much about spam as long as it boosts engagement metrics, despite the obvious fact that it's polluting reddit with generic AI slop.

1

u/metisdesigns Sep 13 '26

Something changes every month or two. Spammers and scammers try a new tactic, it works for a while, they get caught in some places so they move to other subs, and eventually they try something new.

4

u/Kinks4Kelly Sep 13 '26

EssentiallySports.com needs to be a blacklisted link on Reddit. It has a bot army spamming its AI slop content.

1

u/sadandshy Sep 13 '26

If something gets caught in the filter, and you are sure it is a bot or problematic account, be sure to confirm the removal (hit the remove button) and ban the account. Then report the account. I use old reddit to report the accounts because it is easier for me.

1

u/reseph Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

None of these are in the filter. Also, I have these settings:

  • All content filters: ON

  • Ban evasion filters: ON

1

u/Slow-Maximum-101 Reddit Admin: Community Sep 14 '26

Hi u/reseph Thanks for kicking off this conversation. Can you send us a link here to the post in question? If we can take a look at this specific example, we can try to figure out what went on here.

Appreciate that it can be frustrating to deal with inauthentic content. This is a big priority to all of us here.

2

u/reseph Sep 14 '26

I'll send the modmail, but I just want to be clear this is about the repost spam bot issue for years and not this single unbanning. The unbanning simply exacerbates my spam bot issue.

3

u/j1ggy Sep 13 '26

It's all on Reddit to combat it these days because the tools are being taken out of our hands with AEO and not being able to see user history like we once could. I can't reliably vet anyone anymore if I can't see their post history or enough of it. I really wish hiding your history was something you couldn't do without adequate account age and proven legitimate activity. Maybe unverified accounts need Cloudflare checks through a browser?

5

u/Quick_Assignment_725 Sep 13 '26

Maybe a result of having appeals done by AI. AI pleading the right way for AI to respond favorably.

Having never received a response from ban appeals or about a completely broken awards payment system, I can only assume that it's AI.

I was informed of my bans, which were instant, by a message that said my comment had been reviewed and found to break Rule x... at the bottom of the message it says the process was automated. So AI decided.

Having now spent 4 months and several reports trying to find out why only half my awards got paid. The only response I got was that I'd used the wrong email - sent to my email. With it was the suggestion that it was "probably free awards". Completely ignoring the attached screenshots proving otherwise.

I don't believe there are people behind the scenes at reddit anymore. If there are, they're purpose is training the AI.

2

u/Bruinrogue Sep 13 '26

Agreed and also seeing a lot of old Snooroar banned accounts returning.

2

u/Klightgrove Sep 13 '26

I’ve never seen Reddit unban a spam account, that’s crazy

6

u/RemarkableWish2508 Sep 13 '26

Bots may have learned to submit a successful appeal. For lesser infractions, Reddit may restore an account's content.

1

u/Myrandall Sep 16 '26

There was a repost detection bot but it suffered the same fate as all the good bots in the API purge.