• ooterness@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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.

      • ooterness@lemmy.world
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        1 month 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.

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Possibly vote manipulation as well, I mean where else would the sites to buy upvotes and downvotes get those voter accounts.

    • Yardy Sardley@lemmy.ca
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      1 month 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.