this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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[–] ooterness@lemmy.world 32 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

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 13 points 2 months 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.

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What’s the aim? What do they use the accounts for once they’ve acquired the karma, which I am assume is the goal.

[–] ooterness@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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