Reddit used to get flooded with bots before elections. By 2024, they were just around all the time. I got permabanned after that, but it's probably even worse by now.
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
119 points (91.0% liked)
Ask Lemmy
38323 readers
2826 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
You're not missing anything. Reddit is the embodiment of Empty Internet Theory. If you're a human posting on that site, you're a statistical anomaly. And not for long, because everyone's getting booted.
I got booted because:
-
I said Peter Thiel should be turned to soup
-
I said Th-iel should be turned to soup
-
I said that I had previously been given a suspension for saying Peter Thiel should be turned to soup.
So now I'm redditless.
LOL! Thiel soup.. guaranteed to cause the shits!
I got permabanned for saying a naughty thing about Stephen Miller.
Found old.lemmy.zip, signed up and haven't missed a beat!
Care to post a recipe for that soup?
- Boiling Hydrofluoric Acid
- Peter Thiel
I don't recommend eating the rich, due to Prions. It'd be better to render them and process them into fertiliser.
I'd hate to see what all the dick pills in Elon Musk's bloodstream would do to a field of corn.
dent corn that'll put a dent in you
That rendering process better be thorough - prions survive in the soil.
Edit: hydrofluric acid probably isn't very good for the soil either.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
The big and medium communities are lost. Small niche communities still have some good followings and timely content.
I recently got Permabanned from Reddit because I reshared the Alex Pretti video back when that was happening. They also banned every other account for every person in my household because of their fingerprinting service going overboard.
Fuck Reddit.
Wow. It's so fucking bad over there.
Its gotten really bad now that hidden profiles are a thing.
Hidden profiles?
Basically all comment history is hidden. Very popular with totally organic pro Maga accounts.
I've seen several accounts here on Lemmy that go to an error page when you click on the name on their post. I always report them to the admins and never see them again. Never heard back from anyone what's going on. I've developed a habit of checking the profiles of posts that just seem off.
Basically all comment history is hidden.
Oh, actually I was forced to do that myself due to the slight possibility of doxxing, etc. Ten-year account over there that I still use, and traditionally I practice complete transparency. But the times, they is be changing...
Oh, actually there is a workaround (or at least there used to be). Add the acct in question as a "friend," then click on the Friend stream. You'll be able to see their content.
Just delete your account and start a new one. There is literally nothing that you gain from using an old account apart from increased risk.
load more comments
(8 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
same, theres even more bots there now, because they banned or shadownbanned so many people.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Everyone on the Internet is a bot except you.
Safest approach to stay sane.
But, what if I am a bot and don't know it?
Nothing would change.
No there is just a major world event, a war in Iran, and people want to dump their angry hot takes about it incessantly. So you are going to have a big influx of people grandstanding about it being good or evil.
The majority of posters are indistinguishable from bots, because well, just like bots, they are working off a contrived script about who is good and who is evil.
I've seen some pretty broad and good takes about the current conflict, but they are far and few and most of the replies are harassing them for not picking a side.
most of the replies are harassing them for not picking a side.
This is Lemmy; let’s not pretend there’s an actual choice of which side to pick to avoid harassment or even mod intervention.
The majority of posters are indistinguishable from bots
load more comments
(1 replies)
I’ve not yet noticed any deviations from the norm
Yeah I cant tell. Lots of accounts have history that are talking...so I dont think they are bots.
You can report if you want. Different instances will take different approaches.
I swear that cm0002 guy or whatever is a bot, because they go around cross-posting a lot of stuff here and there.
Lol nah, I just crosspost .ml (see below) and it's all done by human hands, I'm just hooked into the RSS feed to deliver notifications to my phone + a good workflow
Why am I cross-posting .ml content?
I cross-post from .ml to the nearest relevant non-.ml comm to reduce the influence of .ml comms and indirectly, the instance as a whole, to help vitilize non-.ml comms and make it an easier decision for other instance admins to defederate because one key reason I identified that admins don't want to defederate is because .ml still has some very large comms and some active niche comms.
Some highlights from the link:
.ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558 The original transphobic Comment from Nutomic: https://lemmy.world/post/18236068
"If you don't support Russia then you just don't understand geopolitics" ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/27352415
"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167
"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342
"NK is actually good and anything counter to that is Western propaganda!" ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035
General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet ~davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/27426510
And so so much documentation on clear heavy handed censorship and bias also on the link. So much I can't even put them all here because this comment would be really long.
I believe the behavior of its admins (the main admins are Lemmy devs) does harm to the overall growth of the Lemmy-verse and maybe even the Thrediverse (since Lemmy kinda kicked off the Thrediverse) because of its association with the devs of Lemmy and their insistence to use .ml as their personal political platform to spread harmful propaganda
On the outside, bringing up Lemmy frequently leads to comments like "Lemmy? Isn't that the place with a bunch of tankies?" Or "Tried Lemmy, but found it full of pro Russia crap so I left". The best way forward from that I see is to either widely defederate from .ml like the rest of the Triad, or pressure them to put a fair and unbiased as possible admin team.
I've blocked that guy so many times for posting that dumbass Buckminster Burkwood AI slop over and over but they have an account on every single fucking instance apparently.
I saw some obvious bots like a week ago, there are some among us for sure.
Maybe there's more than usual, because of the Iran related stuff.
Maybe there's just a higer percentage of neurospicy people on the fediverse.
I feel very confident this is the case. And I also suspect that most of the "bots" or "shills" or whatever other inauthentic accounts people think they are identifying are just these same types of people who have unusual posting habits or communication styles. I've yet to see one iota of evidence that there are any accounts masquerading as something they're not to influence politics. The only actual bots I've seen are the boring spambots who just post scam links at a rapid rate.
load more comments
(17 replies)
not as bad reddit
Not this bot again.
There is a bot that posts nothing but links to reddit threads. I could block it or bots in general but then I won't be able to downvote the posts it makes. It moderates the communities it posts to so reporting it would do fuck all.
AFAIK that whole instance is nothing but Reddit repost communities and ought to just be defederated.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I saw a couple that were obviously bots, when I looked at a news-relevant hashtag on mastodon today. I only noticed two, but that's two more than usual.
Just my guess - meant to bait people into making various threats to see how well Palantir's social media monitoring works at the fringes.
Be careful out there, y'all.
palintir has been botting on reddit heavily recently.
Either way that doesn’t sound fun :( stay safe!
view more: next ›