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
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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:
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I said Peter Thiel should be turned to soup
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I said Th-iel should be turned to soup
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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!
You're better for it.
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.
My hungry pigs disagree with that advice
Your hungry pigs and professor acid soup can wait till I'm done. I only get one life to eat a human.
That rendering process better be thorough - prions survive in the soil.
Edit: hydrofluric acid probably isn't very good for the soil either.
Would prions survive the acid?
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.
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.
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.
One can get banned for that, as well as the fact that you're once again uploading info that might possibly be used against you in future. Even the Fediverse tracks its accounts as I understand it and makes one's history semi-permanent.
The only true alternative I know is to take part in an accountless system or one which is heavily anonymized, like the 'Chan' stuff or whatever. For me it's just far easier to tread lightly, and avoid certain topics.
I've seen some links posted to sites that somehow manage to show comment history even for accounts with it hidden as well. Apparently the feature is pretty half baked.
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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.
Some of the bots, on the other hand, are very easily distinguishable from humans. The one who's profile I checked out was posting well-polished exactly bot-like political memes for the past few months at a rate that would be a full-time job for an unassisted human.
The majority of posters are indistinguishable from bots
I have noticed more personality posts stuff like relationship dramas but the phrasing in them is odd.
Also a few more agitators…they are quick to be in and quite snarky. Maybe it was always there and I didn’t notice it.
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 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.
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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.
Either way that doesn’t sound fun :( stay safe!
Some people block political threads, so all that's left are those that don't block them... which tends to be people who strongly believe in their opinions or want to use it as a soapbox to rant... so there's rarely any just "chill" opinions or nuanced takes. Almost everyone on a political thread is gonna be angry at something... against one side, cheering for the destruction of one side... or both sides...
A bunch of the ABWD sleepers reactivated recently. I don' think they are bots, but after a year of being very quiet, they all came out of their termite holes after being quiet for about a year.
I've noticed a few, but nothing crazy. Just the occasional post where I can tell this is an automated account that isn't marked as such, posting shit like short-captioned AI slop images 1-3 times a day, usually on Mastodon and not Lemmy.
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