discuss Reddit Bots?

[Compassion]

Hi,

Does anyone have good information about what % of users on Reddit are bots?

All helpful information is much appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[Gustavo-Woltmann]

Consider a bot that posts around 300 comments a day. It probably makes 20-30 GET requests to Reddit per minute. Let's say on average it gets every 25 seconds - that's roughly 3,456 GET requests every day. So this bot hits servers 10 times more often than it posts comments, so you can see how its visible behavior is dwarfed by its background behavior, which is actually a bigger technical concern for Reddit.
Gustavo Woltmann.

 

[Compassion]

Feedback appreciated....

Any way to discern which accounts are bots?

 

[Gustavo-Woltmann]

Feedback appreciated....

Any way to discern which accounts are bots?

Thanks for your appreciation!

Well, that depends. Many bots try to publish as real users. Those bots often post junk comments like "I (disagree)". "You are wrong". "Hawt". etc. Things that can almost be published randomly in any shipment. But the bots are slowly becoming better designed. It can notice if it's in a thread about President Trump (normally because the word "Trump" will be in the title). And the bot can post a comment supporting or agreeing with the president on a somewhat random topic. Or it can try an figure out the topic of the post about Trump, and then post a general comment about that topic.

Of course, the problem here is that it could also be a stupid person. So there really is no way to know 100% for sure.

Gustavo Woltmann.