Thread

Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests

312 points · 408 comments · p-s-v

nomel · 1790637663 · focus · HN ↗
> Thin accounts: few comments, low scores, no real standing in the subreddit.
> Young accounts, or accounts with histories that are hidden or wiped.
Nope, this is no longer an indicator of a bot account. Many that I've looked into will have active posts to local town/region subreddits (often times multiple!) and different sports subreddits, sometimes getting unusually high amounts of karma in them (which suggests a network).
Turing test is looong dead, so no reason to assume the small fractions of a cent to make comments, to get a reasonable history, isn't being taken advantage of.
1. metalspot · 1790655497 · focus · HN ↗
  > this is no longer an indicator of a bot account
  it is trivial now to create synthetic multi-platform personas that generate real looking post histories at unlimited scale. the baseline assumption should be that everything on the internet is fake until proven otherwise.

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