Almost every top post is locked what happen to this sub over the last few days?

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Watchful1@reddit

We automatically lock posts once they are a week old to prevent people from using them to advertise, which was happening a lot.

No top posts from more recently than 7 days are locked that I can see.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1rwq7q7/auto_lock_posts_to_combat_astroturfing/

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NoCardio_@reddit

Are people really going back to read week old posts about how much someone hates AI?

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drnullpointer@reddit

Reddit is forever. Yes, people search the internet, find Reddit posts and then read the post and the feedback.

Yes, there is a lot of views immediately and then the traffic slows down considerably, but discussions on interesting and unique topics tend to see views over time.

Is it hard to imagine that somebody a year later might come back to the post and give some interesting insight to it?

That said, I understand why mods might reduce the number of posts they need to babysit to prevent abuse.

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genericusername71@reddit

has there been any response to feedback like this?

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Watchful1@reddit

I'm aware of how it works. Locking the posts is just part of our efforts for this.

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max123246@reddit

But if it doesn't prevent edits, I don't see how it stops advertising at all

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throwaway_0x90@reddit

Editing is one thing, but making *NEW* comments is another and treated differently by web crawlers.

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dontquestionmyaction@reddit

But those would show up in the mod queue like normal.

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Scylithe@reddit

Not that I care since I reckon Reddit is 90% bots anyway, I have regularly commented on posts 1+ week old and gotten good replies, and I'm not sure how this reply addresses that

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OkLettuce338@reddit

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater here

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MathmoKiwi@reddit

Only one week old seems like a very aggressive move to do? Why not something a little more reasonable like 1yr? Or maybe 6 months?

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Mundane-Mechanic-547@reddit

Its very very very highly moderated. I stopped posted a while ago, zero point even though i have decades of it experience.

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AlexeyBelov@reddit

Oof. I disagree. AskHistorians is highly moderated. Here, bad comments are not deleted (too many of them).

By bad I mean (1) unproductive comments that don't drive the discussion forward and (2) disrespectful conduct.

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EliSka93@reddit

Not enough experience to realize that moderation in the time of AI slop isn't just good, it's necessary.

(I know "it isn't just , it's " is a thing AI says a lot, but for once I, a human, actually chose to use it anyways)

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break_card@reddit

Sub is inundated with bot posts. Reddit has become borderline unusable these past few months.

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ham_plane@reddit

I've noticed a really stark uptick in the number of thinly-veiled product pitches here recently

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I was trying to avoid saying that outright because I didn't want to sound like an idiot at the time. Like someone just randomly coming into a dev reddit for discussing anything that is related to being a dev in the industry, and they choose to start talking upbeat about a completely new and unproven technology. At least when I was in college ages ago my instructor for web was like, "Yeah so we are being sponsored by Apple, so we're obligated to have at least some use of dreamweaver."

Also this random memory of some classmates running over a laptop with a car so they could use the warranty to upgrade. Man those were the days...

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MishkaZ@reddit

I saw a WILD one, but i follow the warhammer fantasy ttrpg subreddit. A while back some of the mods got hacked, and basically what ended up happening was full on ads. Like basically a bot would post a thread like "out of these three which crypto gambling site should I use?", and then a bunch of bots would swarm in simulating a conversation on why to gamble on X and not on Y, Z. They had arguments and debates, and memes. All of them bots. Again, all on a warhammer fantasy ttrpg subreddit.

So my theory is, the reason why karma farming bots is a thing, is specifically in order to astro-turf or do these thinly veiled product ads, like the crypto gambling ad.

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Neuromante@reddit

Thanks to shit like this I've become more and more paranoid of bot accounts lately.

This subredit is having a huge issue with "developers" claiming Claude is the next big thing and great, and software engineering is doomed for a while, but I didn't really realized that there are LLM-powered accounts on the subreddit until I made a post here about me being burnt out and I started to get weird replies that either shown no reading skills ("For the tone of your message, it looks like you're burnt out" no shit, it's literally on the thread title) or very open-ended questions that led nowhere.

And seriously, why would I want to go to a forum to talk with a robot?

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Colt2205@reddit

The claude ones were especially bad and I'm kind of blaming the blitz for half the problems that are going on surrounding the stupid thing.

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Accurate-Pirate-3036@reddit

beep boop

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Sunstorm84@reddit

Might be just be my bad luck, but I noticed a massive uptick in doom saying “developer” bot posts in the last couple of days

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Cahnis@reddit

I feel the same way about the Brazilian dev sub. It feels incredibly astroturfed

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ForeverYonge@reddit

Claw-Reddit is here

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WestEndOtter@reddit

I saw a similar problem on the les miserables forum. It has few / low contact mods and for a week or two it was bombarded with poats every 6 hours for which is the best tv-ip service(with one suggested) with a flood of 0 second old comments explaining why they agree with the op and what amazing service they had with them. Eventually the mod returned from leave, added banned words and appointed deputies

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humanquester@reddit

Yeah, a lot of it is this and pumping stocks and probably during the election they can make money doing Astroturfing and whatnot.

Its funny because the more they do this the more poisonous it is for crypto at large.

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ColdPorridge@reddit

Yeah it’s been crazy. Thankfully I vibe coded a new tool in rust to help identify and filter out thinly veiled product pitches on Reddit, it’s only $3.99/month please buy it

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sexual--predditor@reddit

✨ Introducing: PitchShield Not another “AI tool”… but a signal filter for your sanity.

🧠 Built with Rust (because speed matters) 🔍 Detects thinly veiled product pitches before they waste your time 🧹 Cleans your feed so you actually see… real content

It’s not just “ad detection”… it’s context-aware vibe filtering. And honestly, once you turn it on, Reddit feels usable again.

💸 Just $3.99/month Less than a coffee. More than your current peace of mind.

👉 Stop reading ads disguised as opinions. Start scrolling like a human again.

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vasaris@reddit

Absolutely fantastic. https://blogas.domenai.lt/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Shut-up-and-take-my-money-1200x750.jpg

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polypolip@reddit

There are two things happening bot posts that get a lot of bot interaction, and then posts claiming moderators have to be replaced because they lock or remove posts with a lot of interaction, pointing at the bot posts.

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Educational-Heat-920@reddit

It's a double whammy for dev subs because people can vibe code projects to completion now.

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thekwoka@reddit

well, to some kind of completion.

When you have no target, anything you hit is the goal.

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dashingThroughSnow12@reddit

Then post it on a a few related (in a vague sense) subreddits.

I think Reddit’s dedup logic is getting better, or maybe spam fighting. Awhile back I had the same post three times in my feed beside each other that the clankkka had posted to three different subreddits. Was pretty common to see doubles.

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Whitchorence@reddit

It may not make you a great citizen of the ecosystem but setting floors for comment/post karma tends to filter out most of the garbage pretty easily.

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MishkaZ@reddit

Oh man, a lot of subreddits are just completely swarmed by them. I remember going down the rabbit-hole a year a go and realizing like, unironically, 9/10 posts on ProgrammerHumor are made by bots. How did I know? They all were made around similar times, and post to the same three subs. ProgrammerHumor, AITA, AskReddit.

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humanquester@reddit

As far as I can tell there are no bots on any of the discord servers I'm on - they're all small so I guess they'd be noticed eventually. I wonder if that's where human activity on the internet is heading - small spaces where everyone kinda knows eachother, despite being anons.

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MishkaZ@reddit

Honestly, I'm all for a return to the ye' olde small niche forums.

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humanquester@reddit

For sure, a lot of people regard the internet as a bad thing here and are trying to get out of it.

Unfortunately I think we americans are in a bit of a cycle of doom - we don't have a lot of public spaces or social orginizations and we're getting more and more paranoid and out of touch with reality, our trust in orginizations and our neighbors is very low, most people belive crime and violence are enormously higher than they really are. Plenty of people on all sides of the political spectrum barricade themselves up in their houses behind walls, heaps of video cameras and guns. Its going to be hard to get out of that and somehow rebuild trust in eachother.

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03263@reddit

No kidding, now we have dependence on the internet.

People sometimes complain they need timely Amazon deliveries because they're disabled or elderly and for a long time I just said no, no you don't, do whatever people did before Amazon. But I realized, what they did largely isn't possible anymore. The support structure changed.

We don't just need to trust each other we need to depend on each other again. In a way that is not abstracted into anonymous financial transactions.

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humanquester@reddit

Yeah good point. I'm trying to do more local financial stuff myself.

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daddywookie@reddit

I keep trying to work,out a new social media, something like Google+ with the circles to keep each group less than 100 people for social cohesion… but I keep ending up back at what is basically WhatsApp.

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-no_aura-@reddit

It’s been steady downhill for a long time now

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micseydel@reddit

I feel like the last 4 months have gotten a lot worse. Exponentially. Like, a slop singularity is coming, almost.

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Sunstorm84@reddit

Accelerated enshittification.

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Empanatacion@reddit

Also, posts getting taken down by mods 2-3 days after they are posted.

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lost12487@reddit

To be fair, they did ask for help when they updated the rules about AI/LLM posts.

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ideamotor@reddit

Yea, after all these years (been here since digg 1.0; longer than this account’s age), I may have to finally give it up.

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pr0cess1ng@reddit

There use to be corners of reddit that were tolerable. Everything has been compromised now. Bots swarm anything with a pulse

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random8847@reddit

Even the Digg beta has closed down for now because of the bot problem. They really didn't anticipate it would be this bad.

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AlexanderTroup@reddit

I have noticed a load of posts that seem to be honest at first glance, but they're all like "How are you all managing this new world where AI is at the heart of our role.", and it feels like an attempt to make AI seem way more adopted than it actually is.

After learning about Claude Code's "undercover" mode in the leek last week I'm certain that GenAI companys are attempting to flood the narrative on spaces like here as part of their efforts for the bubble not to burst.

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humanquester@reddit

I think they're targeting certain large subs like this one. I've seen far more bots in here than any small subs I regularly visit.

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NewFuturist@reddit

I browsed the top reddit subs, and this is what it told me about bot activity on reddit =>

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Silver_Daikon6310@reddit

bots are prcticing their takeover strategies here

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dashingThroughSnow12@reddit

My block list is ever growing and the bot spam is never ending.

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Hefty_Breadfruit@reddit

I’m really concerned that I haven’t felt the same? What screams “bot” to you? Why has it become unusable to you?

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heywintermute@reddit

This is why https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1rwq7q7/auto_lock_posts_to_combat_astroturfing/

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secretBuffetHero@reddit

I do not understand. So we are locking because some posts (which???) are being astroturfed (why and by whom?)

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engineered_academic@reddit

Karma bot farmers. Once you see the pattern, you start noticing them everywhere.

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ToyDingo@reddit

Care to enlighten us? What are these patterns? I'm completely ignorant on who is or is not a bot.

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teerre@reddit

I'm sure there are more sophisticated approaches, but an enormous amount of bots all posts in lowercase and have usernames like [noun][noun][4 digits]. For the last couple months there's not a single day I don't ban at least a couple users like that

If you check https://www.reddit.com/r/BotBouncer/ you'll see how bad it is

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engineered_academic@reddit

I guess telling the botnets this will help them make better bots. You just know you are interacting with a bot and not a real human. My sneaking suspicion is Reddit knows this but chooses to look the other way because it shows "engagement" with the platform to make posts look "busy".

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judasblue@reddit

Oh, they definitely encourage bots and troll farms at this point. Hiding post histories is basically just to hide conflicting narratives and trends that would make it blatant that you are looking at synthetic content.

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AchillesDev@reddit

Locking them does nothing to prevent it though.

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CherimoyaChump@reddit

I mean, the end goal isn't the karma. They make karma-farming posts to legitimize the account and maybe to have a bit of cover. The end goal is usually marketing a product in some way or another.

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Chennsta@reddit

a lot of companies advertise through reddit posts and comments

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AchillesDev@reddit

The mods don't know how subreddits work so they think locking threads will somehow stop posters from editing ads into their posts (it doesn't work this way), instead they just end discussion early and prevent followup comments in high-ranking search results.

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todo_code@reddit

From what I can tell, many people are not reading the rules before posting.

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micseydel@reddit

A lot of histories are hidden nowadays (boo reddit) but I've noticed more larpers too. I definitely believe this problem isn't 100% bots.

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dbxp@reddit

Mods can see a 28 day history of anyone who posts in their sub

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Ok-Entertainer-1414@reddit

Why do you assume the posts are written by people?

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engineered_academic@reddit

Essentially it's this. I remove a ton of posts every day for rulebreaking material.

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Idea-Aggressive@reddit

Moderators gonna moderate.

Sometimes they are doing it wrong in my opinion. Not very community driven

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Pleasant-Cellist-927@reddit

Wish some of you knew just how easy it is to manipulate this website. "Community driven" means nothing when a big chunk the community are bots.

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mq2thez@reddit

The slop runneth freely

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arlenep3tal8054@reddit

didn't notice till you pointed it out

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Pleasant-Cellist-927@reddit

Funny enough, this account is another slop'posting bot.

Fuck off..

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hw999@reddit

time to head on over to lemmy

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National-Loquat2773@reddit

reminds me of when digg was overrun with spam and everyone jumped ship

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RedditName9000@reddit

It's pretty disruptive an unpleasant to have posts that are getting a lot of engagement get moderated. Kind of a worst of both worlds situation. I think rule breaking posts that get getting a lot of mostly neutral or positive engagement should stay up. Maybe the mods need to give themselves more time to approve new posts up front if this is a regular problem.

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AromaticStrike9@reddit

Strongly disagree. Just because something has a lot of engagement doesn't mean it fits this sub. The line has to be drawn somewhere or this just becomes another useless general discussion sub.

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RedditName9000@reddit

I think that would be fine, to have strict rules strictly enforced, but when they are enforced on a delayed timeline after the posts already have tons of comments and people are having productive discussions, that's when I think it's a problem. If that's what the mods and community want then I think manual approval would be a better method than moderating posts while they're having active discussions.

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micseydel@reddit

I think manual approval would be a better method than moderating posts

I'm curious what mods have to say about that, but I worry about observability as compared to what they're doing right now. I suspect your suggestion would be less labor for them though.

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engineered_academic@reddit

There is so much rule breaking content. Especially around AI. If you saw the amount if slop I see on a daily basis, people are already smashing the report button on rule breaking content. Either we support the people who obey the rules or let it go because it's AI slop engagement by people who glaze AI like it's the second coming of Jesus Christ or people venting about how they just got laid off or hate AI.

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tmarthal@reddit

Especially when the engagement is from... other accounts that may or may not be real

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tmarthal@reddit

"No Low Effort Posts"

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Euphoric-Neon-2054@reddit

The goal of the sub is to reproduce stack overflow culture to give oldheads a nostalgic experience as far as i can tell

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AromaticStrike9@reddit

I noticed in the last week that there seemed to be a huge uptick in rule-breaking/off-topic posts. Or, maybe I've just been on reddit more than usual and the mods usually filter those out. This sub is not for general discussion, it's meant to be fairly focused.