r/ModSupport • u/progress18 • Jun 15 '23
Admin Replied Over 1500 ChatGPT bot accounts banned during the past couple of days
r/worldnews has been hit by a wave of ChatGPT accounts.
Somewhere over 1500 2400 bot accounts have been banned so far.
Most of the accounts start off their activity with a self-post on their profile with 4-12 post karma. They then move on to other subs to farm comment karma. The self-post on their profile is mostly gibberish. The title of that self-post sometimes breaks mid-sentence if there's a comma or semi-colon in it.
The accounts were all created during the past 80 days.
This is an example list of posts that the bots attacked.
/r/programming noticed that their sub was being hit with the same wave of bots before they went private. The bots hit other subs such as /r/askwomen, /r/askmen, /r/askreddit and TIL.
Recently, each new bot comments 2-3 times per minute and it sometimes fluctuates down to 2-3 times per hour.
Is anything being done to help reduce the amount of these bots from registering new accounts or spamming different subs?
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u/ohhyouknow 💡 Expert Helper Jun 15 '23
Publicfreakout gets hit by bots like this but they are usually around 120 days old, and have a history of “aww sweet kitten so cute” like comments in r/aww.
How are you finding and banning them? They are fairly difficult to spot in context, it takes looking at every single account 100-150 days old to determine if they are a bot. Do y’all have bots running to catch them?
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u/Handicapreader Jun 15 '23
They are seemingly innocuous at first glance, and they come off as a false positive, but after you check user history and see there's 1 self post with 4-5 karma and 1 comment over and over with new accounts it becomes readily apparent it's a chatGPT bot. After 100-200 of them, you can start to pattern bots pretty easily just by reading them.
They typically like to find top comments and reply: hi I'm an expert, as a professional, having studied...and end with: I hope we can learn from this, stay safe everyone, etc
ex:
Unfortunately, this is not a new issue in North Korea. The government has a history of neglecting their people and prioritizing their own interests above those of their citizens. It is heartbreaking to hear about innocent people suffering and dying from starvation due to a lack of access to food and resources. However, it is important to note that it is difficult to verify these claims due to the country's government-controlled media and limited access to outside information.
ex:
This news is not surprising since many countries have been involved, both openly and secretly, in supporting Ukraine's fight against Russia. However, providing missiles for air defense is a major escalation, and it remains to be seen how Russia will respond. Hopefully, this will lead to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, but history has shown that conflicts like these rarely end without bloodshed. Stay safe, everyone.
ex:
Well, it's no secret that tensions between Ukraine and Russia have been running high for quite some time now. As for the Ukraine counter-offensive update from June 14th, it seems like things are looking up for Ukraine as they have reportedly made more gains. As for Russia's HIMARS woes, well, that seems to be a bit of a setback for them. At the end of the day, it's tough to say what will happen next but keeping up-to-date on these types of developments is certainly important.
ex:
Yes, some Italian regions are allowed to lower speed limits to reduce pollution. However, it is important to note that this may not be a long-term solution to the overall issue of air pollution in Italy. Other measures should also be taken to address the root causes of pollution.
ex:
As a Reddit user who has delved into the darker corners of the internet, I can tell you that natural disasters can be incredibly destructive and dangerous. Cyclone Biparjoy is no exception as it poses a threat to both India and Pakistan. It's always better to be safe than sorry in situations like this and I'm glad to hear that over 170,000 people have been evacuated. Let's hope that the storm doesn't cause too much damage and everyone stays safe.
ex:
Wow, that's pretty wild! It'll be interesting to see how the white rhinos adapt to the DRC environment after so long. I hope conservation efforts continue so these majestic creatures can thrive in their natural habitats.
Some are crafty and not so obvious. You have to see what they are replying to to make out if it's a coherent answer and not gibberish.
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u/whicky1978 Jun 16 '23
Hilarious because 99% Reddit is not talk like this
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u/Daniel15 Jun 26 '23
You mean you've never started a comment with "As a Reddit user who has delved into the darker corners of the internet"? Saying you're a Reddit user in your Reddit comments is totally normal!
3
u/NatoBoram Jun 27 '23
As a Reddit user who has delved into the darker corners of Internet, I can assure you that I never start my sentences like that.
19
u/Isentrope 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
We are thankful for the help we’ve received so far and we do see that some of the bots are being shadowbanned, but it’s still a lot of accounts and some of them have aged past our various limitations. Doing higher age gates would just be unfair to users and blow up our queues. Mods are waking up to a few pages of overnight comments to evaluate and a large number of them are bots.
10
u/Carbon_Rod 💡 Expert Helper Jun 16 '23
I've banned over 800 of these bots in TodayILearned just today. Over the last week? Well over 1600, and that's just what I personally banned. Know how many the Ban Evasion filter caught? Three.
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u/3rdEyeDeuteranopia Jun 15 '23
1500 over what time period?
Do we know these are ChatGPT or just some other program that copies comments or just posts 10/10? There doesn't really seem to be an AI chat program requirement from what I've seen from these bots in r/nba.
BotDefense gets a lot of these, but many times I see a popular thread that can have quite a few of these bots in it that were not picked up by BotDefense.
I've been looking at their profile and reporting them as bots from their profile view for their posts in other subreddits to assist in the other popular subs.
17
u/progress18 Jun 15 '23
Over 1500 over a few days.
It's likely ChatGPT-related.
They're not 10/10 bots but we do see those.
In case anyone is not familiar with what a 10/10 bot looks like:
https://i.imgur.com/2iUUioF.png
A 10/10 bot generally piggybacks on another highly upvoted comment towards the top of a thread.
3
u/whicky1978 Jun 16 '23
I had one that copied one of my memes and didn’t even change the title of the post in r/boglememes
12
u/Isentrope 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
It is not a copy paste bot though we get those too. The bots seem to respond to a prompt based on the title of the article they comment in.
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u/3rdEyeDeuteranopia Jun 15 '23
What are your biggest indicators of these posts being a bot? The self posts, account age, and posts in certain subs?
14
u/Isentrope 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
Account age, karma, the weird post, and their comment is clearly a summary of the article title with some variation.
13
u/freakierchicken 💡 Skilled Helper Jun 15 '23
Writing style is a big indicator. Once you get used to the syntax it's fairly easy to spot even when they try to mask
5
u/-doughboy Jun 16 '23
The ones in worldnews I can spot easily now that I've banned hundreds of them. The comments all follow the same structure, as do the usernames. If they had made them less identifiable it would be an even bigger issue.
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u/istara Jun 17 '23
Every single one of these comments comes up as 100% AI when pasted into a ChatGPT detector I've used.
Comments from genuine accounts (that have been wrongly flagged by AutoMod as GenAI) score at most 70% AI, but in most cases are correctly analysed as human.
9
u/Halaku 💡 Expert Helper Jun 15 '23
Have you tried "Filter if no verified email" in Automod?
It'll jam up your queue, but at least it won't flood the subreddit proper.
5
u/-doughboy Jun 16 '23
That's what we are doing, most are getting sent to the mod queue to be banned and comments removed.
13
u/Handicapreader Jun 15 '23
This is speculation on my part, but I'm pretty sure this is what we're up against.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/ukraine-shuts-down-huge-bot-farm-pushing-russian-propaganda
6
u/haggur Jun 15 '23
Pretty sure we're getting it in /r/smallbusinessuk too - certainly a lot of comments with a suspiciously similar, and slightly "off", writing style.
2
u/dieyoufool3 Jun 18 '23
Run comments through ZeroGPT (chatGPT detector) and if it comes up 100%, ban them.
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u/CapriGuitar 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
This is where a damn good context bot would be useful. One that has the power to ban. I feel for you. If you need help clearing queues. Just ask. Good luck.
11
u/PossibleCrit Reddit Admin: Community Jun 15 '23
Hey progress18!
I dug into the links that you provided here and a good chunk of these do appear to have since been actioned by the appropriate team. There did appear to be more that were floating about and I've let the team know about those accounts as well.
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u/Isentrope 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
Thanks for looking into it! The problem though is that they seem to still be coming and they haven’t reliably been filtered yet sitewide. With the way this bot net is working, they’re probably just hoping a handful of the bots get through which, given the sheer volume, is probable. I camped the new comments queue to check and automod is not catching them all. Is there a way to bring this to the attention of a team that can detect a pattern to just shadowban them? I understand that this is a bad time with everything else going on, but there are times when like 10% of new comments are just bots, and we have no idea what they could be trying to use these for (hopefully just porn spam but that’s also a ton of bots they could use to vote manipulate just about anything).
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u/PossibleCrit Reddit Admin: Community Jun 15 '23
Is there a way to bring this to the attention of a team that can detect a pattern [and actioned them]?
This is the team that I've alerted here, yes.
They do appear to have already actioned quite a few of these already and I've let them know that some accounts may be getting through.
16
u/Kwahn Jun 15 '23
Any progress on removing the really dumb idea to have Reddit auto-suggest available, well-RNG'd names that make it much easier for bot farmers to make mass accounts compared to trying names?
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u/Natanael_L 💡 New Helper Jun 16 '23
Yeah, I hate that change too because before those suggestions nobody had consistent naming schemes so bot networks always stood out next to regular users
27
u/Deucer22 💡 Skilled Helper Jun 15 '23
What's being done about karma farming to prevent these bots from posting in the first place?
10
u/IranianGenius Jun 15 '23
I think there are bots (non-admin sanctioned) that ban users who have also posted to the (admin sanctioned) subreddits that bots use for karma farming.
I could be mistaken.
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u/ixfd64 Jun 15 '23
I've heard some spammers block those bots to avoid being automatically banned.
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u/Natanael_L 💡 New Helper Jun 16 '23
Then use another secret mod bot to look for accounts who blocked the public mod bot
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u/Alex09464367 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
What is being done about T-shirts spam? The post with a stolen t-shirt with an account asking where it is from then another account sending a malicious link. They then thank them.
Anyone who points this out gets their comment vote manipulated down
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u/SnowySaint 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
Personally, I find it fucking insane that Reddit Inc allows: (A.)Unlimited amount of accounts per "person" (B.) unverified email accounts get full access and (C.) Karma farming isn't against TOS.
Fixing those issues would go a long way towards your "teams" being freed up enough to be proactive instead of reactive.
Imagine what Reddit would look like if they made common-sense changes to deal with real issues instead of making Reddit worse for millions of users (for a few bucks).
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u/istara Jun 16 '23
The pace seems to be increasing, they are just endless.
They pretty much all score 100% AI when pasted into one of those GPT detection tools. I haven't seen any false positives from comments I've checked.
If they could simply be deleted at source in some way, before even hitting the sub/AutoMod/Modqueue it would be enormously helpful.
I don't know from a technical perspective what it would mean to run every worldnews comment through one of those tools first, or at least every account under x months old, but if it's feasible please can we try it?
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u/GFoxtrot 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
But what are you doing long term to identify and prevent bad accounts like this?
Or is any engagement good for your numbers so you’re letting it slide?
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u/qtx 💡 Expert Helper Jun 15 '23
If only we had some restrictions on API access so these bots would be far less..
(I'M KIDDING.. maybe)
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u/duckofdeath87 Jun 17 '23
We don't know that they are using the API. You can do a lot with a headless automated browser like phantomjs
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u/crowcawer Jun 15 '23
Karma gating really doesn’t work in most scenarios as the bots will eventually build up the karma in the shadows.
Reddit needs to require a phone number for access on a parent profile, and then alts could be tied to that parent profile.
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u/ADefiniteDescription 💡 New Helper Jun 15 '23
Karma gating really doesn’t work in most scenarios as the bots will eventually build up the karma in the shadows.
Perhaps if the admins didn't insist on doing literally nothing about all of the karma farming subreddits this strategy would work. Alas, they don't care.
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u/kingofallnorway Jun 16 '23
Who does this karma hungry OP think he is? This gloating, power hungry guy has nearly 10 MILLION points he's falsely farmed with a mixture of banning users to steal their content and using AI to make posts on an automated schedule. This progress guy is part of the contagion that has destroyed this site.
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u/dieyoufool3 Jun 15 '23 edited Jun 15 '23
This is an issue that isn't going away either. We really need help if we're to avoid Reddit succumbing to the dark prophecy that is Dead Internet theory.
Edit: We're over 1800 bots banned.