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A new kind of reddit karma bot (self.TheoryOfReddit)

TheBrainwasher14 が 投稿

I've been meaning to make a post like this for a while, but haven't gotten around to it.

Relatively recently, I've noticed a wave of a new kind of spam bot on reddit. It's not the sex spam shit bots that Reddit admins cracked onto (that became very bad a few months ago and the admins had to devote special time to it) but bots with simple usernames that link to YouTube videos. The YouTube channels uploading the videos are new, don't usually have profile pictures (to my knowledge) and repost without crediting sources. The videos themselves are reposts of videos that have been previously popular on Reddit.

I'm thinking a spam network has figured out how to find older successful reddit posts, upload the videos under these spam YouTube channels, and link to them using brand new Reddit accounts as some sort of massive spam network to... I dunno why, exactly. My best guess is to make these reddit accounts valuable to advertisers and get them over the karma threshold many subs have now. EDIT: I didn't even think about the possibility that they're mining ad revenue off YouTube. That seems far more likely.

I don't believe the admins have cracked onto this yet, since this /r/movies post is currently racing to the front page. The account /u/hht99 is the uploader (note the simple non-sensical username) and has only ever made this reddit post. As I found using KarmaDecay, here is the original reddit post posted five months ago that racked up 3,273 points. Another video on that YouTube channel (also assumably a repost), this one, was also posted by /u/hgnn87 (another simple username).

Am I onto something or am I reading too far into the whole thing? Sorry if any of this is confusing.

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[–]Alphadog33 50ポイント51ポイント  (9子コメント)

Am I onto something or am I reading too far into the whole thing? Sorry if any of this is confusing.

It's not your imagination. You're right.

There was a discussion a week ago in /r/atheism about these guys, and /u/VictoriaisReal did a good job of illustrating how these accounts work (then I chimed in and gave other examples):

https://np.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/4knc55/tv_preachers_living_like_rock_stars_can_we_please/

Edit: My one quibble is that I don't think there's a long-term plan to sell these accounts to advertisers. My hunch is these guys are just trying to make money off YouTube ads.

[–]TheBrainwasher14[S] 10ポイント11ポイント  (6子コメント)

Another interesting tidbit: the account I mentioned in the post (/u/hht99) has 9 comment karma, despite having no visible comments. Make of that what you will.

[–]Alphadog33 13ポイント14ポイント  (2子コメント)

He deleted a few of his previous comments, but they're still visible in some caches:

http://archive.is/U7O32

[–]strallweat 22ポイント23ポイント  (1子コメント)

They most definitely copied comments. The accounts work together by posting an old askreddit question and copying the top answers. They get enough karma to bypass the spam filters in subs like /r/videos and then they can start posting reuploaded yt videos with ads.

[–]potatoesarenotcool 12ポイント13ポイント  (0子コメント)

This goes seriously fucking deep

[–]girafa 10ポイント11ポイント  (0子コメント)

9 comment karma, despite having no visible comments. Make of that what you will.

We require 5 comment karma to submit anything in /r/movies. Kills nearly all spam. This person worked the system. Deleting comments is 99.9999999% indication of malicious behavior.

[–]HaggisEnchiladas 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

I was wondering about that.

/u/littlegame just posted a vimeo video which was rehosted on dailymotion, and their link karma shows 4086 despite the fact that the only submitted link visible is just over 100.

[–]rigrnr27 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

judging from the comments though, this seems like a normal person's account doesn't it? maybe they just delete posts for privacy or something

[–]VictoriaIsReal 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

It's still going on as if nothing happened. Check out this thread from 5 hours ago on /r/atheism. Same shit: fresh Reddit account, fresh Youtube channel with ripped videos...

[–]DerpsterIV 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Wow. It's a week later and the thread is deleted.

[–]strallweat 20ポイント21ポイント  (4子コメント)

Check out /r/thesefuckingaccounts for a lists of most of these bots.

[–]WaffleSandwhiches 5ポイント6ポイント  (2子コメント)

That sub really needs to publish an official blacklist.

[–]strallweat 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

Most of the accounts are new though and the spammers just create new accounts to replace the ones that get banned.

[–]Alphadog33 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

Good idea. I just started one:

https://np.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/4lwdu1/list_of_active_spam_ring_accounts/

[–]wackymayor 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Than post them all to /r/Botwatchman.

[–]Stendarpaval 13ポイント14ポイント  (4子コメント)

Perhaps their motive is to cash in on the views on the Youtube videos.

[–]reverseswang 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

This came up in the /r/atheism thread too, I think, but: how does that work? In the thread about the reddit CEO talking about ads, it was mentioned that many - most? - reddit users use adblockers. If those people are linked to a YouTube video where they're also using an adblocker, won't it simply not generate a lot of revenue?

[–]Stendarpaval 6ポイント7ポイント  (1子コメント)

Even if a single video doesn't generate a lot of revenue, this practice seems easy to scale to hundreds (maybe thousands?) of videos.

[–]Textual_Aberration 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

With Youtube's imprecise rulebook and the complexity of the internet, spamming various social hubs with money-yielding reposts would probably be a lucrative venture. If I were an evil hacker straight out of a B-move I would do exactly the same thing.

By using one website to abuse another they end up solidly in the realm of a loophole. The internet is far less legally binding than reality, meaning that most things like this will simply disappear when somebody figure out how to root them out. There's less consequence to it too, which makes it inevitable.

I can't imagine bots take very much computing power to run so a single program could be used to launch as many bots as they want.

[–]Fixhotep 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

it pads their numbers such as views, minutes watched and retention and therefore it will get love from the search engine algorithm where the vid can begin to get organic views.

[–]girafa 11ポイント12ポイント  (0子コメント)

/r/movies mod here. Thanks for doing this. We're workin on some steps to prevent some of this.

[–]Fenzik 4ポイント5ポイント  (2子コメント)

This is maybe heading towards TheoryofYouTube territory, but how is it that these accounts can rip popular videos and reupload them, presumably in pursuit of ad revenue, when actual content creators are having their OC taken down on what seems to be a regular basis? Is there a reporting system for these reposted videos?

[–]Sarkos 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Big companies automate detection and DMCA. Which leads to all the false positives we hear about, but also means they never have to put up with this shit.

[–]potatoesarenotcool 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just report for copyright.

[–]tehbertl 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

You're absolutely right - it's been happening in /r/youtubehaiku and /r/ContagiousLaughter as well. Reposts of older videos that were uploaded quite recently; the same exact title on Reddit and YouTube (sometimes even the description too); sometimes unlisted.

[–]30672742071180134913 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

I hope these bots stay in the default subreddits.

[–]XniklasX 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

They dont unfortunately. We have them over on rMMA as well. Several different types of them.

[–]merreborn 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

There were some similar youtube spammers discussed here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/4jodai/viral_marketing_spammers/

[–]El_Dumfuco 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah, I was looking for a video I had seen earlier on Youtube, and I saw it reposted at the same time by three different users with Turkish-sounding names. Weird stuff.

[–]Jorge-Alberto 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

The post and the repost even have a very similar top comment, wtf

[–]anthropologyadam 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Is that what's going on here as well?

[–]avntr13 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Am I about to get banned? I'm human I swear!

[–]onewhitelight 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Theres alao a bot that has commented in the thread, /u/GilbertKajd Its ones of the ones thats linking to an alternate version of the video.

Edit: Also /u/ussell