I’ve noticed quite a few top posters that are using LLMs or other software to repost news links and images, probably from Reddit, onto a bunch of specific forums. They don’t identify as bot accounts, but they are fairly easy to spot because they are posting a steady stream of posts, around 2-3 posts an hour, 24/7. No sleep periods, just constant posts, at an unnatural rate.

Here’s a few examples I’ve found:

  • @[email protected] - Joined 2 months ago, 1.69K posts, sole moderator of Build A PC [email protected], steady stream of posts without sleeping, only posts on 4 different forums
  • @[email protected] - Joined 2 months ago, 1.3K posts, steady stream of posts without sleeping, only posts on 5-6 different forums
  • @[email protected] - Joined 3 months ago, 2K posts, moderator of 15 different forums only on piefed.world, also a hidden moderator of Beep—[email protected] (yes, with an emdash) with zero posts and zero users, seems to try to evade detection by having some posting breaks in-between

Keep an eye on these kind of posters, and report them when you see them.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    51·
    3 days ago

    Can you edit the post to say that you suspect that this is what they are doing instead of stating it as a fact?

    I am also suspicious, but looking through the accounts the activity could still be a human using LemmySchedule to schedule the posts ahead of time. There aren’t that many posts each day, and I couldn’t easily map the posts to any existing subreddit or other source. Normally these bot accounts have a lot more posts, and that’s why they get blocked or banned.

    It could just be a user that is using potentially harmful strategies to get communities related to their interests off the ground

    • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
      81·
      3 days ago

      You can look at the comments on the first two accounts. They’ve outright stated they use automated tools to make their posts.

      • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        I did find confirmation for the first account, but supposedly they are going to make a new account for the automated stuff. That should make it easier for people to ban or block it

        https://lemmy.ca/comment/23580356

        I didn’t find anything in the second account though

        • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          They must have deleted the comment then. They said something like “yes I use a script to crosspost from reddit, I can set it to run when I click a button or automatically”.