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Comment by imnotreallynew | Hacker News Reader

I run a social media marketing service; we stream all reddit content (~110 posts/comments per second). We run text analysis on comments and bot detection on popular posts.

Most people don’t understand how many bots are influencing public discourse on reddit. It’s really concerning, particular that the “real” users on reddit tend to be young and impressionable.

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> We run text analysis on comments and bot detection on popular posts

Can you give an overview of how your bot detection works?

I assume you don't have any proprietary information?

Are you solely using the text features of the comment to tell if it was posted by a bot?

Thanks.

Would interest me as well. Out of sheer curiosity.

fake activity is how reddit got to threshold growth, the trend continues :P

To anyone unfamiliar with the background:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4139876 ("How Reddit's cofounders built Reddit with an army of fake accounts")

> Most people don’t understand how many bots are influencing public discourse on reddit.

Well, do elaborate pls.

I mean, you even see bot comments on threads that are plain copies of previous comments on the same thread

I would def like to hear more about this if you can elaborate. I have long believed that Reddit is mostly bots because of how often (current thing) is pushed to the front, and any dissenting opinions are downvoted and buried

Or how many of those (current thing) posts end up getting deleted within a day or two. or the poster's account getting deleted. That's purely an anecdote but something I've noticed a handful of times when I've left a browser tab open. It'd be great to have mandated transparency regarding things like this for any "social media".

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