A subreddit about TEMU.

Someone missing context doesn’t make them a bot. To be a part of this particular bot network, all 4 points will be present.

Emoticons ≠ emojis.

This is 100% a bot that’s part of the former TEMU network. Every comment is weirdly cheerful, nonsensical, and multiple end in two emojis. Pregenerated Reddit username, too.

No clue.

Yeah. Here’s a few examples.

Exactly this. It functions largely on referral codes.

I’ve dealt with this particular bot problem as a mod. Noticing the pattern early on was easy because they always had posts on TEMU subreddits. Now that those subs are banned, it’s harder.

1. Comment length. Their comments are always less than two lines long.

2. Tone. They always contain at least one exclamation point, and tend to have a tone that I’d say is “cheery to the point it’s offputting.”

3. Context. Reading them, a lot of the time you’ll ask “did they even read what they’re replying to?” The comment seems related, but directly misses the main point.

4. History. Look at the rest of their comments. If more than one ends in two emojis, they’re definitely part of this particular bot network.

Basically every user that has comments that end with two emojis like this is a bot. Originally they existed to drive traffic to TEMU subs, but since Reddit banned those subs they’ve become harder to spot. I think the spammers just forgot to turn off their bot farm.

That user is the alt of a well-known troll. They know exactly what they’re doing.

I’m really thankful for it, so thank you for pushing back. One of the biggest reasons I chose Lemmy over Kbin was the lack of overall user score. I’m fine with posts and comments having a score — it sort of helps one determine what is and isn’t good content for a community, or what might not be good advice — but summing those up on your user profile only leads to weird score measuring contests and a sort of “number go up” addictive cycle. Thank you also for giving us the ability to hide scores if we don’t want to see them.

Time for Ban 2!

I moderated two subreddits over 1m users, one over 250k users, and a handful over 10k users.

Every. single. one. of my team members has left, except for one on one of the tiny subreddits.