I've been on reddit (yes, Im embarrassed that I haven't quit the cocaine) for about 15 years now. The changes in the last year or so have been noticeable.

For one thing, the worst of the ranting trolls are gone. I used to occasionally get some replies from people who obviously were just out to get a reaction, usually by swearing and name calling with the kind of grammar skills you'd expect from an angry 9 yr old who just discovered how to log on. Those have largely disappeared. But I have a hard time believing that trolls are gone off the net, so is it just better moderation? Or has reddit just implemented more auto rules that squelch the noisy juvenile behavior?

Secondly, Ive noticed the discussions becoming much more detailed. It was typical, especially in political subs, to see the only comments that got strongly upvoted, were short quips, the more smart ass the better, and then for those to be followed by a long succession of similar quips. That still happens, but Ive noticed a lot more lengthy discussion with redditors actually disovering they can create paragraphs and debate more maturely. Is that a change in human behavior? Or are those not likely humans?

And some behavior really has me suspicious. In particular I have gotten the same reply several times to a comment. It will say, "Thank you for sharing your comment, I appreciate it. Could you tell me more about your _______?". This COULD be a human, but the fact that it always starts the same and then asks me for further engagement really has me wondering, if for no other reason than I dont recall the average redditor being that polite.

Ive also noted some strange comment patterns. Yesterday I interacted with a poster and then checked their post history. Over 10,000 comments and they were ALL in the last few months during the run up to the Canadian election and ALL were against one party. Only 4 posts but 10,000 comments?. If there are NO posts in any other sub that seems very suspicious. Either a bot or someone hired to do as much damage as possible?

Reddit has changed. Its now publicly owned. And like all other social media it lives on engagement so I have no doubt that it will do whatever it takes with AI bots to keep people online and engaged. But how good are they? I just hate being 'taken for a ride' by a bot and a company. But how do you ever know if its a human or a bot you're talking to?

I've got a notion to put some of my extra energy into learning to code. I'm familiar with EXTREME basics - I did some coding in BASIC and Python when I was younger ("Hello world" type stuff, and some futzing around with my Ti calculators programming capabilities) and while I had a pretty good knack for it I never developed it further.

I'd like to use this as a chance to create something useful for me - a discord bot for my server. We have a handful of bots doing a few odds and ends, and I'd like to try and work something out to consolidate things. That's getting a bit ahead of myself though - initial scope would be simple: have the bot do a simple task like counting +rep points, or something silly like telling a joke.

I don't really have any idea of where to start - what resources I need, what language to use, or really anything about how this all works. Any assistance at all would be welcome!

To be clear - I want to learn to code, and specifically I want to learn in a way where it is immediately applicable and useful in a context I care about.

I just finished reading I hate the new internet post, in which the OP stated:

Every social medium is just bots. The front page of Reddit is easily 35% easily detectable bots at least and who knows what the rest is comprised of.

Why couldn't we create a bot database, which I imagine would work similarly to uBlock for ads? There would be a number of signals to attempt to classify users of social media sites (likely human, likely bot, etc.) in addition to user-provided feedback ("I think this person is a bot" or "this account is me -- definitely not a bot").

An extension could then be attached to the database to provide visual changes to social media platforms ("WARNING! LIKELY BOT!") or simply hide bot posts/comments.

Off the top of my head, some bot signals:

• Posting known duplicate posts with political motivation (e.g. on Reddit you see the same exact post about how the tariffs will create a stronger America by different posters) [strong indicator]
• Usernames that follow the lazy bot format, e.g., Pretentious_Rabbit_2355 [weak indicator]
• Usage of AI-generated or ripped off profile pictures, post images, etc. [strong indicator]
• etc.

On the crowdsourced side, there would have to be some rules in place to prevent profile bombing, etc.

All in all, I could see something like this adding a bit of human value back to the various social media platforms AND I would think it would lead to higher advertisement click rates (bots will become less valuable over time on a given platform and decide to invest their resources elsewhere, while "human" user engagement increases at the same time).

If this concept already exists, I apologize. I only did a very quick google.

Discuss: namespace clashes expose and ensure instabilities in user-side solutions to interface problems.

Case in point -- the RemindMeBot, which will send a timed reminder message to anyone who calls it in a reddit comment with the phrase "RemindMe!", has been cloned and iterated upon by another bot, Kzreminderbot, which responds to the exact same trigger phrase. Both bots reply to the comment threads where they are summoned. Kzreminderbot has slightly more diverse features, including email/text notification, but the interesting thing here (I think) is the impotence of the response from the creator of RemindMeBot, who has added a link in their comment replies to send annoyed feedback to the second bot.

We talk occasionally about the scramble for usernames on new services, but this is an slightly novel example of the cascading hierarchies of website design. A feature which reddit lacked is added by a bot, but that bot is too provisional to cover the hole which it was meant to fill.

While reading up on what it takes to run this site, it just occurred to me that the site is hosted on one server with one network connection. Adding a CDN or cloud based DDOS protection would run contrary to the "no third party" thing we've got going on here, so that doesn't seem like an option.

So I got to wondering, what would happen if a malicious actor were to sic a botnet on us? I imagine the outcome would not be good. Do we have any strategies to deal with this?