Question: Question about Reddit

Bamabuzzard

FB Moderator
Staff member
Aug 15, 2004
30,570
18,360
237
48
Where ever there's BBQ, Bourbon & Football
I'm relatively new to Reddit and its subforums. I am in several trading card collectible subforums and bourbon/whiskey subs. I see administrative "stickies" about "bots" posting and how to recognize them. I'll see posts and click on the comments and see "real" posters post "this is a bot". Why would someone use a "bot" to post things on reddit? What information is someone getting out of doing that?
 

Cruloc

Hall of Fame
Sep 1, 2019
5,447
8,743
187
I've been on reddit and never paid attention to bots. So I googled reddit bots.....interestingly the search yields "how to create reddit bots," "what are the best reddit bots."

Then I found this...a reddit post from 8 years ago:

Hey! Sorry I'm so late. This account is primarily a bot, so I might have some insight.

Like other people have said, it is a script that runs on a timer. For example, this bot pulls the 1500 most recent comments from all subreddits every 30 seconds (number might be wrong. been too long since I looked). I wrote it to then search those comments for the key phrase I'm looking for. If it finds any matches, it posts it's reply.

And yes! Anyone can write one. They are programmed, but it isn't overly difficult. I use python to do all the programming, and the "praw" library to interact with reddit. All actions like getting the comments and replying are done with simple calls, and I don't need to deal with any JSON or GET or POST.



And then this from the same thread....links to creating bots?
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cyrxx/_/cjkje6p
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bamabuzzard

New Posts

Latest threads

TideFans.shop : 2024 Madness!

TideFans.shop - Get YOUR Bama Gear HERE!”></a>
<br />

<!--/ END TideFans.shop & item link \-->
<p style= Purchases made through our TideFans.shop and Amazon.com links may result in a commission being paid to TideFans.