New subreddit rules targeting harmful bots and astroturfers

Good morning/afternoon/night/etc,

As many of you know, food subreddits are lousy with bots and astroturfers. They come here, make some simple posts and non-impactful comments, then fly off to r/politics or r/conservative or a local city's sub to spout whatever message the botnet operator was paid to spread. It's not good for discourse in those subreddits and makes our sub worse too.

Starting today, we're formalizing 2 rules that have been in use for a while unofficially.

First, we're limiting bot behavior. Good bots like u/haikusbot are still welcome. This is targeted at bots using our sub to make their accounts look legitimate. Since bot behavior is evolving, how we determine what looks like bot behavior will also evolve. This will be up to moderator discretion. For now, we're looking at a few specific behaviors, including (but not limited to):

– Posts that are taken from Instagram/Yelp/etc and reposted here as OC.

– Posts with headlines/captions that are not descriptive.

– Posting repetitively on a schedule (I.E. 7 posts every 8 days).

– Posting alleged OC but unable to answer basic questions like where it's from.

– Excessive or repetitive commenting. If you're commenting "looks good" 46 times an hour in every food sub, you're out.

Second, posts/comments from accounts that are new or have low karma will be sent to moderator review. We will remove them if the poster acts bot-like or if their account history contains insufficient information to determine if they're a bot. Since astroturf accounts frequently start by dropping low-impact comments into food subs in order to make their account look legitimate, we do not want to contribute to that. On the flip-side, newer accounts that post descriptive or informative comments will have a high chance of getting approved.

We realize that any set of anti-bot rules has a chance of flagging benevolent human posters. We'll do our best to prevent that from happening, but since mistakes can happen, kindly message the mod team if you get flagged in error.

Lastly, if you see a post/comment you suspect was posted by a bot or astroturfer, report it as a group rules violation! We rely on user reports to know what to review.

Sincerely,

Your friendly neighborhood OBRobot (not an actual bot)

*Pictured: Carne asada taco from Tacos El Frances in Playas De Tijuana*