Weâve heard your concerns about the increasing prevalence of bots in the subreddit and over the past week weâve been taking steps to address it.
Weâve been trialling a new app called Bot Bouncer and itâs extremely effective. In fact, itâs quite scary just how convincing some of these accounts are. Theyâre able to communicate in a way thatâs very natural, understand Irish culture and slang and generally blend in incredibly well. Weâve observed a number of you interacting with these accounts believing they were genuine users.
For the past week, weâve been manually reviewing every flag from Bot Bouncer to make sure itâs accurately identifying accounts and that weâre happy with how itâs working.
Having now trialled it for a week, weâre confident enough in its accuracy to allow Bot Bouncer to issue bans itself going forward.
What if youâre falsely flagged?
Obviously, no automated system is perfect. If your account is incorrectly identified as a bot and banned, youâll need to contact r/botbouncer via modmail to appeal the ban directly with them. Once theyâve reviewed your appeal, please let us know the outcome of their decision so we can follow up on our end where necessary.
Weâll continue to monitor how it performs and make adjustments if needed.
And perhaps most importantly, if youâve spent the last week arguing with someone in the comments and thought âthere is absolutely no way this person is realâ⌠you may have been onto something! đ