07-08-2023, 08:21 PM
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/...ic-reddit/
The Reddit community is still reckoning with the consequences of the platform's API price hike. The changes have led to the shuttering of numerous third-party Reddit apps and have pushed several important communities, like the Ask Me Anything (AMAs) organizers, to reduce or end their presence on the site.
The latest group to announce its departure is BotDefense. BotDefense, which helps removes rogue submission and comment bots from Reddit and which is maintained by volunteer moderators, is said to help moderate 3,650 subreddits. BotDefense's creator told Ars Technica that the team is now quitting over Reddit's "antagonistic actions" toward moderators and developers, with concerning implications for spam moderation on some large subreddits like r/space.
A user who asked for privacy reasons to be identified by their Reddit name, Merari01, and who moderates the r/LifeProTips subreddit told Ars that BotDefense has been crucial because it's time consuming to manually fight spam bot activity. Merari01 also underscored the challenges of fighting spam bots, with karma being sold cheaply.
With BotDefense shutting down, [fewer] spam bots will be caught, banned, and reported to site admins, which means more will be able to be sold. ... The inevitable end result is that more people will be robbed of their money and/ or personal details and that more conversations will be manipulated.
Reddit's 2022 Transparency Report said spam, which includes karma farming and scams, represented 79.6 percent of content removed by Reddit administrators last year.
In response to BotDefense's announcement, a Reddit user going by Dacvak who moderates the r/gaming subreddit using BotDefense said:
What an enormous loss to the site and its users. The average person has no idea how much botspam there would be without you guys, and it’s worth noting that Reddit does not have effective tools for combating the growing complexity and number of bots.
This place will slowly but surely become a cesspool of bot-driving garbage, and I don’t blame anyone but Reddit for that.
The Reddit community is still reckoning with the consequences of the platform's API price hike. The changes have led to the shuttering of numerous third-party Reddit apps and have pushed several important communities, like the Ask Me Anything (AMAs) organizers, to reduce or end their presence on the site.
The latest group to announce its departure is BotDefense. BotDefense, which helps removes rogue submission and comment bots from Reddit and which is maintained by volunteer moderators, is said to help moderate 3,650 subreddits. BotDefense's creator told Ars Technica that the team is now quitting over Reddit's "antagonistic actions" toward moderators and developers, with concerning implications for spam moderation on some large subreddits like r/space.
A user who asked for privacy reasons to be identified by their Reddit name, Merari01, and who moderates the r/LifeProTips subreddit told Ars that BotDefense has been crucial because it's time consuming to manually fight spam bot activity. Merari01 also underscored the challenges of fighting spam bots, with karma being sold cheaply.
With BotDefense shutting down, [fewer] spam bots will be caught, banned, and reported to site admins, which means more will be able to be sold. ... The inevitable end result is that more people will be robbed of their money and/ or personal details and that more conversations will be manipulated.
Reddit's 2022 Transparency Report said spam, which includes karma farming and scams, represented 79.6 percent of content removed by Reddit administrators last year.
In response to BotDefense's announcement, a Reddit user going by Dacvak who moderates the r/gaming subreddit using BotDefense said:
What an enormous loss to the site and its users. The average person has no idea how much botspam there would be without you guys, and it’s worth noting that Reddit does not have effective tools for combating the growing complexity and number of bots.
This place will slowly but surely become a cesspool of bot-driving garbage, and I don’t blame anyone but Reddit for that.