You can also semi-automate accounts. I used to use reddit actively and was one of the "most active" posters on a couple subreddits, but really I just automatically posted certain articles and then replied to comments([0]). I was clearly a real person who interacted with people which meant I was trusted and because of that the moderators would not pay any attention to me. This was all done for fun in communities I enjoyed participating in, only contributing from sources that I knew would be appreciated. This was so easy that I know that if someone put a bit more effort into making the automation less obvious and also using enough real interaction you could do massive manipulation.
0: interestingly, I posted so many articles from a small amount of sources that people started to assume I worked at those sites. I had to correct people on this repeatedly. Super easy to get trust and once an idea gets out there it's hard to get everyone to forget it.
I tried to do something similar but couldn't get karma very quick (using a paraphrasing API on other people's comments and submitting news from RSS feeds). I think I had a chicken and egg problem with karma because most subreddits require a minimum amount to post. I ran it for about two weeks before I lost interest. None of my accounts were limited in any way and I was just using publicly available Hola proxies. It seems that very little scrutiny is applied to the reddit mobile API. No captcha is required for registration (unlike the website) and no email is required.
This is all theoretical, of course. I've had a think about running a botnet on reddit for a while because I detest what the place has become. I can literally see the obvious botting that takes place across the entire frontpage and it annoys the hell out of me. It's mass social engineering.
Time and time again I see people on reddit really intensely screaming 'go no contact with your parents, abandon your family for the slightest difference of opinion' and such a toxic viewpoint is not only heavily upvoted but applauded by others that jump in with 'I did the same, it's totally normal, everyone goes no contact with their parents these days...'
I really think the place is being weaponised to disrupt society in a fundamental way. I mean, genuinely trying to break down the bonds of society and turn people against each other by creating this alternate reality. You go outside and talk to the average person at work or in a bar about opinions that, from reddit, you'd suspect are mainstream and they look at you like you have two heads. It's so artificial. I just pray that too many people don't fall too deeply into the trap.
I use reddit spordically - [this](https://www.reddit.com/user/FirstToday1/) is my account. I got my job from something I posted on reddit so I still feel a little indebted to the site. Reading the default subreddits will probably cost you about 3-5 IQ points p.a. I don't know where the family hatred comes from either. It's really common on the advice subreddits. Reddit has always had the punk/atheist type stuff but now that more ordinary people use Reddit what they say can have an actual effect on society now. The increasing popularity of memes and videos over text probably isn't helping the site either. Such a shame.
> I tried to do something similar but couldn't get karma very quick. I think I had a chicken and egg problem with karma because most subreddits require a minimum amount to post.
Doing this on an account that you personally use is probably the easiest way, but that doesn't scale well for obvious reasons. Getting past time gates (must wait a month or more to post in certain areas) and karma gates takes time. This kind of makes me want to go back and try this again but there are moral/ethical issues that give me pause.
Yeah I think I would have been more successful had I just bought some aged accounts with 50-100 karma. If you're "morally flexible" and willing to work with some unsavory types there's probably a lot of money to be made but that's not really for me either lol.
> This was so easy that I know that if someone put a bit more effort into making the automation less obvious and also using enough real interaction you could do massive manipulation.
There have been government studies on this as well, like "Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity" in cooperation with the Air Force Research Laboratory out of Eglin AFB in Florida: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf
> the automation less obvious and also using enough real interaction you could do massive manipulation
I think this has already been done with r/politics. I've created new reddit accounts to argue with people on there a few times and find them being banned within a few weeks for the most trivial of infractions, simply comments like 'I find it hard to believe someone would express that belief in good faith' get you banned, and as you don't get a ban without a report someone has to be reporting comments that no reasonable person would report.
I came to the conclusion - after a while - that it's a secretly walled garden, that basically 100% of the content is automated, probably by bot-runners aligned with the moderators, and that users that stray into it are intensely surveilled until a plausible reason exists to ban them. There is zero metacommentary allowed and making a post 'about the moderation of this subreddit' gets you banned for metacommentary. You now also aren't allowed to question user activity, so if someone's account history is 100% botlike you get a ban for pointing it out.
0: interestingly, I posted so many articles from a small amount of sources that people started to assume I worked at those sites. I had to correct people on this repeatedly. Super easy to get trust and once an idea gets out there it's hard to get everyone to forget it.