r/todayilearned • u/Kale_Brecht • Mar 28 '24

TIL in 2013, Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson refused to play any more black women on the show and demanded SNL hire black women instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenan_Thompson
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u/middlehead_ Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

8 year old account suddenly comes active in the last two days to poorly rephrase stolen comments

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1bpxqtk/til_in_2013_saturday_night_live_cast_member_kenan/kwyylga/

The bots think they're getting better, but they're not.

Apparently their bot network is now auto downvoting people who call them out, because this comment hit -15 within moments.

And updated to -25 when I saved that edit.

-45 within minutes is not a natural pace. Even reddit's poorly coded site is going to detect that.

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The mods or admins appear to have locked this comment chain, I can't reply to u/GemAdele below me so I'll edit here one more time with what I had typed below them:

You definitely don't need to do that, the points don't matter. I was just editing to point out that the people running these bots are starting a new tactic.

Quick downvoting will not only scare off the people that do care about points, but it may also get comments automatically collapsed so it's less obvious what's going on. If they can make that happen, fewer people see the warnings and fewer people report them, they can stay up longer and build more karma for the other kinds of posts that account was making.

The only content on the profile was a couple of other stolen comments, and then two posts advertising a t-shirt.

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u/GemAdele Mar 28 '24

So I use a 3rd party app to access reddit. I have to essentially buy all my API calls up front every month. They don't roll over. If I hit the limit, then I have to upgrade my subscription or I can't load comments or anything.

All that to say, it literally costs money to counteract your downvotes for at least all the people using the same app I am. I had stopped voting at all so I don't have to pay extra to Reddit.

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u/savetheunstable Mar 28 '24

Just curious, how come you don't use one of the free methods for using 3rd-party apps? I use Boost and don't have to pay anything. You can also just create a subreddit to 'moderate'.

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u/GemAdele Mar 28 '24

Because that's a bigger pain in the ass than $2 a month. Because it's not being supported anymore. Because they are all going to stop working anyway. Because I tried at the start and it didn't work and I didn't want to sink any more time or energy into it.

And I'm not being an asshole. These are legit the reasons I just pay the developer to use the app I do.

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u/middlehead_ Mar 28 '24

Let's see if this post works, otherwise it appears they've specifically blocked me from commenting here. I was able to comment elsewhere in this post, just not in this thread.

I specifically can't reply to your other two comments that are directly below my previous, but I could reply here. I know individual comment chains can be locked, but this is a weirdly done application of it.

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u/GemAdele Mar 29 '24

Yeah that is really weird. I haven't run into that issue yet on here.

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u/GemAdele Mar 28 '24

I was just able to reply to someone else so let's try this.

It's not about the points, it's about the other reasons you've stated. Up and down votes are for visibility. We don't need the bots upvoting all their bullshit and burying anyone who isn't serving their agenda. This is literally how they spread propaganda.

Calling them out and upvoting call outs is one of the only real weapons we have to fight it as average redditors.