Good morning, good evening, depending on your timezone.

For a while already this subreddit has been targeted by a bot that creates accounts and uses them to copy old popular posts. It's not clear what's their ultimate goal; biggest suspicion is that the accounts are "stored", along with the karma they manage to get, to be used for spamming in the future, bypassing the most common account age and karma barriers. What is worrying, is that they used to be more common in NSFW subs but they are popping up in SFW subs more and more.

There are some simple ways to spot them.

• Usernames are randomly generated, usually two words, possibly some numbers added. Many regular users use the random generation too, however it's already a way to narrow the search.

• Accounts are 1-2 months old but never posted anything else beforehand.

• They will never post a source. Don't ask, there's no people behind them.

• Beside the post itself, their accounts always have only one comment, made in a different sub, by copying someone else's comment and reposting it under the same post.

• Between the comment and the post there is a gap of exactly 12 hours (they are obviously automated).

• If the above steps are checked, just search for the title in the sub and find the original, congratulations, it's a bot! Report it for spam.

For practical examples, here's the most recent bot account, and another that managed to take 1000 upvotes before the post was removed.

The way they are conceived, automated barriers are difficult to set up. Account age is useless, while post and comment karma, even with low values, are at risk of catching many legit users.

For now, the only safe way is to spot and report them quickly, and not give them upvotes.

Big thanks to /u/StealthSpider who returned to make a sweep and gave me the chance to check on the sub from now on.