recently you may have noticed me making test posts with the intention of them to be bot tests. i used LVL 9000 autism and a spreadsheet to tabulate results that came up. i did this after several of them appear to be actively stalking me for calling them out.

i waited a bit for the suspected accounts to react, and since they seem to be moving again, now seems a good as time as any to go over what i found. here is a picture of what ive gotten: https://files.catbox.moe/1pg61f.png

let me go over what you're looking at.

HYPOTHESIS 1: a bot account set to stalk a target auto-downvotes, may comment with a chatbot, but cannot parse the words "do not react if you are a human". they just do the thing

HYPOTHESIS 2: a bot account set to stalk a target does this doubly fast if pinged by name, since it doesn't have to expend energy finding a post.

HYPOTHESIS 3: this could only be measured over several posts, with steps taken to sift out targets by repeated testing, and ping separation.

HYPOTHESIS 4: a pack of bots moves and votes as one. 1 bot = 1 vote.

HYPOTHESIS 5: matching vote count, to ping, to name, can theoretically suss out bot behavior.

with this in mind i set out 4 posts, gathered data, tallied it up, and i'm now ready to go over my results.

INTERESTING FIND #1: bots set to follow a target tend to keep their posts at 0, only moving if the vote count rises above that. i assume this is to remain low-key and save votes, but it's highly visible over time

INTERESTING FIND #2: with a given order, a large crowd of bots all stop and start the same behavior at once. please notice if you will, how activity drops to only -1 at post 4 despite reaching -4 at post 3 just before it. why, i ask, did so many accounts just do the same thing at the same time?

INTERESTING FIND #3: of an original suspect list of 15, i've split them them into 2 groups

group 1, this cluster continued acting all the way into post 4: u/KimBellend u/6h057 u/Obrez u/SphericalHorse u/the_sharpest_knife u/Schreiber u/tokui

group 2, this cluster all stopped reacting to posts at the same time, and covers the rest of them: u/yewotm8 u/Low_Paid_Porno_Noob u/hikoo u/Syber_Pussy u/AnonymousJester12345 u/CaptainBasculin u/KittyPot u/Ember2528