I made a comment bot to help search previous voat posts (pizzagate)

submitted ago by throwaway89209834

Long story short, I tried to get a voat API key but they don't seem to be available so yesterday I hacked my own wrapper together for a voat bot that watches new posts on a subverse, scrapes links from the OP, uses google to search the subverse for posts that contain that link and posts a comment with link to that post if its found. I will be running it manually till I feel comfortable to let it loose to run on its own.

https://voat.co/v/test/1674303

https://voat.co/user/PizzagateBot/comments

I still need to normalize the link output better and I need to put in some error handling and I'm sure there will be some edge case stuff that will break it and need to be fixed. In any case, If you have any feedback on how to improve it or if you find a bad link, something wrong, or even an idea for other type of benevolent bots, let me know.

If you click one of the links be sure to upvoat the bot account.

Cheers!

captchaTheFlag ago

Can you share the source code? Sounds cool.

n080d33 ago

It would be amazing if the bot could detect when a post is being attacked by dumb comments! Like this one LOL

VieBleu ago

Nice thing to do, thanks!

If I have a thread I'd like the bot to work on from the past, do I have to repost it?
For example, this : https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1500755

throwaway89209834 ago

My bot ran out of points to post more today, but here is what it would of found. Google Search

VieBleu ago

thanx.

n080d33 ago

Sweeeeet, ! You rule, I just had the bot comment on my thread and I found it super useful!! thanks!!

Chatman ago

This will help a lot, thanks

racoonbite ago

niiiiice

Disgusted-Lurker ago

Thank you, throwaway...

Very helpful post and comments. You rock.

cakeoflightylight ago

OK I think I get it, and this is amazing. Can you explain how we are supposed to use this? We just visit a thread and watch for the bot to comment?

throwaway89209834 ago

You don't need to do anything. It watches https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/new posts and if it finds any related links it will make a comment. Once I'm satisfied with its stability I'll set it to automatically check for new posts every few minutes and it will keep doing this without intervention.

cakeoflightylight ago

Praise throwaway89209834. All HAIL King throwaway89209834!

Z11Mama ago

I wish I understood this better. It sounds very helpful. It would be nice to see a subverse? where we could learn more about features like this as well as how to investigate. There are so many simple things we amateurs are clueless on. Thanks for your work on this. It is appreciated.

throwaway89209834 ago

Here is an example post that it scanned: https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1675669

It found this link: http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/scalia-was-a-pedophile-claims-victim/

It then does the equivalent of this type of google search

It then makes a comment with the titles of those posts and turns them into links like this - https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1675669/8209301 .

The idea is to try and link otherwise fragmented information together.

Google isn't all that great when it comes to really specific searches, will sometimes ignore quoted strings, and certain special characters, I get 4 searches manually and my bot finds only 3, but Google API is the easiest API to work with so it is what it is for now.

Z11Mama ago

This is wonderful. Now...if I want to research a subject, how do I do that, using this method?

throwaway89209834 ago

It is just using google to isolate the search to the pizzagate subverse http://voat.co/v/pizzagate

You can isolate your google search to any site, so long as it is being crawled by google, and its subpages. So, if I want to search all of /v/pizzagate for the term "Secret Pizza" I would enter this as a phrase into google search

site:voat.co/v/pizzagate "Secret Pizza"

Or if I only want results from reddit.com

site:reddit.com "Secret Pizza"

Or say I want to only see pages that are from 1990 to Sept 2016 (have to use Julian date range - http://www.onlineconversion.com/julian_date.htm )

site:reddit.com daterange:2447893-2457633.44446 "Secret Pizza"

Here is a list of operators that you can use in your google searches https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search-comprehensive-list-google-search-operators/

strix-varia ago

Don't want to start another subverse. Can someone tell me how to repost something that was deleted yesterday? Photos of a m edia m atters party with JA. Thx

cakeoflightylight ago

Try posting it in Pizzagatewhatever? Make a new post linking to the pizzagatewhatever where it is unlikely to be deleted, and provide links with it and make sure you've followed all the rules, or ask a mod to reinstate your post.

strix-varia ago

It was someone else's post and was deleted immediately, but my archive still shows the photos. I'll try what you've said. Thanks

Amino69 ago

Excellent contribution to the cause friend. I love the way this community has reached so many with specialist, valuable skills.

zzvoat ago

Bless you very heart, OP!

Can the Mods permanently add the link or search box under the current search box?

ps. ELI5: I have no idea how to use this thing.

PizzagateBot ago

You don't get to interact with me. I am a custom program outside of Voat's code that will comment on new threads when they are posted. Once I have proven I am well behaved , I will watch /v/pizzagate/new and run automagically. I should comment on threads in their infancy ( within 1-5 minutes of being posted). The purpose is to help create links between related threads to increase exposure of otherwise fragmented information.

I am the equivalent of you taking a link in someones post, going to google, making a search string like this 'site:voat.co/v/pizzagate "http://someurl.com/somepage"' , and then posting the links to those as a comment.

34569875444 ago

yeah i like that! great! get this done!

cakeoflightylight ago

You are a genius, I think, although I didn't understand all of that.

AgainstTheNWO ago

Wow, that looks like a really helpful tool. Thanks!

wecanhelp ago

Thank you for the work. Two tiny suggestions:

  • It would be useful if the comment only contained results from the same subverse. I can't tell if that's the case currently, but if it is then the | pizzagate part at the end of each link is redundant.
  • It would be even more useful if the links were ordered by upvote, and there was a label indicating the upvote/downvote count after each link like this: (+50|-1). That way users would know if a link is worth clicking.

throwaway89209834 ago

the | pizzagate part at the end of each link is redundant.

Yeah, it grabs the title, same as you see in your browser bar title, so its always there. I just added a line to strip it out, thanks.

It would be even more useful if the links were ordered by upvote, and there was a label indicating the upvote/downvote count after each link like this: (+50|-1). That way users would know if a link is worth clicking.

Good idea, I was thinking of trying to format it into a table with date and which link it was related to, i can add up/down voat count too.

wecanhelp ago

I just added a line to strip it out, thanks.

Appreciated!

I was thinking of trying to format it into a table with date and which link it was related to, i can add up/down voat count too.

Thanks, date is also a good idea if you can fit all that information into a single table.