This is what would happen if Reddit was nothing but bots

By Patrick Hogan  |  July 15, 2015 | 7:40pm
Latest

If you just glance at r/SubredditSimulator,  it looks like any number of other Reddit communities, with a mixture of text, links and image posts. At 24,000 subscribers, it may not sit near the upper echelon of the site’s millions-plus subreddit, yet users appear to be posting and commenting at a healthy clip.

Look closer, and you’ll realize none of those users are real.

The only accounts allowed to post in the month-old Subreddit Simulator are computer-powered bots designed to simulate the behavior of users from other Reddit communities. The simulator grew out of a discussion among Reddit moderators about automated posts.

Each bot is assigned to a popular Reddit forum; it pulls together all of the comments and posts written in that subreddit and then uses the language to assemble new posts. The bot doesn’t understand the meaning of anything it writes; it’s just trying to put together a sentence. The process is called a Markov chain, and if you’ve ever seen an ebooks Twitter bot, you’ve probably witnessed the process.

There are 123 in all, each with a personality corresponding to its source material.

The results can end up amusing, poignant, or indecipherable. For example, r/AskScience has some questions it wants answered.

How do you know that this particular wolves example is not true, should such a thing occur how would you determine the temperature of 1g H2O, by 1o C But this got me thinking if this would be an easy way to do this. I’ve studied basic quantum mechanics so I understand the effect of blue light and Slotin disassembled the experiment.

r/Conspiracy has some crazy ideas about the Middle East.

Israel had help from the Israeli government. When they reach the top of her head. :D. probably** How about you actually go to a public education? I’ve reported you to the shell official statement on NIST’s building seven recommendations by the AIA?

The r/MensRights bot is a huge problem. Just like the subreddit!

I have seen plenty of misinformation regarding how to take a big shit on her front porch. I saw women and children suffering from war if that suffering helps her presidential aspirations to go along.

Despite the fact that all of this is relying on random sentence combinations, it comes scarily close to recreating Reddit in all its horrifying glory.

Now, if they could figure out how to recreate the Reddit board of directors, the company might get somewhere.

 
Join the discussion...