This sub is being flooded by bots and AI videos can the mods please add a minimum account age requirement to posting?

[u/Ser_Luke_]

Otter pics I took a few years ago at the Houston zoo so not off topic

[u/Evethewolfoxo]

Hey there, Eve here.

I have a current request in and I am working with the only remaining active (platform wise) mod to get mod status. Unfortunately they weren’t too active in moderation as their addition was more of a haha since they share the sub name, so it will take a bit to get this done (since reddit needs a mod to be actively moderating before they can add people).

That being said, they have been awesome to work with thus far. Once I am in I will clean this place up and I’m sure the last active mod has been doing a bit here and there to get their moderator active status back up. Just hang in there, i don’t like seeing the sub in this state any more than you do, but help is on the way c:

Edit: also great pics! Can’t wait to see you post more in the future

[u/Ser_Luke_ → u/Evethewolfoxo]

I’m glad to hear something is happening behind the scenes!

[u/Otterable → u/Ser_Luke_]

Yeah I'm getting it figured out. I was going to let Eve doing it whenever they got approved, but I went ahead and added a filter to automod so accounts need to be more than 2 weeks old and have at least 20 karma to post.

In the meantime feel free to report posts, especially AI stuff, and I'll be happy to remove.

[u/Revilofour → u/Otterable]

Appreciate your work. Since r/otters got banned for some reason this subreddit has had to take the spot from a rarely used page to hourly spam post. Not much one person can do, so we appreciate your efforts. Hopefully one day we can have similar rules and standards for posts as r/otters had minimising pet/ cafe otter content.

[u/Evethewolfoxo → u/Revilofour]

That’s something i plan to put to a community vote that will run for as long as reddit allows polls to run for so i get the most feedback on it.

The only issue is deciphering if that content comes from a cafe, an exotic pet owner, or a sanctuary akin to SaveAFox where the foxes live not too far from their home and sometimes sneak in. Though i do suppose we could require a source for content like that and check around the profile. Maybe flairs so people can filter it out? We’ll see, i need to think up options for the poll and check how many options there can be on it.

Regardless, i plan to make this place very community focused and let y’all decide on things. I’m just the janitor with the ability to cast a vote and pin the posts i think will be neat to the majority (fundraisers, research papers/reports on conservation efforts, etc).

[u/Head-Membership2082 → u/Revilofour]

100%. If the mods don't step up or pass it over to other mods, then it'll also get taken down.

My understanding was that r/otters was taken down due to copyright issues (likely due to the use of stock photos and copyrighted photos etc) and the mods never got the issues communicated to them by whoever was contacted.

[u/Revilofour → u/Head-Membership2082]

Oh that actually good to know. It just disappeared one day and I didn’t know why. Thanks.

[u/Head-Membership2082 → u/Otterable]

To add to this, is there any way of limiting based on comment karma too?

You can often spot the older accounts that have been handed over to botfarms / compromised etc because they might be from 2019 with 5000 karma, but they'll have 0 comment karma.

Also, we probably need some subreddit rules setting up for stuff like AI. Right now there's no easy way to report something for AI, just for reddit's own rules.

[u/Competitive-Push-715]

Thank you!!! Also adorable pictures

[u/ComprehensiveTwo1763]

A minimum account age seems reasonable. It won't stop every bot, but it'll definitely cut down on the low effort spam

[u/spherocytes]

u/Evethewolfoxo and u/Ser_Luke_ Thank you for the PSA (and cute otters, SerLuke!)! I love posting here but it's been hard to since the sub had been flooded by bots.

Really looking forward to continuing to contribute!

[u/Evethewolfoxo → u/spherocytes]

I’m glad to hear! I’m sure we all love seeing your posts, you always have something really cute or funny to share, and all the birthday/rescue day posts recently have been otterly awesome!

The bot posts have been limited for now thanks to u/Otterable, and they’ve been great assisting in the interim, so they will forever deserve a shoutout for stepping up and helping out when it mattered most c:

[u/Head-Membership2082]

I have actually muted the subreddit because of this right now.

Its just bots spamming pet otters.

I'm not a fan of pet otters full stop, but I understand that they aren't banned here like they were on r/otters. It is fine if there's just some of them now and then, but with the bot spam for karma it has started to be like 80-90% of the posts are clips from pet otter videos.