Reddit

I think if Reddit corporate wanted to make bot accounts that looked legitimate, they could do it. I would not be surprised if their god-like powers over the site would allow them to re-write the history of a sub and create fake posts that weren’t actually made in that subreddit at that time, or even falsify the age of an account. Ideally, the admins of a site would know the red flags of a bot account. Given that these are all on r/programming, that circumstantial evidence makes me inclined toward thinking these are made by a hobbyist programmer who is dissatisfied with the protest, rather than Reddit corporate astroturfing. However, if someone could provide a complete history of these bots’ comments and posts, that could provide some insight.