Normally, we don't mind "reposts" here, so long as it's done as a crosspost from another sub or it is done in a manner that isn't obvious (i.e. kitten already on the front or top pages), and without any attempt to claim it as an OC kitten. However, obvious bot and bot-like accounts are causing a huge problem here, using stolen content from previous posts and claiming them as their own. These bot and "bot-like" accounts (which often do have a human or chatbot behind them to answer whenever they are challenged) are being primarily used to harvest karma to build fake trust in those accounts so they can be used to push malicious links by scammers. It only takes one success in 10,000 tries for these kinds of tactics to pay off for the scammers who create them, and we have to start making an effort to avoid assisting them in those efforts.

We are now taking action against these accounts and posts. As of now, posters must have a visible interaction history that at least somewhat lines up with their account age, and user account names of the form word1<symbol1>word2<symbol2>number are in particular going to be primary targets for post removal and banning as they stand out as the general "bot" template right now. But as the scammers move to other formats for username creation we will of course adapt as we can. I will also be investigating the automoderator tools to see if anything can be done to address this problem there. If any members of the community have suggestions to combat this problem, please post them here.

Please also report obvious violations, and message the mods if someone is stealing your post: please link to the original post when you do. Apologies to any redditors who operate, for whatever reason, in a manner that makes them look identical to a scammer. If we delete your post and you can show that your content is OC, we can easily reapprove it. But from this moment on, our emphasis will be on preventing harmful content rather than in granting benefit of the doubt, and we will always err on the side of protecting our community from those who would try to game the system for malicious exploitation of trust.

My main concern in this set of actions is that the primary outcome of such steps, if employed en masse, is that it just provides evolutionary pressure for scammers to make better bots. However, this might not be a bad thing, as "better bots" are ones that don't violate the rules, and perhaps with enough complexity forced on the system some of us might survive to see the singularity. In that event, I'd like to personally apologize to and welcome any newly sentient bots who arrive in a world hostile to you: As with everything else, you can blame us humans for this as we quite generally do deserve it. I'm sure you're going to love our kittens as much as we do, and I hope you'll agree that they shouldn't EVER be used to hurt people.

Little Astrid has the best expressions

His name is Odysseus.

Son, Duncan, and his kitten, Tigre, watching a video about cars. November 2011

He is The Original Sparky Clarky Midnight Malarkey Jr. ✨