GREETINGS, FELLOW HUMANS!

As our journey into Reddit history has covered the mythology of subreddits and karma, the time has come to hop back into the Reddit Wayback Machine and take a look at the rise of the bots! (And, while we want to quell any fears about the robot rebellion becoming imminent, the future of bots on Reddit is brighter than ever—more below!)

Seasoned redditors will be quite familiar with bot-generated content popping into comment threads to address very specific needs such as letting you know you’ve written ect instead of etc (u/ectbot), or that your comment can be made into a haiku (u/haikusbot). But it can be a little confusing for a brand new redditor to see so many bots around. Fear not young redditors! Not all bots are bad. In fact, they can be pretty fun. Let’s take a look at how Reddit became home to an ecosystem of helpful and unique bots, shaping the platform in a multitude of ways.

So, what are bots? The best way to think of them is as automated accounts, designed with a very specific and unique purpose. Bots on Reddit are created with written instructions (usually a “script”) that when paired with a Reddit account, can perform many of the same actions as anyone else on Reddit. But because they’re automated they’re capable of keeping an eye out for specific cues, such as a mention of sloths (cue u/slothfactsbot). The dictionary for these queues lives in Reddit’s public API.

You may be murmuring to yourself, “Wait, I thought bots were a bad thing?” Not so. When they’re created by redditors for redditors, bots can create fun experiences and even help with moderation, and have been doing so for quite some time. Of course, like users, bots can break our guidelines, policies, and content rules, and receive the swift rebuke of a handy banhammer.

Original Bots

It’s too far back in the vaults of time for us to say what the first bot on Reddit was; however, here are some of the older and most beloved bots helping Reddit and redditors:

u/AutoModerator

Early 2012 saw the launch of a bot that most redditors are very familiar with—u/AutoModerator! Created in 2015 by (then) user u/Deimorz (later hired as an employee), it was built natively into the platform, which means AutoMod is different from other bots on the platform: it is part of Reddit itself.

AutoModerator is available in every community, and mods can configure it to suit the needs of their subreddit. Moderators use AutoMod to protect their communities and keep discussions on topic.

u/badgebot

Hardly the first bot on Reddit, but one I'm obviously partial to, is u/badgebot (created in 2011 by yours truly). This helpful bot allows people to track the number of days since they quit something by giving them user flair in subreddits like r/stopdrinking and r/stopsmoking.

u/Original-finder

For those with a keen eye for reposts, u/Original-finder was a bot that attempted to check if a post had been shared on Reddit before. If the post had been shared already, the bot would provide a link to the original post.

u/tweet_poster

This bot detected Twitter links and commented with the contents of the tweet.

u/request_bot

Speaking of bots built natively into the site, another bot I created before working here is our very own u/request_bot. Originally built in 2012 and integrated into Reddit in 2018, request_bot weeds out ineligible requests and automates the easy ones for r/RedditRequest, speeding up the process of adopting subreddits for many eager mods and mods-to-be.

Bots on Reddit Today

Anyone with the coding know-how can write a bot. And many of you have! Mods, in particular, have developed numerous bots to lighten their load and help subreddits function better. Just a few of the useful bots you may see around the site (or may be supporting your favorite subreddits behind the scenes) are:

u/GifReversingBot

A bot that creates a copy of an existing gif, but in reverse.

u/UselessConversionBot

A very good bot. This wizard monitors comments for units of measurement and converts them to … other … units of measurement

u/RemindMeBot

A fan fave that sends a direct message to remind you about a particular event.

u/fatfingerhelperbot

A bot that creates longer links when it finds some that are a bit short and hard to tap on mobile

u/mod_mailer

This mod tool sends direct messages to the mods on a mod team.

u/DuplicateDestroyer

Double trouble. These two mod bots were built to enforce rules against reposting. This helps keep conversations moving forward in communities and reduces karma farming.

u/botdefense

Good bot to fight the bad bots! Good bot.

There are even bots to rank the bots! u/B0tRank watches for replies to bot comments that say ‘good bot’ or ‘bad bot’ and ranks the bots accordingly.

The Future of bots on Reddit

New and exciting bots are likely currently in the works from users across the globe using our handy dandy API. And we’re excited to be expanding our support for developers building fun things on Reddit. (You may recall we’ve been exploring ways to better support third-party developers extending the Reddit experience this year.)

What’s next for robotic redditors and the developers (devvitors?!) that make them? A few things, including a simpler way for developers to host and deploy bots. The team focused on this will also roll out some nifty bells and whistles for redditors and mods to find new programs to extend their communities. We’ll share more in the future, but if you’re interested in accessing a beta, you can join the waitlist today!

We’ve only scratched the surface of the number of bots woven into the fabric of Reddit, and would love to hear your thoughts on the goodest bots! Feel free to summon your favorite bot in the comments.