Mapping the Reddit Bot Ecosystem: Taxonomy and Evolution
2026-07-27 • Social and Information Networks
Social and Information NetworksComputers and SocietyHuman-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied over 3,000 automated bots on Reddit to understand the different kinds of bots and what they do. They found 18 unique types of bots, including those that create content, perform specific behaviors, or help with tasks like moderation. Their research showed that the number of bots grew quickly before the COVID-19 pandemic, then started to decrease before some recent Reddit policy changes. Despite these shifts, the variety of bot types stayed mostly the same. The authors suggest that bot communities on Reddit act like changing ecosystems.
Automated agentsBotsRedditClustering analysisTemporal analysisContent specializationModeration botsAPI policyDigital ecosystems
Authors
Qiusi Sun, Thomas Gaskin, Branko Blagojevic, Milena Tsvetkova
Abstract
Automated agents increasingly participate in online communities, yet their population structure and roles remain poorly understood. Using a dataset of 3,389 identified bots and their full activity histories, we construct a taxonomy of bot "species" on the news aggregation and social media platform Reddit based on temporal, community, linguistic, and semantic features. Clustering analysis reveals 18 distinct bot types spanning content-specialized, behavior-driven, and infrastructural roles such as moderation and utility support. In addition, temporal analysis shows that bot numbers and activity expanded rapidly before peaking around the COVID-19 period, then started declining even before Reddit's 2023 API policy changes. However, the overall diversity of bot species has remained remarkably stable. These findings suggest that online bot populations form evolving digital ecosystems.