1stTimerAgain
44862
1186
215
Jul 15, 2025 12:46 AM
1stTimerAgain
44862
1186
215
YourCatPower
afraid of what ???
bottledham
Afraid of social media posts, apparently...
TheWhiteBarry
OP: refuses to tag their posts
Also OP: must be Russian bots 🤷🏻♀️
🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
mixiekins
just had a look, they're tagged, tf you talking about?
gearsmith
Using other tags to bypass filters, really.
BlindedByTheWereLight
I usually downvote political stuff regardless of whether I agree or disagree with it. I already have enough of that crap thrown at me in news and everywhere else. I come here for the meme dumps and funny stories.
mixiekins
I've found it's much less effort to simply browse the meme dump tags, but ok
gearsmith
I don't know, I tend to find myself some epicaricacy in downvoting political shit.
GhidraTheMastiff
Glancing at the profile, this looks to be a politically focused and charged account and a lot of imgur is kinda burnt out on this becoming FB2 in doom news :( especially if you are intentionally avoiding the politics tag
svga
what pattern? downvoting content they don't wanna see on the front page? that's kinda the model
LadySpades
The other day I saw an untagged graphic political post about SA in Gaza. I've had to leave imgur repeatedly because people not tagging their activism is harmful to my mental health, like being beaten over the head with the worst of the worst that you're already aware of when I am already on your side
ModsSometimesHeedMyScamWarnings
So to be blunt: There's a flood of new accounts posting left wing things in order to get upvotes quickly and do the good ol fashion: "Sell of account and/or post dodgy links later" move. So that's probably why some of them get downvotes. Not to mention some of the accounts posting these things have shown to be incredibly aggressive towards other users. I've asked some simple questions to check if they're human and gotten sexual assaulty comments thrown my way.
Everyonesfavorite
Seems like I saw this more back in the fall. Before the election. But they would also come with 1 liner insults on anything anti tRump. New accts. Were they trying to get the imgur algorithm to shit can liberal, logical &/or anti tRump anything? (Start the wave and let the algorithm finish it off?)
imperfectregulator
What? The purchased Bot account that doesn’t properly tag its posts? I’m shocked, shocked I say
whatsthisbuttondonow
Imgur are helping them by suspending accounts that tell the truth like ICE are terrorists just like the filthy isrealies
YouAlreadyMutedMe
https://imgur.com/23zDK57.gif
earthlingextraordinaire
MisterLemons
Not everyone wants to see American politics every other post in one of the few escapes from reality left online.
Literally just tag your posts. Yes, they are political (as is stated that "everything is political" time and time again). No, they are not an exception. No, it's not some massive plot to undermine the fabric of free press and liberty. That's all it would require. This stopped being a conspiracy/mystery years ago.
aducksayswhat
Another thing that stands out to me is the "this is important to me" factor, where their pet issue must be put in front of eyeballs, must be observed, must be supported/followed (or otherwise you're a bad person), and some are more obnoxious about that than others.
PJamz
UPVOTED!
gearsmith
Downvoted!
HerbyHuia
Ohhhhh yeah I have a bad case of the serial downvoter stalkers too, for a while but especially in recent times. Looks like they go after anyone posting stuff against fascism/Trump.
HerbyHuia
Five downvotes and counting 😜
omgzwtfs
Complaining about getting downvoted is a self-fulfilling prophecy
SunscreenOnLeith
Reposting bot reposts low quality click/rage bait, doesn't tag 'politics', downvote bots downvote, comment bots comment, upvote bots upvote, Keith, Garth, Seth and Beth, the only four human users on imgur, move on trying to find cat pictures.
mgfk
Or maybe people just downvote your low effort doom spam.
michaelfire
My experience too- regarding Israel and human rights, and especially animal rights- some guy downvoted every one of my comments for an entire year- including my profile history- think they are professional operatives
DarkfireDragon
I've been getting a lot of (I feel) unfair downvotes but none of my comments or posts are about politics so who knows.
SirDistic
I downvote all political posts. So get mad at me if you want. idc.
Razade
They've been out in wild force for a while now.
NinjaCongo
A lot of people on here are very tired of the polemics and dv anything political. Tag your posts.
mixiekins
i dunno, I had a look and their stuff is indeed tagged. if there's something in particular someone is coming here for, there's tags so you can find exactly that without the fuss. 🤷 so many people quick to say "TaG yOuR pOsT" without even checking if they do.
ExistentialDreadlocks
"seriously though wtf" isn't tagging your political post as politics. It's just as bad as not tagging them at all, but with the added obnoxiousness of being able to say "see, I tagged it".
For real, so many political posts are given the most irrelevant tags just to bypass filters. Fuck those people.
JayKay2024
They're in full force today, even for some tagged posted.
PineappleLoopsBrOether
“We don’t want you to think like that so we built machines that cost as much as a fully loaded Ferrari for every human operator, cuz boooo we don’t want you to think your good people thoughts, only do you what WE say”
deidyomega
As for that picture, we had something like that at my old job, it would run our app and take screenshots of every page on every major phone. Then QA would flag any photo that had a broken UI element
EstoyPoopi
Sorry I'm dumb. You were doing this to test your own app for glitches and bugs, did I get it right?
deidyomega
Correct! We built an app that we wanted to make sure worked on every phone. Without getting too complicated, different phone manufacturers (think, Samsung or pixel) will change how certain "standard" UI elements display. So we had to test every page of our app on every phone by every major manufacturer
svga
holy wow... source please? this is horrific
PineappleLoopsBrOether
mixiekins
ah, that's a phone farm for selling engagement on social media, they're woefully common and usually get their hardware by advertising themselves as phone recyclers that imply that you're selling your older phone to be refurbished and sold to somebody who doesn't mind it being an older model. for some reason it's cheaper to just buy actual outdated hardware (usually with cracked screens) than to emulate the firmware and software on a rack mounted server.
aducksayswhat
I think there's also that it's running on real hardware that makes it appear more genuine, google for example has put in a ton of effort for their "web environment integrity" within their browsers and that they want more broadly adopted. Still, one thing I find interesting is that when there's some message to be pushed it's always the 'other team' that uses bot farms, and 'my team' would never stoop so low to buy their services, for whatever issues are accepted on a platform.
PineappleLoopsBrOether
BayazTheBenevolent
Pretty sure I downvoted a bunch of your posts because you don't tag them.
JackDeHearts
Yet when i complain about the apolitical losers who come on here just for girl pics not tagging their posts properly im the problem lol.
MissMittens
No we downvote those too. Untagged = downvote
gearsmith
The fun fact is that both people taking a break and people who are practicing avoidance will have essentially the same response to being non consensually violated with political excrement; they quickly come to despise those who force themselves upon them. Their actions are similar to peta blocking the meat isle and pouring out milk to protest animal abuse.
The root of the matter here is that by participating in this you are alienating potential allies.
You are better than this.
Do better.
WeaponizedJerk
Both are problems. Tag your shit.
BayazTheBenevolent
Everyone should tag their posts, that's the whole point of this site. Aside from that I am plenty political - but I prefer to get my news from actual news sources and not image dumps.
spittytrinkles
Remember when iMgur was a Picture sharing site? And we would share Pictures?
EstoyPoopi
And the top comments would be the most appropiate and funny made up titles to the picture!
spittytrinkles
First Comment meant something! Other than First!
enveezee
there is also the very real possibility that something entirely different is going on... for example.. when you post fucked up shit someone did, perhaps people feel like giving that a upvote is condoning the stupid shit you posted about. Another possibility is maybe some people just come here for cat memes and are upset by this crap and think downvoting will keep that shit off their screen.
GeorgeCalros
I come to imgur to get away from politics. Idc what side you're on here. I just want to see funny cat pictures and other light stuff. Please TAG YOUR POSTS. Its not a conspiracy. We just want to take a break from the horrors of the world. Thanks.
PTK74
Don’t fucking click and downvote them then. Easy enough to just see cat pics.
Eldibs
Look, I get it, and from a data-organization perspective, I especially agree. Posts should be tagged as well as the poster is able. Also, we should be allowed to take a break from thinking about all the bad things happening. I wish there was a way to seperate the people taking a break from the people practicing avoidance, but there isn't. The best we can do is vote up or down and hope that it works out.
gearsmith
The fun fact is that both people taking a break and people who are practicing avoidance will have essentially the same response to being non consensually violated with political excrement; they quickly come to despise those who force themselves upon them. Their actions are similar to peta blocking the meat isle and pouring out milk to protest animal abuse.
The root of the matter here is that by participating in this you are alienating potential allies. You are better than this. Do better.
mixiekins
yes, but when the person in question *does* tag their shit, it's not a good look to suggest they do what they're already doing.
BayazTheBenevolent
Yeah 'current events'. It may not be I correct but if you check their post history it's all politics posts, so why not use the politics tag which I know is what a lot of people have blocked?
mixiekins
definitely worth suggesting, I'm with you, it's just disappointing to see people suggesting a solution to something without even checking if it's applicable to that particular case.
imperfectregulator
Ops likely not even a real person
Whatwhatsomethingbutt
I'm with you. I'll get my news from legitimate news sources when I'm ready, not some rando sharing a meme. Yes, shit sucks right now, but not everything in the world has to remind me of that.
TsubakiTragic
"not some rando sharing a meme"... so much this. The tiktok/imgur/reddit/twitter/etc regime of a talking head mouthing off about some newsworthy event/person is banal and meaningless by virtue of the medium having no credibility. If I go to a news source I can verify the bone fides of everyone from the source itself (eg, CNN, Fox etc) right down to the "reporter" who wrote/presented the article. Can't do that on imgur.
BayazTheBenevolent
That concept seems to be really difficult for people on imgur to grasp.
gearsmith
This has been a sponsored post from #tagyourdamnshit
ExistentialDreadlocks
KeEp StIcKiNg yUoR hEaD iN tHe SaNd! WhAt DoEs LeAtHeR tAsTe LiKe?
(/s in case that wasn't clear)
gearsmith
Sounds like someone needs to keep calm and #tagyourdamnshit
leviaton
I'm a grouchy older millennial that hates tags... But I'm learning to use them for exactly this. My rare post gets a dozen interactions. Which is great for me because I don't need fake Internet points. It's fun to do sometimes. Maybe one day my cat will do something that makes people happy
OnomatopoeicOnanisma
Cat tax is now due. :)
leviaton
No escaping the tax
ObisanyaN
Reminder, it's mostly one loser
nomorehate
PineappleLoopsBrOether
Sounds exactly like the Catholic League back in the early 2000s. One sad shill.
ElbowDeepInAHorse
Back when Imgur actually tried to combat this. Spock was a good egg. Shame they fired him to save a buck.
ModsSometimesHeedMyScamWarnings
I try to manually combat bots and work with other users to out them. There's some simple implementations IMGUR could do to reduce it, but as you mentioned they'd rather save a buck...
RyvaTheRenamon
It couldn't be hard to rig up a botnet of your own to do exactly that.
ModsSometimesHeedMyScamWarnings
When I start using bots after years of outing them:
RyvaTheRenamon
Wise is the warrior who uses the enemies strengths against him.
CaldariBob
It's bots all the way down...
DeliciousDelilah
That's actually really pathetic.
Richter12x2
Seems like you could see which users accessed it before the downvote storm
TheCunningLinguists
Too bad Spock is gone and no one else cares.
Comet260
That's what happens when an advertising company runs things.
AndersCalrissian
Multiverse Spock is here.
imperfectregulator
I was gonna say they may be aware of it but they do absolutely nothing about the bots are “old” accounts that suspiciously have high karma but all their old posts are deleted with every new post the my make being suspiciously and heavily political to the point of being misleading at times
resworn
Wild
nation543
There needs to be account validation and a time limit on when people become eligible to up/downvote. 24-48 hours would work, maybe 72, and while that only slows the process, it would give imgur time to view the patterns to see where they're signed in from.
Email validation, points, and an account age mandatory. If any one of those three doesn't happen, especially email validation, then they can't make that many accounts without being sniffed out.
nation543
Could also link each account to the up/downvote, in that if you vote at all then the server has a list of each person who touched one of those buttons. This definitely should NOT be used in ANY way to harvest ANY information for profit; imgur needs to use it as a safeguard.
spakatak
They already track who votes and how. That's why you can't upvote a post twice, and something you come back to much later retains its state.
OnomatopoeicOnanisma
While a nice idea this is a bit dated. I was was looking at an article about this and bots are 'farmed' - created, curated, matured and integrated in the millions _years_ in advance, like cheese wheels. There's an entire ecosystem in creating, nurturing and then selling these bots. So modern bots will evade all your protections mentioned.
nation543
Yes, that's why I said that it only slows the process. It would, however, give imgur enough time in each instance to gather evidence and take action, whether on their site or legally. And based on what that image is saying, it's only one guy who creates the accounts and then deletes them. If he's creating them on a whim then this process will slow and usersub will be safe(ish).
OnomatopoeicOnanisma
Fair call, any positive action is not negative. I'd just like to see a more effective approach. And if I knew what that was, I could sell it for millions.
nation543
lol yeah. Engineers and Architects have tried myriads of methods, and IP banning is ultimately the "best" resolution but that comes with the problem of VPN. imgur could potentially block all VPN usage but there are still ways around that.
Outside of internet and technology, the next best option is to pursue legal action, which is what they're talking about in that screenshot. If they can figure out who's doing it then they could potentially take legal action.
Turtlegir
That is a very sad lonely and pathetic person if they have that kind of time to just make accounts and downvotes. I mean it's likely bots but if one person is taking that time, lordy
ChippinStrata
Or Russia has only assigned one guy to all of imgur.
AFaceOnlyAMotherCouldLove
Yeah I think it's one dude just controlling all the bots most likely. Definitely a dude that needs a better hobby
Larktonguesinadicecup
I mean it might be his job. They do pay people to do things like that.
PoliticalWanderer
1) It's one guy. I used to keep tabs on a bunch of his accounts that I knew about, seeing them all make the same jokes, use the same turn of phrase, talk about owning the same breed of dog, living in the same area of the country, using the same reactions gifs, liking the same subjects, and all of them would stop posting at around the same time when he'd be on vacation or busy on a long weekend or something. As for his shitty hobby, next comment has some quotes from some of his old accounts:
PoliticalWanderer
2)![]()
Turtlegir
How sad. Having nothing else to do but make multiple accounts and be a douche. I think I saw a guy earlier who was doing the same thing 2 different accounts exact same sentence
Hypothesist
little conspiracy theory feeling
Badprenup
This kind of thing more common than you would think. I was a moderator on the Minecraft Forum and there was a handful of "like-minded individuals" that seemed to generally agree with each other on various things, all with different posting styles.
Until one account slipped up and caused us to take a harder look at them. Turns out all of them were one guy, who was operating a half-dozen accounts just to reinforce their opinions within the community. Each account had thousands of posts, and 1/2
Badprenup
All the posts were created manually, as this was well before Chat GPT was a thing.
Some people get really fucking weird about stuff online, so it absolutely wouldn't surprise me if someone has written a script for downvoting things en masse. It wouldn't be very hard to do for someone with moderate programming ability.
Hypothesist
i mean sure its easy enough, but to bother with all the IP based limited API stuff Imgur does, feels like a hassle. for whats going to be still failry easily detectable.
OhIfIMust
Just cuz you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!
kawem
Just cause they aren't typing bark, doesn't mean they aren't dogs.
MrRandom314159
This is a small sample size and a biased selection. If this is your experiment, you'll need to provide additional data on alternate topics.
ModsSometimesHeedMyScamWarnings
OP is also posting analytics from multiple different accounts that tend to follow very similar behaviours... Almost like they're all from the same person...
armyguy
Suck me, shill.
MrRandom314159
Then present, bias cherry picker.
GolbatChan
There are absolutely bots that try to control what gets popular.
MrRandom314159
I.e. Do they downvote that much on pictures of selfies? On tumblr posts? On right-wing articles? Is it politics in general?
Whatwhatsomethingbutt
Yup. Need a control. Same time of day? How does the same post change from user to user? There are about 50 things to make this a legit look at what's happening.
MrRandom314159
Well, that's the whole point of peer review. To poke as many holes as possible so it's iron clad.
Nikolai5
That and you need to account for the people that downvote literally anything political because they don't think Imgur should be for that, and they number quite a few. It's not that they agree or disagree, they just don't want politics. Then you have people who downvote because of post quality, maybe the title is bad, maybe its untagged, maybe there's no source.
How can you tell what the downvotes are for?
ArmedandOverclocked
There's a subset of that group that primarily target untagged posts. You can filter out political posts that are tagged but not ones that aren't.
TheSecondPiewackit
It's easy to make correlations when 80% of downvotes happen in the span of 15 minutes.
Nikolai5
Well that could be the fact people browsing newest posts are going to see new posts. Then the post will end up in a middle area, not popular or new.
TheSecondPiewackit
I'm also not pulling this out of my ass. Mods are aware of it, others have noticed it. Check through some of the other comments on here. This is a known problem.
MrRandom314159
This is a SUSPECTED pattern. I mis-trust something we all know yet can't point to a valid study or experiment for proof.
BayazTheBenevolent
Just checked your post history. You're using 'current events' for your politics posts. While maybe not incorrect I understand why people that have the oolitica tag locked down vote your post if they see it. Use the politics tag and respect block lists, and your downvotes problem is no more.
TheGhostofElizabethShue
current events is literally a political tag, if you've selected the "show me less politics" option in the filters that'll include current events, so the people complaining in these posts shouldn't even see the post and are lying that they've filtered politics. Their aim is to get more people to filter politics. Why they're doing that I'll let you work out.
BayazTheBenevolent
Because reposting screencaps is almost like direct action?
deidyomega
Not everything is a conspiracy damn.. you sound like everyone's crazy uncle. I filter politics, but not current events, as if there's a wildfire or hurricane, I don't mind a post about it. I just don't need 200 posts a day about how trump is a shit human.
TheGhostofElizabethShue
ok 1 don't get your wildfire news from imgur, and 2 please shut the fuck up about imgur not being how you want it to be if the problem you're having is because you choose to ignore the tools that were made explicitly because enough people like you threw this exact tantrum. The posts are tagged, fix your settings.
deidyomega
the entire premise of imgur is you upvote content you like, and downvote content you dont like. By that premise, if I've already done the work and filtered content, and then I do upvote/downvote content. I think there's no problem here, minus the conspiracy theorists who want to make this into something it clearly is not.
TheGhostofElizabethShue
except you haven't done the work and are a dummy.
TheHotdogInYourMothersHalIway
In many cases posts like those are untagged and they get big downvotes from people that use tags.
[deleted]
[deleted]
AlienJeffries81
And if you do it more than once they’ll hunt down your other posts.
Safflower777
How...friendly & open & welcoming....
ExistentialDreadlocks
Nah, if they're a serial antitagger I just mute them.
meme2zombie
Also if it was natural downvotes they wouldn't all hit at once.
AgathaHarkness
Exactly. I experienced swarms.
dlbgaw
I downvote untagged political posts, but only when they cross my feed. I don't intentionally hunt them down because I don't want to see them to begin with, which is why I have most political tags blocked.
newsguycraigevans
I totally understand. I down vote anyone that whines about tags. I can't just let them share imgur, post or comment whatever they want, I make sure they know my personal preferences and demand to be given priority.
EmailFail
I'm with you. People whining about tagging your post are frustrating. You're not required to tag and it seems pretty entitled to demand folks tag stuff because you don't like politics,not whatever.
gearsmith
So... you downvote yourself? Just asking since this definitely comes across as whining about tags.
newsguycraigevans
I held up a mirror and many of you did not like what you saw.
pritolus
AgathaHarkness
I was tagging all my political posts and they went after me anyway. They're just assholes.
deidyomega
Different assholes lol. I down vote any political posts I see on my feed, because I've blocked political tags, so if you get down voted with tags, it's a different group
TheSecondPiewackit
It happens if you tag posts with politics. ~11-35 downvotes all within about 15 minutes.
MaleProstateMilker88
It's most likely both if we're being realistic. The numbers though are what would be interesting to see, if anyone is passionate about making statistics with more than handful of posts from several different people.
MenloPart
Many of my posts are about news and politics and I started tagging them because I was tired of people complaining about knowing Earth is found to Hell.
yoyo42
So if you tag a completely non political post with #politics does it still happen? Is it tag based or keyword based?
TheSecondPiewackit
I'm not sure, I haven't tried. I do know that any post I make that gets tagged politics gets the same thing, and others have also noticed it.
mixiekins
thank you! there's a bunch of people telling op to tag, but I had a look and, lo and behold, everything I checked was tagged. QQ go browse #memedump and #funny, it's less effort for you and less headache for the rest of us.
newsguycraigevans
Check some of the users demanding tags. I've seen some that are brand new accounts and demanding tags is all they do. They want to limit messaging, even here.
CookieJar6502
I'm sorry, but how does asking people to use the tagging feature limit messaging? Unless you feel so entitled that everyone must know your politics expressed through totally real social media screenshot. Much like religion and genitals, don't shove it down my throat
TheSecondPiewackit
Because if you tag your posts politics, it suffers an immediate bot-downvote campaign. If you don't, it actually gets seen.
Considering that you're one of those accounts who's majority of comments is about people tagging, I'm pretty sure you already know this.
meme2zombie
Other way around, those brigade accounts follow tags and that's why people often don't tag.
TheHotdogInYourMothersHalIway
Sounds like a conspiracy theory. Tags are simple and help the community.
graehall
There literally is a dude who checks the politics tag specifically to brigade dowvote them, because the tag makes them easy to find
PoliticalWanderer
AgathaHarkness
It's not "conspiracy". I had a ton of political posts and I tagged religiously. With a minute or two of posting they'd swarm. It didn't happen at first - only once my posts started going "viral" regularly did I end up on someone's list.
meme2zombie
Also just look at the comments, I was at positive votes until they replied to me then suddenly 24 more downvotes hit. Always enough to counter the upvotes I got. It's a standard pattern lots of people have called out.
AgathaHarkness
And someone already downvoted you. It's all so petty.
TheSecondPiewackit
Tags also make it easy to abuse what makes it to FP.
TheHotdogInYourMothersHalIway
Good. Too many spambots.
TheSecondPiewackit
No, actually. You realize that these bots are the cause of the tagging problem, while you guys are railing against the symptom? The fact that the tags can be used to manipulate what makes FP seems to be exactly the opposite of what you want. If tagging something with "politics" didn't come with a near-automatic penalization, there wouldn't be any controversy about telling people to tag their shit. Corner cases would get updated as they do now, and you'd see 0 politics on FP if your filter's set.