The player-run Among Us community on Reddit unexpectedly went private to restructure its moderator list after being relentlessly raided by spam bots sharing awful memes. The subreddit's moderators are working to resolve the issue, but this incident is somewhat unprecedented for a popular game community of its size on the site.
Among Us is possibly the most popular game of 2020 even though it came out over two years ago, becoming a sleeper hit in just a few months. The COVID-19 pandemic likely played a massive role in the game's success, as Among Us provided a unique way to continue with social interactions during quarantine. The game was even used by United States Congress representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to raise awareness for the 2020 elections and the resulting Twitch stream was one of the most-viewed on the platform's history. Success comes with its fair share of problems, however, and it appears that one sect of the Among Us fan community has recently had to deal with some annoying growing pains.
Reddit user LiquidInferno25 recently inquired as to why the Among Us subreddit suddenly and unexpectedly went private, discovering this from one of the subreddit's mods on the community's dedicated Discord server. Apparently, it was raided a few days ago by spam bots that continually posted the same two to three memes over and over again for hours. The result was that hundreds of bot posts flooded front page, and the moderator staff put the subreddit into restricted mode until they were able to get the issue resolved, which involved later making the server private to remove and reinvite its moderators. The subreddit is now back up, but it's not clear if the spam issue has been fully resolved.
LiquidInferno25's question prompted many different comments and conversations on the issue of spam bots with a few individuals taking the opportunity to make imposter jokes. Others, however, discussed the reasoning behind raids like this as well as what can be done to prevent them in the future. Some theorized that this particular raid on the Among Us subreddit was due to the fact that the game just came to the Nintendo Switch. It was also pointed out that the King of the Hill subreddit experienced this same scenario just a few days earlier, but the exact connection and perpetrators are hard to pin down.
Spam bots are becoming more of a nuisance on reddit as they are becoming harder to detect unless they are as relentless as they were on the Among Us subreddit. The technology behind them is more than unsettling, but when it is only used to post an absurd amount of memes on a subreddit, one cannot help but wonder what is the point. When this technology is used in this manner, it is only for the sole purpose of annoying people. The Among Us subreddit is likely only one of many that have fallen victim to spam bots in recent months, but it can be hoped that other subs' moderators will learn from this particular instance and be better prepared for when their own are inevitably raided by similar spam.
Among Us is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, iOS, and Android.
Source: LigquidInferno25