but I don’t think people realise how bad it’s become.

One time I made a main level comment, then replied to one of the most upvote comments in the same thread.

Seconds later a bit replied to me with my first reply, except for some reason it cut off the end. I don't know if the bot ran out of characters because it was a cheap bot, or if it was an attempt to avoid automated detection.

Bots were a huge problem long before AI started trying to have conversations.

We all joked about it, but a lot of the accounts were really fake, and they usually got sold to advertisers after amassing enough karma and post history to look authentic