Graham, T., & Carlon, D. (2026). On the Internet no-one knows you’re not a bot: ‘Botting’ on Reddit as participatory culture. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251409210
Summary
This paper reexamines “botting” — repetitive posting that may be manual, semi-automated, or fully automated — through a case study of Reddit’s “Anus_Fungi” accounts, which spammed mushroom emojis across the platform in 2020-2021. Combining computational analysis of nearly ten thousand comments with thematic analysis of the counter-fungi subreddit r/stopanusfungi, the authors argue that what was perceived as a bot invasion was largely a human-driven imitative phenomenon embedded in Reddit’s participatory culture. The central claim is that authenticity online is a culturally negotiated performance rather than a technical property, and that the human/bot binary obscures the hybrid, playful practices through which communities actually operate.
Key Contributions
- Extends Schäfer’s concept of “botting” beyond automated visibility strategies to include manual, playful, community-driven repetitive posting.
- Provides one of the first platform-specific studies of botting on Reddit, contrasting it with prior work on Instagram, Twitter/X, and YouTube.
- Treats classification ambiguity (whether accounts are “really” bots) as an analytic finding rather than a problem to be resolved.
- Argues for a shift from technical provenance detection toward community-based, context-sensitive moderation.
- Advances theory on digital authenticity, counterpublics, and platform vernaculars by showing authenticity as performed and negotiated.
Methods
Mixed-methods case study (Jan 2020–March 2023). Computational collection of 9,728 mushroom-emoji comments via Pushshift/BigQuery, validated against the Reddit API. Identification of ~217 “fungi” accounts using naming conventions, posting patterns, cross-referencing r/BotDefense and r/BotTerminator ban lists, and manual review. Descriptive/temporal analysis of posting and account lifecycles in Python; network and modularity-based community detection with NetworkX and Gephi; and inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke) of the top 25 posts in r/stopanusfungi with dual-researcher coding.
Findings
- The phenomenon was smaller than its cultural footprint: 83.2% of fungi accounts posted ≤10 mushroom comments; only 8.4% posted more than 20.
- Account creation peaked Sept 2020–April 2021, with most accounts following a “spoke” pattern in preferred subreddits rather than coordinated mass campaigns.
- The most-targeted subreddit was the ostensibly anti-fungi r/stopanusfungi — opposition paradoxically fueled propagation.
- Counterpublics formed on both sides (anti- and pro-fungi subreddits), with the mushroom emoji as a shared symbolic boundary marker.
- Four discussion themes emerged (reporting spread, propagating the meme, ironic/performative sentiment, speculating about the phenomenon), with little actual moderation.
- Fungi accounts in r/stopanusfungi were rarely downvoted and often upvoted — the community indulged the behaviour it claimed to oppose.
- Whether accounts were bots or humans mattered less to members than cultural relevance and meme “freshness.”
Connections
This piece sits within the platform-critique and coordinated-behaviour literature but stands out for challenging the automation/authenticity binary that much of that work relies upon; it productively complicates studies of coordinated inauthentic behaviour such as Giglietto2020-9d8acdd7 and Giglietto2022-0e951ac5 by showing how “bot-like” activity can be human, playful, and community-sanctioned. Its emphasis on platform-specific vernaculars and community norms resonates with anniversary essays reflecting on platform sociality and moderation such as Baym2026-tr and Marwick2026-ss. It offers a counterpoint to detection-focused approaches to inauthenticity, arguing that classification ambiguity is itself the point.
Podcast
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