This might be a naturally high attrition rate from the whole COVID thing. I suspect there’s a lot of new member registrations in the time of crisis’ but no/low engagement beyond that first post. Desperate times breeding unrealistic dreams of getting rich via trading.
The suspected bots though, even if they don’t reply to someone asking them anything, continue to engage with usually irrelevant advice in other topics periodically. So the behavior is markedly different in this instance.
That’s bugged me so much too because there would be in depth replies like crazy detailed but then the OP won’t ever reply back 
Sometimes I think they work for shady brokers. Or whatever product it is they’re trying to shill. Idk why they’d start threads though, makes no sense,
Have you heard of GPT3? I’ve often wondered if who I’m talking to online (including here) is actually GPT3-written.
No, first I’ve heard of GPT3. Thanks for the heads up. Always good to read up on what’s happening in these spaces.
My ex-workplace was in the process of adopting IBM Watson (corporate AI solution) a while back but that’s the most I know of any AI solutions.
I think a lot of this is/was COVID related. Lots of new accounts, the user wants to get involved, asks a question, the further they get into learning they realized it’s not an easy lotto ticket sized win. They go bye bye.
Many use cases for it. I’m already seeing AI powered newsletters, news articles etc. But, I’m not sure what benefit an online forum-replying bot would have. 
Thought I’d update this in the interest of transparency.
Got messaged from the mods a few days back saying that their investigation concluded the actions of the accounts could be attributed to real human beings. Specifically:
What we’ve observed are actions and system indicators that support these accounts as being real human beings. The accounts are asking questions, engaging directly with other specific messages, referencing and making unique thoughts in relation to statement made by others, and actually interacting with the forums platform at a level that we think would be extremely difficult for a bot to do - direct replies, likes, actually reading, etc…
I replied with an excerpt of an exchange that didn’t appear human on my part. But I’m no expert in AI behavior nor do I have the resources to do the kind of full fledged investigation to prove/disprove anything beyond reasonable doubt.
I’ve decided I’ll challenge any bot like opinions I find, in a civil manner, and ask to explain their POV further. If there are humans at the end of these accounts they should be able to express themselves better than the canned responses I’ve personally seen so far.
Not as much time as I have wasted as a project manager talking to subject matter experts who I wished were bots (coz the bots would have more knowledge)
I’ve seen that around. But I didn’t want to jump to conclusions and misjudge. However, if it quacks like duck…
but at least you had a reason to talk to them and had something sensible to say to them. I have neither! 
Exactly!
From a forum’s point of view quantity is more important than quality, at least up to a certain extent. Provided it does not infringe any rules or degrade the overall reputation of the forum it only improves its visibility and income.
Is it just me… Or do these names all have a similar ring to them… Oh… and time and dates??
Not a good look…
So true - I recently discovered the Tess and Jo threads, among others. Brilliant!
I’ve been sending my suspicions of bots to @Pipstradamus. Without trying to overburden this great mod, please PM this mod with the link to threads you believe may have bot participants. Some are more obvious than others. I just replied to one then thought - hang on a minute - even a newbie would not say that, so I appended it with bot, bot, bot bot bot
This is a post from 2019, which I believe was botched. Reference thread. The highlighted part of the message contains a variable that’s supposed to reference a database/table to retrieve a name for use in the template. Atleast that’s how I believe it was supposed to function. Just substitute “Opinion_Leader_Name” for a person’s name and the message makes more sense.
How’d you find this one? Were you combing through old threads? 
A forum member resurrected an old thread. Didn’t know it was old till after I replied and decided to take look at the timestamp for this specific message.
Thank you @darthdimsky for the work put into review many accounts.
That specific post reads like the member is making a generic statement about how followers react to another trader’s decision to enter trades, hence the “opinion_leader_name” reference, not as a variable used by a bot to actually dynamically enter a text in a reply.
We read it as the member giving an example, like “Elon Musk always buys in such setups”, or “Warren Buffet always buys in such setups”, allowing the reader to “fill in the blank” so to speak.
But I can see where it could look like a variable or syntax for something else.
As always, if you feel something isn’t right, report the post or user to our moderation team by flagging the post and we’ll go from there. Moderation and community activism are great mechanisms we have at our disposal to maintain and hopeful grow the value you experience in being here.
Thanks again!
Yea, maybe even a copy and paste from a document or online source (checked for plagiarism but turned up nothing in the free searches from atleast 3 sites). Would make sense if he/she isn’t fluent in English, making the response look very canned. Plus the specific member doesn’t have the same behavior as the ones I’d highlighted and sent.
Looking at a few of his posts I’m inclined to think perhaps it’s a language barrier.
That specific post though was so off the mark to the OPs thread that it stuck out like a sore thumb. Plus seeing so many similar messages from the accounts I highlighted might have created a bias on my part.
You’re not the only one! 
Thanks again for the help!
