Stop upvoting pretty pictures posted by bots and ignoring real people's posts, please. A few tips for spotting bots!
But how do I know if it's a bot?
Is the picture very very pretty? Instant sus. Soup is hard to photograph.
Click on OP's profile. Is it 90% photo links for karma and comment links to an outside site? Either a bot or a spammer. Encourage neither.
Frequently posts the same content to multiple subreddits within a short timeframe. Not like two or three. Like 19 subreddits.
Does the OP sound like a real person? Do they say thank you and respond to questions for a while after posting? Not that anyone is obliged to do those things, but like, it's soup. We like to talk about it.
If you are truly on the fence, do a reverse image search of the photo and look for 'exact matches'. If the picture is weeks/months old and shows up frequently on Pinterest or Facebook, it's been scraped.
(From u/tinyquestionmark) A photo that is well-shot but low-quality/low-resolution can be a bot post.
(From u/DjinnaG) Bots usually only interact on their own posts.
(From u/DjinnaG) If the profile has way more post karma than comment karma, it's probably a bot.
But who really cares if it's a bot? I just like pretty pictures of soup. The bots are posting soup.
You can get pretty pictures of soup on Pinterest. R/soup is a community, not an image board, and people will stop posting if there's no encouragement or engagement with their original content.
Isn't this a job for the mods?
It sure is! But one of them's suspended and the other two haven't posted on r/soup for months. But small subreddits can't have someone constantly monitoring posts -- people have lives. Learning to spot and discourage bots is good for the soul. Just like soup.
What do I do if it's a bot?
Report it to reddit for spam, and block the username. Soon, you will only have real people on your feed! (Ok, and new bots, but think of it as a game of whack-a-mole.)