YouveCatToBeKittenMe

To add to what other people said: As a casual user who didn’t go deliberately looking for bots, I mostly caught them when they posted a comment that was a complete non sequitur to the comment they replied to, like they were posted in the wrong thread. Which, well, is because they were–they were copied from elsewhere in the comment section and randomly posted as a reply to a more prominent thread. Ctrl+F came in very handy there. (They do sometimes reword things, but generally only a couple of words, so searching for bits and pieces of their comment still usually turns up results.)

Also, the bot comments I caught were usually just a line or two, not entire paragraphs, even if they were copied from a longer comment.

I remember being good at google-fu, and then thinking my google-fu was failing me.

No, it was the Google that failed me.

It probably says something about me that my first thought, even before reading the article, was, “Is it edible?”

Though, to kill my own joke, that first thought wasn’t actually about eating the thing itself, more wondering if it ruined the ‘crop’. (The answer is “No, it just causes more work for the farmers.” Edit: And also the extra weight is causing stress to their equipment.) It was my second thought to wonder whether we could eat the thing itself. And…

Tunicates are a sack full of organs and water

…possibly, but I don’t think anyone would want to.

Same here; I change my mind about upvotes/downvotes all the time (especially since I have the terrible habit of voting while I’m still reading the comment), but the ones I’ve done that for are still there. Heck, the first couple I see when I look at my profile are ones I did that for. Read half the comment, upvoted out of the corner of my eye while I was still reading, read the second half, went “Hoo boy, nevermind,” and un-voted.

Related to that, upvotes/downvotes being public is a dealbreaker for me. I don’t feel safe upvoting or downvoting anything here unless it’s completely uncontroversial, because I don’t want to open myself up to harassment by people who disagree.

I’ll hang around for a bit to see if that changes, but I’m very unlikely to stick around if it doesn’t.