Any way to mitigate/defend against 'hey bro, looking to buy?' phishing bot activity targeting substance-related subreddits and their users?
Hope this is the right place and my title is articulate enough. I plan to start a subreddit that'd be a support group for those grappling with addiction to a certain substance.
From my own experience, the moment you post in one of those - or really, any substance-related subreddit, you will typically be swarmed with dozens of fresh bots sending you PM requests; the interaction invariably looks as follows: "hey" "wanna buy? i know this guy on <instagram, snapchat, etc, always off-site>, he sells everything and for cheap". Decline them and they just roll through whatever script they have to try and persuade you anyway, while you continue to be hit by dozens of other just-made bots attempting the same; it's plainly an automated attempt at phishing/scamming to capitalize upon vulnerable people. Disgusting... but anyway.
Just curious if there's anything I can do to preemptively try and curb that activity. Or is the best I can really do just, advise and warn users ahead of time and trust in their judgement to not engage when swarmed-upon in their PMs?
Thanks for any pointers, and I hope this is an appropriate question/topic for here - the idea of starting a subreddit, no less moderating at all on Reddit, is entirely new to me. I'm so nervous. But I'm resolved to try and help my fellow sufferers - I'd be filling a void left by the previous subreddit for my exact topic, after its moderation team vanished and the sub got shuttered for being unmoderated.