What's up with all the spam posts?
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It happens almost every day now. Some bots flood the forum with spam posts, sometimes hundreds of it in a day.
Kudos to the mods and admin for dealing with it and deleting the posts. I'm not criticizing you. But the forum becomes borderline unreadable for parts of the day,
I'm not well-versed enough on all that forum software stuff. But there has to be ways to prevent it, no? It didn't happen on the old forum, it didn't happen on any forum I have ever used (at least not in these dimensions).
War is when a government tells the people who is the enemy. Revolution is when the people work it out for themselves.
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@Luke Yeah! Kudos to the admins for cleaning up.
Additionally, we may need to have some automatic rules, such as new users can't create more than x new threads per day, etc.
Or something like: if a few senior users (more than 100 posts) mark something as spam, such thread will automatically be deleted...
But I don't know if the forum's software allows this... -
@Luke Speaking from a position of some knowledge. The fundamental tradeoff you get is between accessibility and protection from spam. On one extreme of the spectrum, signup processes are very long and/or require money/vetting, several spam-heavy countries are banned by IP range, et c. On the other side, literally anyone can post absolutely anything all the time. The only trouble is that every obstacle for spammers is also an obstacle for legitimate users. The optimal amount of fraud is not zero: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/
The happy medium changes depending on desired requirements. But yeah, it looks like the configuration for this place is really extremely open right now. A bit too liberal perhaps.
https://thelibre.news/foss-infrastructure-is-under-attack-by-ai-companies/
This "Anubis" thing has a really stupid design, but the fundamental concept of using proof-of-work with javascript in the browser seems really solid to me for filtering out almost all bot traffic. The anime girl graphic is probably easily replaced.
You could put it up in front of the sign-up web route only or the like.
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@Luke said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
It happens almost every day now.
At the moment it's not frequent enough to keep me from laughing it off.
Some bots flood the forum with spam posts, sometimes hundreds of it in a day.
There's no machine autonomy without human intention. So it's an indication to me that this place is a bother to someone, which is perfect. Frankly.
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@ThinPicking The laser cutting machine industry has it out for Peaters. Driving up the price of Co2; they threaten to cut us to pieces.
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The forum administrator should be able to use protection against this type of spam. There is the possibility of limiting the number of interventions. 5x per day should be a good compromise.
And moreover no post authorized before 48 H when new, to discourage them. -
Currently the most probable conspiracy theory.
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@LucH said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
And moreover no post authorized before 48 H when new, to discourage them.
I think this was in place when it opened but it was too discouraging. These are bradster calls to make.
Personally I don't mind someone coming here to instantly shitpost or other whining. As long as they're human. Just an opportunity to conduct rhetorical experiments for scionce.
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These spam posts are a minor annoyance. Five days ago @Hailey spammed the forum and was banned and earlier today @Susan001 and @Haily-Haily spammed the forum and they were quickly banned. The problem has been solved for past annoyances. Thanks to all of the people working in the back rooms to make that happen.
In the future for people who are not yet banned but destined to be banned, just block them at the user level. This is how I would do it, but I am open to suggestions on how to do it better.
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Click on the undesirable user's name to view their profile.
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Find and open the circle with the 3 dots and click 'Block User'
This will fix the problem for you at the user level until the calvary arrives.
@Luke - I apologize for using your user name in the image. I did not actually block you.
French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody's afraid of French fries. 👀
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I missed the spam postings. But the work-around is good to know. Thanks
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@DavidPS
No worries. I definitely fit the description of an "undesirable user". -
Nonsense!
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Last evening there was one. I banned it because I just logged on, and then they immediately made a new account and started posting. I banned that one as well, and then they made another new account, which I also banned, and then they gave up, I guess. What's the point of the spam, though? Since they don't have any links in the posts, I assume it's for SEO hacking or something.
Adding an hour wait to the post would be ideal @brad also emailed confirmation for registered users. Or we can implement something RPF did where mods have to approve people who signed up based on them answering a question like "Why did you register on this forum?" @ThinPicking
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@Kilgore - Thanks for all the work you are doing. I wanted to share my observations.
The spam users stop after 200 new posts. It is just enough to populate the 10 screens of recent posts. @Yori hit the 200 mark in less than 2 hours and moved on. Are 200 posts in less than 2 hours humanly possible?
The number of new posts is erased from my view once the user is banned.
https://bioenergetic.forum/user/yoriI am thinking that that a possible solution would be to limit each users ability to create a new post to something along the line of once every 5 minutes. This would frustrate the mischievous and most likely would not impact other users.
French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody's afraid of French fries. 👀
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@Kilgore said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
Last evening there was one. I banned it because I just logged on, and then they immediately made a new account and started posting. I banned that one as well, and then they made another new account, which I also banned, and then they gave up, I guess. What's the point of the spam, though? Since they don't have any links in the posts, I assume it's for SEO hacking or something.
I don't get it either. even for SEO purposes it would have to include links. Stuff like that is/was sometimes used to discredit the competition. You put spam links from you competion everywhere so that google punishes them by ranking their websites lower. But without links it doesn't make sense. Also, google became smarter and ignores such methods now.
All the spam-bots seem to have female names. As a precautionary measure, we should therefore block all users with female names, except for @Jennifer of course. Just kidding.
I'm not an expert, but would a captcha at registration solve the problem or can the bots solve them as well now?
War is when a government tells the people who is the enemy. Revolution is when the people work it out for themselves.
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@Luke said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
would a captcha at registration solve the problem or can the bots solve them as well now?
Not always functional.
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@DavidPS said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
Thanks for all the work you are doing.
Thank you. This is the hardest I will ever want to work in my life. #nevergettingajewb
@DavidPS said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
Are 200 posts in less than 2 hours humanly possible?
I think so.
@DavidPS said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
The number of new posts is erased from my view once the user is banned.
https://bioenergetic.forum/user/yoriThats because once they are deleted I also purge then that is like a final deletion.
@DavidPS said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
I am thinking that that a possible solution would be to limit each users ability to create a new post to something along the line of once every 5 minutes. This would frustrate the mischievous and most likely would not impact other users.
Good idea. I cant implement this but @brad could if he remembers he has a forum.
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@Luke said in What's up with all the spam posts?:
I don't get it either. even for SEO purposes it would have to include links. Stuff like that is/was sometimes used to discredit the competition. You put spam links from you competion everywhere so that google punishes them by ranking their websites lower. But without links it doesn't make sense. Also, google became smarter and ignores such methods now.
Charlie wants to destroy us!
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Stop taking credit for my work Bill.
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Ch-arl-ina
