What's up with all the spam posts?

ThinPicking

@alfredoolivas said in What's up with all the spam posts?:

@jamezb46 Or as someone said before hand... litterally cap the posts for a new account to a few posts and comments for the first day. If a real account wants to post more, he or she can wait a day, it's not deep.

Another vicious bot attack this morning @brad'ster. If this is possible I think it's a good idea.

alfredoolivas

@ThinPicking Hell, even restrict the amount of comments and posts an account can make within the first 2 hours of creation!

The most notorious spam accounts will create all their spam within an hour and never login again afterwards.

For example, yori007 was created, made a bunch of mess within the first hour of creation, and didn't log back in after the first hour

Luke

I sense a little emphasis on machines here.

ThinPicking

It's quite fascinating really. This. This is the plan apparently.

ThinPicking

@alfredoolivas said in What's up with all the spam posts?:

The laziness is insane.

Laziness or aversion to actual speech. Even that which is written and 'anon'.

DavidPS

Well, it looks like the admin team has been busy banning new users. 8 new users (by my quick count) were banned within a few hours. Thank you.
https://bioenergetic.forum/users

The spamsters seem intent on being mischievous.

I am wondering to myself if (or how) the situation will escalate.

DavidPS

@alfredoolivas said in What's up with all the spam posts?:

and didn't log back in after the first hour

The account may have been quickly banned to prevent them from creating additional new posts.

brad

I added a few anti-spam provisions.

CAPTCHA for new users. (Not sure if this worked.)
New users have their posts placed in a queue requiring manual approval before they're posted to the main page. This can be avoided if you confirm your email address or get 2 "reputation" points (still not quite sure what those are).

Let me know if this helps. Will roll them back if unpopular.

Kilgore

@brad said in What's up with all the spam posts?:

New users have their posts placed in a queue requiring manual approval before they're posted to the main page. This can be avoided if you confirm your email address or get 2 "reputation" points (still not quite sure what those are).

The reputation points are upvotes.

NoeticJuice

@brad said in What's up with all the spam posts?:

"reputation" points

I don't think this is beneficial. Being able to vote on posts can further discourage people from posting things that go against consensus. But those very same posts can promote learning and lead to interesting and beneficial discoveries, even if the content of those posts are inaccurate.

ThinPicking

Upvoted.

I'm here for the downvotes.

ThinPicking

Agreed. Upvoted.

DavidPS

I am good with the anti-spam provisions that have been added. Let's wait and see how it goes.

ThinPicking

Eastbots in a state of utter confusion.

Kilgore

you love to see it:

brad

@NoeticJuice I actually agree with this sentiment. While the "reputation" feature is necessary for anti-spam, I've added some custom css to hide the vote count. If people demand votes come back then I'll consider it but I don't want some implicit popularity metric aside people's posts. This isn't Reddit.

LucH

@brad said in What's up with all the spam posts?:

I don't want some implicit popularity metric aside people's posts. This isn't Reddit.

Fine. I appreciate.

NoeticJuice

@brad votes still change users' reputation. Would it be possible to hide that as well?

Notifications about upvotes and downvotes can also influence people.

lobotomize-me

Cloudflare recently announced that they are trying to confuse AI scrapers with random fact websites. I don't know if this is related, but it is something to look into if this website uses them as a provider

https://blog.cloudflare.com/ai-labyrinth/

ThinPicking

Based cloudflare.