Thanks to all the saidit mods helping remove spam.

submitted by magnora7[A] from self.SaidIt

There is a ton of it lately, some kind of extra spam attack on top of normal. So thanks to the mods helping to remove it. The spammers have shifted the subs they're focusing on based on the mods taking out the trash regularly enough, so that's a sign of progress I think.

If you want to help, even if you're not a mod, you can upvote things that aren't spam so they rise to the top of the front page.

Cheers!

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[–]passionflounder 12 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

So the human verification screening is not effective in stopping this? Please clarify its purpose, thank you.

[–]magnora7[S] 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

It reduces it by about 80% according to our last experiment. So unless you want 5x more spam even than we are already getting, it remains on.

[–]passionflounder 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Fair enough and thanks for the response.

[–]monkeymagic 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

good luck with that lol

[–]zyxzevn 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

There is a different kind of spam too.
I often get replies that are unrelated to the subject. Look like sentences copy/pasted from 4chan.
And some people keep posting political opinion posts in unrelated subs. Then they also complain when it is removed.
It feels more like disruption. But these people also seem to have several mental issues.

[–]magnora7[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I think a lot of the extremely disjointed replies are AI or bots. I agree a lot of the disruption is intentional in an attempt to make this site nonfunctional.

[–]RedditButt 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

These types of bots seem to be getting more sophisticated.

On sites like reddit, it feels like 90% or more of the noise in front-page threads are AI bots that have the goal of mitigating damage to a company or political angle.

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I agree they're getting more sophisticated. They're getting better at working around the cloudflare too I think. Bad news for the internet and for information freedom.

[–]hfxB0oyA 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's too bad there's no way to ban anything pointing to a certain URL. There are a pile of posts from different usernames that all point to lvmpd-portal.dynamics365portals.us. If we could just say "On this URL, ban that user and post", that would save us a pile of trouble.

[–]Optimus85 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (2 children)

hehenrrjrjrtstutjaahaehahttaha

[–]YoMamma 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

ifiojiihikjkjhihiuoipjoipjiopjiopioihiuhiushiuhui

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

bgfrtsbur4hgt8u4hgurfg

[–]Zapped 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

At first, I thought this was a certain user here playing around, but I see that a lot of the spam with garbled headlines links to the Las Vegas Police Department. Specifically, the forum where there is a lot of the same spam that gets posted here. It looks like they've done to the LVPD website what they have been trying to do here.

[–]magnora7[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Yeah it's all forums, these attacks aren't specific to saidit. Forums are globally being deliberately ruined and whoever is running the programs to do it is committing crimes against humanity as far as I'm concerned.

[–]hfxB0oyA 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

Election year

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Agreed, but that doesn't explain why today is worse than yesterday. I noticed the spam seems to be manually done, and the hours it's done aligns with work hours in moscow or israel time almost always, so it's probably one of the two

[–]hfxB0oyA 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Seems like a lot of effort to disrupt a site with a handful of visitors.

[–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I agree, but it's undeniable it is happening. Most importantly it's not just saidit, it's all forums. They target any forum that has more than a couple dozen people, it seems

[–]hfxB0oyA 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Living in a worldwide dystopian surveillance state is far more bland and annoying than it looked in the cyberpunk movies.

[–]zyxzevn 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Currently there is a spam-bot that posts every minute or so.
Maybe we should set all saidit-subs to type=restricted as default.
That means moderators have to login every day or so to allow the posts.

See sub settings :

type
public  anyone can view and submit
restricted  anyone can view, but only some are approved to submit links
private only approved members can view and submit

[–]hfxB0oyA 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I see your reasoning behind that, but it restricts the ability of people to have an organic flow to their conversations.

[–]zyxzevn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think that comments are open anyway.
And mods can appprove people that are not bots, and not disruptors.

[–]WoodyWoodPecker 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I just wanted to let you know that you are welcome. I even mark the perfume spam as spam to help the other moderators. I think it is about 100 people in India posting on your site and getting past Cloud Flare.

[–]Entropick 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

The fight is getting good! Stay with it, stay hydrated, stay strong, DON'T GIVE UP.

[–]Jiminy 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Maybe ruin the site with cloudflare more that'll help

[–]HibikiBlack 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Nice to see you Mag. Hell yes. There's so much spam that has been taken care of. It's good we have a team working on it.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

new wave of spam this mornin :/

can a person be auto-muted if multiple post of theirs within a small time frame, gets reported by community? it will prevent them from making more post untill a mod whitelist them or decides to remove them. That way peoples post cant be removed from feed just cuz ppl dislike and report them, but it will prevent a new account from making 30 post in 5 min if they get mass reported and a mod just dont happen to be on at that time to put a stop to it immediately?

[–]TheBlackSun 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Ah shit here we go. Soon the moderators will be removing ‘bad words’ and ‘political opinions that don’t align with their cock’.

[–]Mcheetah 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Soon the [admin] will be removing ...political opinions that don’t align with [his] cock.

He already does this shit.

[–]YoMamma 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

/s/Bitcoin is now temporarily for 'text posts only' which has stopped all of the spam

[–]dissidentrhetoric 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Disable search indexing, ban by IP subnet :D

It is all SEO spam

[–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They don't use any subset that we can figure out any pattern to, they rotate between an extremely vast range of IPs that aren't within just one VPN or country. I'd have to ban a good chunk of all IPs, and I'd be banning legitimate users too, which isn't good. And then they'd just change to a different IP range anyway

[–]passionflounder 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

To find latest spam posts, go to the front page. click "all" and sort by "new". Check the list of posts nd usernames. Some things will stick out for anyone with a nose for that sort of thing.

[–]passionflounder 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Prolific spammeer extraordinaire

[–]passionflounder 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Caught in the act

[–]passionflounder 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Spammer

[–]passionflounder 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Spamming and spamming and spamming and spamming

I need to return to All/New to keep up with this one. Needs to be zapped.

[–]passionflounder 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Something needs to be done.

I have made a point of monitoring and reporting spam over the weekend. Every time I view All, sorted by new (after verifying that I'm aa human, of course), there are a dozen or or more fresh spam posts to report. In the time it took m to report 11 such posts, start this thread and visit the front page to get the URL, four fresh posts by two different accounts clearly acting in tandem.

It is not manageable... it is beyond obnoxious, time consuming, and galling considering the number of times I've had to reverify that I'm not a goddam robot.

Clearly this is not stopping these fucking assholes and nothing is fucking being done about it.

Something needs to be done administratively to slow down this bullshit. It's a little like trying get rid of a pile of sand with a single pair of tweezers. Accounts need to have all activity sent to a moderating queue until they've made 20 good, thoughtful posts.

This is bullshit.

/rant

edit: nine more fucking posts... and I had to verify before reporting them

Subjects like: sdsd fjsdnfbjshdsdfb, nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn, hgc bvvhjfhg,

... and so on.

Jesus baldheaded transexual crack-smoking fucking Christ

Edit: ten (tenth was selling CBD so there was actually English)

/u/magnora7

[–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I mean yeah, now you understand why I'm so upset and despondent about the whole thing and have been for years. It's an impossible situation... thanks for helping though. It's insanely broken, and even with my hours and hours of trying to fix it it's still way out of control. It is what it is, and I don't think I can invest any more time trying to do the impossible, and it pisses me off very deeply. The people doing this crap should go to jail, but of course that will never happen.

[–]passionflounder 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

More spam inundation and ongoing. I do not have the time for this and if you cannot see fit to enact some administrative help to moderators nor show appreciation for people who take the time to report issues by slowing this garbage then shut it the fuck down.

The Cloudflare check regularly inconveniences users without doing one goddamn thing about the bad actors- yet you deem it necessary.

[–]magnora7[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for the help, but if it's that much of a pain to you, then you'd probably be better off doing something else with your time. Thanks again. I try my best and so do you, but we don't have infinite time and this issue is not at all easily fixable. If you want to help more that's great, if not, I totally get it. I don't have the time for this either. You do realize the issue would be 5x worse with the cloudflare off as our last experiment showed? Cheers. Thanks again for all the help.

[–]IMissPorn 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Or hey, you could even add a downvote button for stuff that is spam.

[–]magnora7[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Then they'd make 50 accounts and downvote all the stuff that should be at the top. We very intentionally removed it so that it couldn't be votegamed like it is so frequently on reddit. It's a way of removing censorship by bad actors

[–]IMissPorn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Making 50 accounts and upvoting their own junk is even easier.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm really surprised we don't see that more. Last time there was wide spread vote manipulation it was done by the 'Iron Left.'

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

But that's much easier to detect and remove actually, much easier to deal with than downvote gaming

[–]carn0ld03 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank god for the human verification working as intended slowing down the spam. If you guys need a list of the spam bots feel free to go through this log so you can build one for your respective subs.