Bitcoin Forum

Noticed this one yesterday:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2317270    bebumbum

If you look at his posting history all of the posts seem to be off topic in the wrong threads. They seem to be copying a post from another spam megathread into another one, but obviously the posts stand out like a sore thumb as they're completely off topic:

https://i.imgur.com/XDvFEk5.jpg

The first two posts obviously should have been in the what do you do when you're bored shit thread. Third post was probably intended or from the where would you like to travel spamfest.

More ones spotted today:

https://i.imgur.com/gEsjwUk.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/EwXtbMU.jpg


Shouldn't be difficult to spot them so keep an eye out for them in off topic.

oh my.. these fuckers need stabbing in the eye with hot pokers

Ha. Doesn't really make sense to me for them to do this. It's far too easy to spot. You'd be better off just copying a post from the same thread, though they usually get caught for doing that as well.

I have previously suggested that all brand new users are essentially shadowbanned until their first post has been approved by a mod. Manually having to approve a user's first post or two will likely stop these bots before they even start and become something we have to deal with any way. We can also just nuke the 'great project' and haiku bots before they become an eyesore.

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Off topic but I have 1000 merit now. Wonder if I'll become Legendary now?

#meritruinslives

I also do not like "farm accounts". Write the same type of shit stuffing the amount of activity.

https://d.radikal.ru/d08/1808/ef/bbec70267236.png (https://radikal.ru)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1975531 -  Date Registered:   March 26, 2018, 12:55:21 PM
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1975535 -  Date Registered:   March 26, 2018, 12:58:46 PM
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1975549 -  Date Registered:   March 26, 2018, 01:03:28 PM

And all posts are written in the same themes one after another

P.S. Sorry for my English

That's funny  :D

I can't imagine how these spammers can do such things just to increase their posts and activity. They're posting in off-topic section but their posts are really literally off-topic. Wtf (ehem sorry).
I'm not so sure if these are really spam bots because (because if they were, they are definitely bumping ANN threads etc) what they were doing is more likely a work of a stupid person.  :D

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Off-topic
-1 Politeness

Maybe they are just angry and this is an attempt to annoy the mods since they realize they are not going to be ranking up? If so, they'll likely lose momentum quickly. Or, maybe the primary reason for those continuing is just to clutter the forum and make it useless as a Bitcoin resource. Sort of like an account-based DoS attack  ???  ... but then why do it all in off-topic?  Ok I'm done trying to analyze the mind of demented people.  :D



You've got the merit, but activity could be between 775 - 1030
#activityruinslives  ;D

I gave you 13 as I noticed the shortfall... wanted to be the legendary giver.. alas no change!

Found some more.

1. Hpaqlmkp (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2325691)

https://i.imgur.com/fwCP4B1.png

His post history:

https://i.imgur.com/gfJN74H.png

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2. Apkliqpkh (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2325685)

https://i.imgur.com/AZimqPe.png

His post history:

https://i.imgur.com/sKphS2U.png

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3. styyipoio (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2317515)

https://i.imgur.com/Z5MpCgj.png

His post history:

https://i.imgur.com/GGe9Xce.png

The first two accounts have only a difference of 5 user accounts between them if we see their UIDs.
User: Hpaqlmkp (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2325691) - UID: 2325691
User: Apkliqpkh (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2325685) - UID: 2325685

And, the accounts are mostly named with random alphabets and in some cases mixed up with letters. Someone or maybe some people are creating random accounts in a sequence to do all this, although the reason is none understandable.

Yeah, I noticed and reported a whole bunch of these sorts of posts earlier today. I suspected a new bot, but I've been too lazy to investigate. :-\

Why are these noobs never gets tired in posting shits? If these are bots then how can we stop generating new bitcointalk accounts which are being used as spamming/ bumping ANN threads? Investigating and Reporting can be an irritating routine if there is an endless registration of bots.  ???

Shadowban seems fine for the job, there also should be a priority list of threads, where mods check the first 1-2 post of the newbies, and the off topic and ANN should be at the end of that priority list...
This would really stop new spammer account, also it will raise the price of the existing ones...

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Off: Your situation is much better, you have to wait only for the activity lottery :) Other hero members could have already reached their magic activity requirement, but because of the merit, they just long for becoming legendary one day...
So you have to wait only max. 7 or 8 activity period, which is only 2 months, that's peanuts :)

Bots don't get tired.


Impossible to stop fully. Manually reviewing and whitelisting all new accounts would help and probably around 99% of bots would get caught in that trap then. A bit more work for staff but at least the forum doesn't become an eyesore and hopefully people will get the message that using bots is also a waste of time. Sadly, many bots are still slipping through the cracks and many of them even earn from campaigns, which is further reason why signatures from Juniors should be removed or at least make them require one merit to become a Junior which would help a lot in curbing abuse.  

Can anyone tell me what is the target of those people who stay such kind of posts? To me its illogical and simply has no sense.

# Signature spamming
# Bumping topics
# Increasing activities
# Perhaps (wild imagination) earning some merits LOL
and many more....

Account farming. Create hundreds or even thousands of accounts with bots, spam them to Junior Member rank than join a crapcoin ICO campaign and get paid to copy posts (they won't check so as long as you've made the posts you'll get paid at the end of it if you haven't been caught and banned by staff already). This shouldn't be staff's job though and is why there should be repercussions for those managers who do nothing other than pay people to spam or copy and paste whatever crap they can because they are directly facilitating this behaviour by paying for it which just encourages it even more.

To add to the list: Bump Bots (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3955810.0). If they reach Jr. Member rank, they can't get caught through patrol (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol) anymore, and a higher rank means a higher fee for their bumping "services".

Then why theymos is still not implementing the 1 merit to achieve Jr. Member. If I am not mistaken, this has been talked about from the thread created by yahoo.

Dunno. Maybe he will maybe he wont. I created a thread about it in the Staff board but 99% of threads in there get ignored by the admins.

That is not a solution to this. Assuming they have high ranked accounts as well from the past, they can easily bypass 1 merit limit to reach the next level.
There should probably be something more practical to the cause, that should stop this for good, and I know it is not a piece of cake to come up with something that can tackle such actions, but there is no other choice.

I disagree. I think requiring at least one merit requirement will go a long way to curbing bots and farmers from ranking up to Junior. Besides, if someone was abusing their merit in this way it would become very easy to spot the abuse once they started only meriting newbies or blatant bots with crap posts. Your merit source doesn't last long either and they'll soon run out, but I still think it will be more of a giveaway if they start meriting their own accounts rather than a hindrance.


It's one of the better options we have, but without other suggestions I don't think you should shoot it down.

So what is to be done with these bots, they will appear even after nuking them. If they stop following this type, they will bring up another one. These bots are just shit posting in off-topic, because no moderator is assigned, and then soon after some time these accounts are sold. Easy money.

theymos has to start answering to these issues. Or at least Cyrus should, I don't see him posting at all. Its understandable that they are busy, but if they aren't going to focus on bots, nor on account recoveries, or any other real bitcointalk issues, then soon enough bitcointalk will crumble to the sands.

We need a mod for off-topic. That should be considered majorly right now.

Poor guy who will get this job...
Being a mod in the off-topic section... kinda mission impossible...

What if we nuke all the topics and posts in the off-topic section, and start with tabula rasa... (because it's off topic, noone really needs those posts...)
If you don't have millions of shit topics, the new mod will at least have a chance to control the new posts...

EDIT:
Also, spammers would scream and shout if they lose the majority of their activity, by losing the posts in off-topic...

You have all the rights to disagree. My point was that people with hundreds or thousands of accounts having Member or higher ranks won't really let a simple step of 1 merit requirement completely stop them from doing all this. And, I don't really think they will get a lot of attention if every time they use a different account created in a different date for meriting each of their new accounts. I say that because I know or I can assume how large their collections can be.


That is true. I shouldn't have said that if I wasn't proposing a solution myself. But I just believe we can partly stop this with that, and that is why I said there should be something more aggressive than that to kill the roots, at least for a while.

Actually moderating the off topic board would be much easier than we think. It'll take a few days, but the mod can just use a checkbox and select all the thrash posts in a thread and delete them, or just thrash the thread. Most people go there just to increase their activity, they only make shitposts there.

Also, who cares about the spammers bitching about their own shitposts getting deleted.

I think the off topic boards should remain free and fun, let the other boards be serious and have strict rules.

If you want a good read, check out the flat earth thread on off topic.

Thank you for the explanation of the target of such posters, but how can they rank up to Jr member when there is the merit system from January? Or now here the talk is about merit trading?

They don't rank up. They just shitpost random shit and end up getting nuked. But in some cases,yes there is merit trading and merit abuse, but only an idiot would send their merits to a bot who they know will end up getting banned.

Jr. Member accounts don't need Merit (yet?).

Moderating an out-of-forum discussion board can be nonsensical, and yes it's a hell of a work for moderator(s).
Why don't we just disable Post count from off-topic board (just like posts from Serious Discussion) and possibly, on other bot-infested boards to discourage those lazytards.

Why do we need an Off-topic section at the first place?
It is not related to the cryptocurrency so there should be the same rules as the Ivory Tower.
Why would you gain activity if you do not discuss anything related to the idea of the forum?

So if we keep the off-topic section there should be new rules like this:

- No designated moderator /OK/
- No post count gain
- No Activity gain
- Posts do not engage the two weeks Activity period.

But keep in mind that all the sh!t happening there will try to find a new place. So next sections are Economics, Bitcoin/Altcoins Discussion boards and the not so popular Local sections with a help of Google translate...

This looks fine, and I think it doesn't need so much coding, so why not to implement these changes immediately?
I know that those shitposts will pop up somewhere in the forum, but this needs time for those spammers to realize that their activity is not increasing, so it won't happen at the same time for every spammer.
Mods will have a little time to adapt to the new situation, and if reporting starts to grow because of that reporting badge, it's possible that mods will be able to handle the new shitposts everywhere...

I don't think it will take much time to be implemented, it takes time to be approved by the admins, that is the main problem, and if it is disapproved you never know..
But as we usually hear nothing from the top, we have no idea what is planed, if anything is planed at all.
I read that theymos likes to "troll" people but those a not like the April fool jokes so hopefully we can hear his opinion at the end.
 

I guess we don't need it, but we don't need Politics  or Alt Coin section either. I don't think we should get rid of it though as it's good as a board for threads that don't fit any where else. If someone wants to discuss movies or music then they can in Off Topic. What I think we should do is restrict that board to higher ranks only and/or posts/activity aren't counted in there because it is the go-to board for account farmers and spammers. When you can't speak English very well if at all or know little to nothing about bitcoin you can just spend your entire forum life posting in there about your top five movies etc and many farmers do post exclusively in Off Ropic and create shit thread after shit thread despite there being a sticky in there telling them not to do that. There's no good reason why someone would sign up here and head straight to Off Topic. This is a bitcoin discussion forum, not a child's play pen to farm their account easily in the process, so that's why I think that board should be off limits to Newbies and Juniors at least because they just abuse it. I've also suggested in the past that you have to be a certain rank to create threads in there which would also help, but I would prefer locking it out completely to all lower ranks or posts not counting towards activity etc.

Off-topic is a good place to dump threads with constructive but not crypto-related topics, archival isn't the place for them IMO.

@hilariousetc I second the latter as I mentioned in my previous reply.
Implementing it on Politics Board as well will increase the efficiency of reports/moderation once (it)they start on posting on heavily-moderated boards.

Word.  This is why I have more sections on ignore than not.  There are more shitposters, bots, and dribbling retards here than normal human beings who can string together combinations of words that make sense.  

Oh you know you will.  You probably won't even have to wait until 1020 activity like I did--not that I'm the least bit bitter about that, because at least I ranked up to Legendary like two days before the merit system was introduced.  You have no idea how grateful I am for that.

I can't tell who's a bot and who's just an idiot shitposter.  I'm not sure what their end game is here, because I'm quite sure 99.999% of these turds will never get above Jr. Member in their lifetimes.

Says the person who keeps bumping that stupid Cryptsy topic with shitposts when it should have died long ago.

Deer with no eyes

Shall we play a game