Organized farming of member ranks

[Gandalf86]

During the past few weeks, I have noticed an increasing amount of newbies asking short questions, sometimes illogical or inappropriate questions (e.g. asking about details of the ICO when the coin itself did never have an ICO). This was just strange to me before, until I discovered two different accounts posting exactly the same question, including the same spelling mistake here:

I'm interesting to this project and i want to be a part of it. From which point i can start? I hope to answer me soon... Thanks!

My answer from 5 days ago...  

I'm interesting to this project and i want to be a part of it. From which point i can start? I hope to answer me soon... Thanks!

Hi, just join our Slack and be welcome!  

Oops, fake account detected!    WTH is going on here on Bitcointalk?   Newbies trying to farm high profile accounts and sell them to scammers, probably. Forum administration should have a close look at this.

As I said in this quote, I suspect that the reason someone (or a group of people) is doing this, is to build up forum profiles with a high rank over time, by doing a lot of posts that do not really add any value, and later sell them to anyone who is interested in paying for a Hero account.

Unfortunately this is difficult to detect, because these accounts rarely seem to post the same question twice, and they seem to ask questions that are pretty common in fact. But as it seems, they are sometimes posting the same content across different accounts, which adds a new level to it, as it seems ...  

I would like this problem to be addressed by the forum administration for three reasons:

• To limit the amount of unnecessary newbie questions, which are often answered by me to support the respective community. In this case of fake accounts though, it will not help anyone because the author himself is just trying to increase his rank and is probably not even reading the answer I give to him.
• In this case, I may be tempted to start ignoring questions that get asked too often by these fake accounts, which hurts the actual newbies who are trying to learn about the project, and really want to know about this common question.
• When these fakers have successfully farmed their Hero accounts and sold them to scammers, this will increase the amount of scam projects that look legit because they are run by a high-profile member. Which in turn, will have many people falling for it and getting scammed. I'm sure everyone here agrees that scams are already a huge problem here, but even more so when scams will be run by high-profile accounts.

I'm not 100% sure how these posts are built; maybe they are just copying small posts by other (legit) newbies and re-posting them on other threads. Detecting or blocking this will, unfortunately, be almost impossible.  

Any ideas for how we can deal with this problem are welcome!   Or if you find similar posts or sets of accounts that keep posting these things, share them here so we can get an idea of how these people are operating.

Best regards,
Gandalf86


Edit: Further examples from the Espers thread (which is not an ICO!   ):

How will be the money, collected during the ICO be spent?

What ICO?

I've already seen some similar ICO, why are you different?

Its not an ico and its been around longer.

When would be the coins from the free gift likely to be distributed?

WTF happens here the last days/weeks?

Some of the user names here are physicianheel, equatorialharmless, skinnynegligible, so we can definitely see some pattern here.

[Str1x]

The only thing we can do as a community is to see the patterns and report it to the mods, maybe even put some proofs/methods they use in this post? So others can see the trends and report more and more newbies.

In the end we can't rely on the mods alone, the amount of accounts that come each day is huge and i know what you mean. A lot of posters just copy the answer above, rephrase it and post it....


Example:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2316578.0;all
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2383055.0

Both Coins will grow over next years. Buy whatever you want. You cant really say what coin is better or not. Each coin has benefits.

Both coins price will grow in future.Bitcoin price is stable when compare to Ethereum.It is good to hold bitcoin for future than Ethereum.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2130660.0;all

goto profile and click show summary, and you can find user id in the address bar.

click profile then click show summary and you will get it.

Go to profile and click Stat. You will see your id on the url.

Above accounts were made around 13-14 october.

Conclusion
In beginners help mods should really close threads faster if the answer is given.

[hilariousetc]

Any ideas for how we can deal with this problem are welcome!  

I have the perfect - and probably only - way that we can finally put a stop to this sort of account farming bullshit almost completely: Remove signatures from ranks entirely. What I have suggested is that users who sign up here either have no signature at all or at most a small one like the current Junior to Member one and to get a Senior or Hero-sized signature with colour etc you have to donate to the forum to get it (say something like $50 for Senior and $100 for Hero). This would instantly make accounts almost worthless and thus kills the account farming and hacking market and the money that would have gone to a scummy account farmer or hacker will then go to the forum instead. If we did this we would then have no more people just using bots to copy and paste or shitposting as fast as they can in crappy off topic threads just to rank up and farm their account in the quickest and laziest way possible which leads to the utter degradation of the forum. People also then cannot just sign up to this forum in droves with half a dozen (or in some cases hundreds) of accounts like many Filipino and Indonesians do just to bleed campaigns dry, because if they don't pay the $50-100 fee for a signature the accounts will be largely worthless. I think if we don't remove signatures from ranks somehow this problem will never stop and will only get worse as more and more people purely sign up to this forum just to earn as much money as they can from bounties and campaigns. When you're an impoverished non-English kid from a third world country there's only one thing you can do and that's at best shitpost and at worst copy and paste and we can already see this behaviour becoming more and more prolific as every month passes.

[sirsplashalot]

I’m glad to see this matter in discussion. I believe this is slowing down the process of humanity by inflating Bitcointalk with useless content. It’s worse than ads in mainstream media.

[monsanto]

Yup, I've noticed a real surge of strange nonsensical posts that don't seem to be related to the thread they are posting in. Before I think I saw these once in a while but now they are in just about every thread I read.

[Gandalf86]

Ok I'll just continue the list of users who are making suspicious posts here:

tucksoccer
belluses

Note how the user names are just combinations of two completely random words.

[mprep]

Ok I'll just continue the list of users who are making suspicious posts here:

tucksoccer
belluses

Note how the user names are just combinations of two completely random words.

Banned both.

[Welsh]

I have the perfect - and probably only - way that we can finally put a stop to this sort of account farming bullshit almost completely: Remove signatures from ranks entirely. What I have suggested is that users who sign up here either have no signature at all or at most a small one like the current Junior to Member one and to get a Senior or Hero-sized signature with colour etc you have to donate to the forum to get it (say something like $50 for Senior and $100 for Hero). This would instantly make accounts almost worthless and thus kills the account farming and hacking market and the money that would have gone to a scummy account farmer or hacker will then go to the forum instead. If we did this we would then have no more people just using bots to copy and paste or shitposting as fast as they can in crappy off topic threads just to rank up and farm their account in the quickest and laziest way possible which leads to the utter degradation of the forum. People also then cannot just sign up to this forum in droves with half a dozen (or in some cases hundreds) of accounts like many Filipino and Indonesians do just to bleed campaigns dry, because if they don't pay the $50-100 fee for a signature the accounts will be largely worthless. I think if we don't remove signatures from ranks somehow this problem will never stop and will only get worse as more and more people purely sign up to this forum just to earn as much money as they can from bounties and campaigns. When you're an impoverished non-English kid from a third world country there's only one thing you can do and that's at best shitpost and at worst copy and paste and we can already see this behaviour becoming more and more prolific as every month passes.

I'm all for finding a solution, and this will stop a majority of the people, it will likely stop the account sellers to a degree, but I think the people buying accounts for signature campaigns will still likely be willing to pay a fee, as they are theoretically doing that now by purchasing accounts, but instead of purchasing the accounts they'll just level them up themselves.

I do think this will limit the much lazier people and the people who aren't willing to invest anything and simply make dozens of accounts just to level them up and this should reduce the amount of accounts which are being sold. Having said that though I would be willing to support this as it would reduce the amount and could potentially make the moderation easier as well as general viewing more pleasant. It's certainly going to do more good than the current system.

[sinner]

if a user's ignore count (number of times they've been ignored by, say, Full Member+) were displayed, it could be easier to identify spammers, or easier for people to ignore spammers without reading their posts, or there could be an option to ignore anybody who has been ignored by 100+ Hero/Legendary+ members.

although ultimately, this is a business, and i dont expect anything will be done.  most airdrops that new members are going after are worthless, so maybe after people waste enough of their time they'll get bored, and most of the worthwhile airdrops will require more than a forum account.  there are still places on this forum that aren't overrun by farmed accounts.

[Welsh]

if a user's ignore count (number of times they've been ignored by, say, Full Member+) were displayed, it could be easier to identify spammers, or easier for people to ignore spammers without reading their posts, or there could be an option to ignore anybody who has been ignored by 100+ Hero/Legendary+ members.

This used to be a feature, but got removed for a reason I can't recall right now. Basically users glowed Orange/yellow depending on the amount of people they were ignored by.

[Iwuzhaxxed]

I say turn off the signatures all together until a proper solution can be found. Be like China, rule with fist. 

I'm guessing this is the primary reason for all of these farmed accounts. That and airdrops and selling accounts. Ban these things and the problem goes away.

[Gandalf86]

fattycasting

(idk if I should keep posting names here for the record of it, or just send it to you mprep? It could be interesting here for other people to watch and understand the problem.)

[mprep]

fattycasting

(idk if I should keep posting names here for the record of it, or just send it to you mprep? It could be interesting here for other people to watch and understand the problem.)

Keep posting them here. Easier to keep track of and other mods can see and handle these as well.

[Soros Shorts]

if a user's ignore count (number of times they've been ignored by, say, Full Member+) were displayed, it could be easier to identify spammers, or easier for people to ignore spammers without reading their posts, or there could be an option to ignore anybody who has been ignored by 100+ Hero/Legendary+ members.

This used to be a feature, but got removed for a reason I can't recall right now. Basically users glowed Orange/yellow depending on the amount of people they were ignored by.

I seemed to recall that the reason for removing the orange was the computing resources it took to compute the color. Basically it was some computed attribute of the user that had to be recalculated periodically.

[Thirdspace]

fattycasting

(idk if I should keep posting names here for the record of it, or just send it to you mprep? It could be interesting here for other people to watch and understand the problem.)

Keep posting them here. Easier to keep track of and other mods can see and handle these as well.

wouldn't it endanger my account by posting their names here?
they may retaliate by attacking or hacking me   by reporting them silently should be enough
I think there are a few groups of them out there but using the same script/program
also I notice they're adapting, a few usernames are selectively picked now not as random as before

[karmakeddon]

Any ideas for how we can deal with this problem are welcome!  

I have the perfect - and probably only - way that we can finally put a stop to this sort of account farming bullshit almost completely: Remove signatures from ranks entirely. What I have suggested is that users who sign up here either have no signature at all or at most a small one like the current Junior to Member one and to get a Senior or Hero-sized signature with colour etc you have to donate to the forum to get it (say something like $50 for Senior and $100 for Hero). This would instantly make accounts almost worthless and thus kills the account farming and hacking market and the money that would have gone to a scummy account farmer or hacker will then go to the forum instead. If we did this we would then have no more people just using bots to copy and paste or shitposting as fast as they can in crappy off topic threads just to rank up and farm their account in the quickest and laziest way possible which leads to the utter degradation of the forum. People also then cannot just sign up to this forum in droves with half a dozen (or in some cases hundreds) of accounts like many Filipino and Indonesians do just to bleed campaigns dry, because if they don't pay the $50-100 fee for a signature the accounts will be largely worthless. I think if we don't remove signatures from ranks somehow this problem will never stop and will only get worse as more and more people purely sign up to this forum just to earn as much money as they can from bounties and campaigns. When you're an impoverished non-English kid from a third world country there's only one thing you can do and that's at best shitpost and at worst copy and paste and we can already see this behaviour becoming more and more prolific as every month passes.

I am all for this too. But if getting access to higher ranks means paying, then we might need to add secondary security on our accounts such as 2FA. Them hackers would most likely target the paid accounts since those will be the most coveted ones so securing them with 2FA is not a bad idea.

[hilariousetc]

I'm all for finding a solution, and this will stop a majority of the people, it will likely stop the account sellers to a degree, but I think the people buying accounts for signature campaigns will still likely be willing to pay a fee, as they are theoretically doing that now by purchasing accounts, but instead of purchasing the accounts they'll just level them up themselves.

I do think this will limit the much lazier people and the people who aren't willing to invest anything and simply make dozens of accounts just to level them up and this should reduce the amount of accounts which are being sold. Having said that though I would be willing to support this as it would reduce the amount and could potentially make the moderation easier as well as general viewing more pleasant. It's certainly going to do more good than the current system.

But that's the entire point. Instead of buying the accounts from a shitposting farmer or a hacker which people will continue to do for the larger signature they then buy them from us and the money goes to the forum instead. Removing signatures from ranks would stop account farming by almost 100% and accounts would then be largely worthless if they had no signature available, therefore nobody will be buying them except for maybe scammers. I don't have any issue with people paying for the ranks and that's the whole point of it. At the moment it's free to create 200 accounts if you want and shitpost on or bot them until you hit x rank. Nobody is going to buy 200 accounts at $50-200 or whatever they will cost from the forum but if they can actually afford that and not get them banned then fair play to them.

if a user's ignore count (number of times they've been ignored by, say, Full Member+) were displayed, it could be easier to identify spammers, or easier for people to ignore spammers without reading their posts, or there could be an option to ignore anybody who has been ignored by 100+ Hero/Legendary+ members.

People would maliciously abuse it with bots.

if a user's ignore count (number of times they've been ignored by, say, Full Member+) were displayed, it could be easier to identify spammers, or easier for people to ignore spammers without reading their posts, or there could be an option to ignore anybody who has been ignored by 100+ Hero/Legendary+ members.

This used to be a feature, but got removed for a reason I can't recall right now. Basically users glowed Orange/yellow depending on the amount of people they were ignored by.

I think it was slowing the forum down in some capacity so theymos removed it. I wasn't a fan of it any way. Whilst it was sometimes useful for identifying trolls, people would also just use it for anyone who annoyed them or said something they didn't like. Fair enough people ignoring you but I don't think this should be a score in some capacity which is shown to all.  

I say turn off the signatures all together until a proper solution can be found. Be like China, rule with fist. 

I'm guessing this is the primary reason for all of these farmed accounts. That and airdrops and selling accounts. Ban these things and the problem goes away.

Wouldn't be against trying it but theymos likely is. Hopefully he will implement the more donator ranks option I suggested though like the copper one he recently added. Maybe silver and gold ranks could be next with a Full Member and Hero-sized signature included for example.

fattycasting

(idk if I should keep posting names here for the record of it, or just send it to you mprep? It could be interesting here for other people to watch and understand the problem.)

Keep posting them here. Easier to keep track of and other mods can see and handle these as well.

wouldn't it endanger my account by posting their names here?
they may retaliate by attacking or hacking me   by reporting them silently should be enough
I think there are a few groups of them out there but using the same script/program
also I notice they're adapting, a few usernames are selectively picked now not as random as before

Then use the report to mod function. Either or is fine.

I am all for this too. But if getting access to higher ranks means paying, then we might need to add secondary security on our accounts such as 2FA. Them hackers would most likely target the paid accounts since those will be the most coveted ones so securing them with 2FA is not a bad idea.

Several 2fa options will be available on the new forum software coming soon™.

[ridertiger]

Well, there must be an algorithm that can check for duplicate posts by different accounts, instead of having humans moderate this.

[baradfo]

Maybe a way to counteract this would be to limit newbies to posting only in the newbie page and have child boards for them there. They would be able to see the other boards but are restricted to posting. It could be a way to corral them into a limited spot to easily see fake accounts that are farming as you say. Just my two satoshis.

[praetor_delius]

I think you can only increase your activity/post count once a day, other than that I suppose you can have some kind of algorithm that compares your posts to other pasts within the past 24 hours or so, and if there are more than 3-4 matches you can simply lock/ban the account(s).

Or maybe implement CAPTCHA before every post?