Is bitcointalk being flooded with bots?

[MEWcoin]

Just an observation but there seem to be a lot of 'me too' style generic posts on here, am I being paranoid or would better security measures improve the signal to noise ratio here?

[mdayonliner]

There are already some existing threads about it...

New type of off-topic Off Topic bots
Let's spam Bitcointalk - bumping services - auto-bots!
"PrimeCoreICO Dashboard" Spam flooded the forum. Bots... again.
Let's stop the scammers and bots!
[Mods: NUKE 120 act] Commercial Spambots post and delete 1000s of posts per day
reCaptcha /or similar service/ for newbies and jr.membrs, to prevent bots.
THEYMOS see this. This forum is overruned by bots.
Linked bots
bots posting in the forum

[hilariousetc]

Is bitcointalk being flooded with bots?

Yes. And shitposters/account farmers which might as well be bots because they contribute little to nothing here. I've suggested a few things to try combat this. All new accounts have to be manually verified by a staff member before their posts show up. Removing signatures completely from lower ranks until you've got at least one merit or achieved Member status etc. A a captcha for your first post or two.

[MEWcoin]

Is bitcointalk being flooded with bots?

Yes. And shitposters/account farmers which might as well be bots because they contribute little to nothing here. I've suggested a few things to try combat this. All new accounts have to be manually verified by a staff member before their posts show up. Removing signatures completely from lower ranks until you've got at least one merit or achieved Member status etc. A a captcha for your first post or two.

All good ideas. Trouble with any 'get past this hurdle you're clean' captcha is that a human can sit and guide the bot until it's cleared those hurdles.

I think random captcha on all posts and possibly during a session for a considerable time would be needed to stop determined bot users...

As for shitposter/click farm style stuff, that probably requires a random human assessment of post quality somehow...

[mdayonliner]

A a captcha for your first post or two.

I would like a captcha to have until someone become a member. Most of these spammers are newbies and Jr. Members.

I am not saying it's gonna stop the spamming 100% but this will at-least restrict the spammers. We could see some more merit abuse to achieve member rank though  

[AdolfinWolf]

A a captcha for your first post or two.

I would like a captcha to have until someone become a member. Since users do not need any merit until s/he become a member, they are open to spam the forum.

I am not saying it's gonna stop the spamming 100% but this will at-least restrict the spammers. We could see some more merit abuse to achieve member rank though  

That would be extremely annoying to anyone that uses public wifi, or any sort of VPN/TOR.

It's already an almost impossible task to do google captcha's on a tor browser, let alone if you have to do it multiple times for each post that you make.

but this will at-least restrict the spammers.

And anyone that values their privacy, which i think is a pretty large part of this community....

[mdayonliner]

That would be extremely annoying to anyone that uses public wifi, or any sort of VPN/TOR.

It's already an almost impossible task to do google captcha's on a tor browser, let alone if you have to do it multiple times for each post that you make.

That's why my suggestion was for only newbies and Jr. Members. I do not think a legit newbie/Jr. Member posts that much. Twice or thrice a day? A legit one basically will spend more time on reading then posting IMO. We can be more flexible by reducing the captcha requirement only for Newbies, if we want.

We already have a restriction for newbies, which is can not posting image. We can easily add the capcha requirement for them as well. Both can be lifted if they buy copper membership.

[Jet Cash]

Why introduce all these complications, when all you need to do is to restrict board access for new members.

[hilariousetc]

Is bitcointalk being flooded with bots?

Yes. And shitposters/account farmers which might as well be bots because they contribute little to nothing here. I've suggested a few things to try combat this. All new accounts have to be manually verified by a staff member before their posts show up. Removing signatures completely from lower ranks until you've got at least one merit or achieved Member status etc. A a captcha for your first post or two.

All good ideas. Trouble with any 'get past this hurdle you're clean' captcha is that a human can sit and guide the bot until it's cleared those hurdles.

I think random captcha on all posts and possibly during a session for a considerable time would be needed to stop determined bot users...

As for shitposter/click farm style stuff, that probably requires a random human assessment of post quality somehow...

There are ways to get past any restriction, but it's about slowing the bots down or making them having to jump through a few more hoops whilst not annoying every other genuine user who just wants to post.

A a captcha for your first post or two.

I would like a captcha to have until someone become a member. Most of these spammers are newbies and Jr. Members.

This is too extreme in my opinion and would be very annoying. I think it should be at a minimum just their first post or two. Maybe up until Junior Member at most. People could be white-listed or purchase a Copper Membership to bypass them also.

[cellard]

Thinks are much better now than in the past actually. If you have been here for a couple of years you should know about the infamous FUD bot in the speculation section, and im not talking about kwukduck and his alts, but an actual bot of sorts, which registered new accounts with random gibberish nicknames, and copy-pasted a FUD text and created new threads pretty much every 5 minutes or even less. All we could do is report it.

I think this incident is what finally led theymos to go as far as forcing us to enable javascript for the captcha... so you win some and lose something else.

My point is there is always a tradeoff and we cannot afford more tradeoffs since it would kill any hopes of privacy in here. Even if you added SMS verification, Tor and VPN banned etc, you would still get spammers, look at Twitter.

[krishnaverma]

Is bitcointalk being flooded with bots?

Yes. And shitposters/account farmers which might as well be bots because they contribute little to nothing here. I've suggested a few things to try combat this. All new accounts have to be manually verified by a staff member before their posts show up. Removing signatures completely from lower ranks until you've got at least one merit or achieved Member status etc. A a captcha for your first post or two.

What type of verification are you talking about here?

That captcha for some posts sounds like a good idea.  It can reduce the spam with bots to some extent.

[Mpamaegbu]

I think random captcha on all posts and possibly during a session for a considerable time would be needed to stop determined bot users...

Making people key in captchas before posting is going to be very cumbersome and frustrating for members here. There is a reason the forum has moderators and this is one of such reasons: to weed out spam posts. The mods should get to work and help sanitize the forums. When those worthless posts are constantly deleted, those posting them will get fed up and leave.

[pugman]

Thinks are much better now than in the past actually.

Yeah no. There are way too many bots, 100s of thousands of them, shitposting or spamming with promotions. Word on the street is that these bots get paid at least 1000$ per week for one ANN thread. And these are bots, no hardwork required.

Yes. And shitposters/account farmers which might as well be bots because they contribute little to nothing here. I've suggested a few things to try combat this. All new accounts have to be manually verified by a staff member before their posts show up. Removing signatures completely from lower ranks until you've got at least one merit or achieved Member status etc. A a captcha for your first post or two.

Please, captcha is a deal-breaker.

Also, since you're a staff member, do the staff actually have the time to manually verify thousands of accounts?

[mdayonliner]

Maybe up until Junior Member at most. People could be white-listed or purchase a Copper Membership to bypass them also.

Yeah I had the same thought lately.

We can be more flexible by reducing the captcha requirement only for Newbies, if we want.

We already have a restriction for newbies, which is can not posting image. We can easily add the capcha requirement for them as well. Both can be lifted if they buy copper membership.

Also, since you're a staff member, do the staff actually have the time to manually verify thousands of accounts?

General knowledge, they simply don't have that time luxury

[hilariousetc]

Thinks are much better now than in the past actually.

Yeah no. There are way too many bots, 100s of thousands of them, shitposting or spamming with promotions. Word on the street is that these bots get paid at least 1000$ per week for one ANN thread. And these are bots, no hardwork required.

Making it so lower-ranked members' posts don't bump threads would put these type of bump bots out of business. In addition, requiring a merit requirement for Junior would ensure that bots never make it past newbie status and thus can be nuked.

Also, since you're a staff member, do the staff actually have the time to manually verify thousands of accounts?

Probably not as it stands, but dedicated patrollers can be made to handle these. We have to deal with the bots anyway so better to nip them in the bud before they shit all over the forum with explosive diarrhoea. The users will be shadowbanned and go into a queue so they can post as normal anyway, their posts just won't show up until approved which probably wouldn't take that long to actually verify.

[KingScorpio]

Just an observation but there seem to be a lot of 'me too' style generic posts on here, am I being paranoid or would better security measures improve the signal to noise ratio here?

entire cryptomarket is abused with bots marketing, many bots are ais faking people to scam others

[TheBeardedBaby]

Just an observation but there seem to be a lot of 'me too' style generic posts on here, am I being paranoid or would better security measures improve the signal to noise ratio here?

entire cryptomarket is abused with bots marketing, many bots are ais faking people to scam others

Well, report them. Only complaining doesn't help much. If you see anything suspicious, report it. More people should be familiar how to report and do it.