How to deal with bumping via fake conversation?

[MagicSmoker]

In order for a thread to maintain a position on the first page of the altcoins/announcements subforum it needs a post every 10 minutes or less, something that seems unlikely for all but the most followed projects and/or ones undergoing some controversy. For a project too small to show up on CMC, however, the more likely explanation is the use of paid bumping. Previously I found plagiarism or duplicate posting (ie - when someone writes the exact same response in several thread) to be most common, but the last few days I have noticed a new technique which appears to be a fake conversation. That is to say, two or more people seem to be having a conversation because they are asking/answering a series of questions between them, but this conversation does not seem to be authentic as it is strictly about generalities and often times doesn't even make sense.

Unfortunately, this behavior (absent plagiarism or duplicate posting) does not seem to be excluded by the (un)official rules hence I thought I'd present my evidence here and get a discussion going on how to address this going forward. Below are a few threads whose conversations seem fake and the users who appear to be involved based on posting more than two generic questions or answers to the thread:


The first two examples - EvenCoin and SafeInsure - seem to be employing the same group of people: BTCFaucets, CoinNextE, amanai, bitokman, guarino, 12coins, SamuelN, peetah, Tiny_Prism, boomertoo, kk777, Klacik.

The 3rd example - ATLANTICO - is run a little differently as it is less of a conversation and more just random postings (mostly from people on the sig campaigns for GigTricks and EraSwap): Justenjoy1903, Anya Doreen, Maryqueen Finez, HappyCaptain, imopogicute, 25espia1994, larry1994, clarise123, pogicute1234, 123pogi123, jackielim

I have already reported some of the users above for plagiarism or duplicate posting (though the latter is less clearly an infraction*) but if they haven't plagiarized or posted the same post to multiple threads I'm not sure what to do. A few months ago a similar situation occurred with the RoomDao ANN - discussed here Bumping RoomDao ICO ANN - and that thread was nuked by mprep, but some people argued that bad actors or competitors could report threads for paid bumping to get them nuked for their own benefit. I dunno about that - "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" springs to mind.


EDIT - got clarification that duplicating one's own posts is treated the same as plagiarism by hilariousandco:

I don't know about perma ban, but temp ban should be for sure. Threads for these types of posts aren't really required. One or two reports should be enough(ask the mod to check post history and explain it clearly what the guy is doing in the report paragraph).

It's a permaban. This is no different than copying someone else's post and if you do this then you have absolutely no intention of contributing here and you're 100% only doing it to farm your account and/or bleed bounties whilst putting in no effort at all. It's scumbags like these that are destroying the forum. If they're too lazy to actually make posts then don't bother.

[1713952218]

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[1713952218]

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[1713952218]

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[LeGaulois]

The evidence can be quite strong but if there is no concrete proof, the line between a scripted conversation or not is very small. I mean they will always try to find any type of excuse to say no it isn't with every argument possible.
But in another side, the posts can surely be deleted for a low-quality one, which I am sure is the case

[MagicSmoker]

The evidence can be quite strong but if there is no concrete proof, the line between a scripted conversation or not is very small.
...

Yep, that's the primary counterargument I expected. The ATLANTICO example has more of a classic spam megathread kind of feel, but the EvenCoin and SafeInsure examples are, I feel, much more insidious in that they give the appearance of a genuine conversation occurring until you really pay attention to what is being said, e.g. from the EvenCoin thread -

Post 2662 makes a typically generic assertion found in most spam megathreads:

I like that this project promotes the ideas of a distributed economy to the masses and uses for this just the technology of blockchai. It's great to make it more massive and attract more new users.

Post 2663 then responds to that generic assertion with a generic question:

I like that this project promotes the ideas of a distributed economy to the masses and uses for this just the technology of blockchai. It's great to make it more massive and attract more new users.

And what are the advantages of this project? Can I ask you about?

Post 2664 provides generic answers to the previous generic question - I mean, what crypto doesn't "support cross-border transfers"?:

I like that this project promotes the ideas of a distributed economy to the masses and uses for this just the technology of blockchai. It's great to make it more massive and attract more new users.

And what are the advantages of this project? Can I ask you about?

Well, for example, EvenCoin will support cross-border transfers, which in itself is an excellent solution, as this will help to facilitate international trade between entrepreneurs. It's also a ready-made and complete e-commerce system, and this is based on the highly reliable method of Escrow

Etc.

[xtraelv]

You can report the conversations when they are low quality.

I prefer to just put up a public notice like this one:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5031712.msg46561855#msg46561855

Make them fun, make them all different and make sure to be "on topic" so they violate no rules.

The other way is to look at their other conversations and report them for plagiarism which gets a permaban  



Exact same content posted in multiple threads.





To be investigated : BTCFaucets, CoinNextE, amanai, bitokman, guarino, 12coins, SamuelN, peetah, Tiny_Prism, boomertoo, kk777, Klacik.Green Lantern nicrnicr

Permaban eligible and reported = deleted


It is clearly BOT activity because try posting this fast :

Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:59:41 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:55:14 PM
Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:49:57 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:44:39 PM



Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:59:53 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:55:24 PM
Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:50:09 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:44:51 PM


Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 04:00:04 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:55:36 PM
Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:50:23 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:45:03 PM

Just look at the times between posts and replies on multiple topics between the two alt accounts.







Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:43:06 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 12:34:04 PM
Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:24:41 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 12:18:55 PM
Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:06:42 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 11:56:32 AM

Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:24:53 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 12:19:11 PM
Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:06:59 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 11:55:50 AM
Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 11:41:19 AM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 11:27:43 AM

[Veleor]

Someone should stop this flood
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4901699.msg46512676#msg46512676 [archive]

[TheBeardedBaby]

You can report also Quoting Pyramids.
This is taken from the Rule  1, examples >

Examples:

1. Such posts like "SELL SELL SELL", "I agree", "+1", "Support", "Watching", "Interesting", "LOL", "SCAM", "LEGIT", "FAKE", other one word posts, posts consisting mostly of swearing, quote pyramids,useless introduction threads, threads about a topic already recently discussed in several other threads.

[Welsh]

It really depends on the individual case for me. I'll delete it if its of low content, and if its particularly a problem I'll message the users involved. If they ignore that or is unbearable I might ignore it so that a higher up member of staff can take a look at it, and decide whether its ban worthy or not. I know this doesn't answer your question, but I guess you sort of see my take on things when I receive reports like this. I get a lot of these types of reports!

[xtraelv]

It really depends on the individual case for me. I'll delete it if its of low content, and if its particularly a problem I'll message the users involved. If they ignore that or is unbearable I might ignore it so that a higher up member of staff can take a look at it, and decide whether its ban worthy or not. I know this doesn't answer your question, but I guess you sort of see my take on things when I receive reports like this. I get a lot of these types of reports!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4901699.1140 the whole thread deserves to be nuked. It is just an account farm bumping it with pyramid quotes.

[MagicSmoker]

You can report the conversations when they are low quality.

I prefer to just put up a public notice like this one:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5031712.msg46561855#msg4656185 <NB - corrected link to actual post>

Make them fun, make them all different and make sure to be "on topic" so they violate no rules.

The other way is to look at their other conversations and report them for plagiarism which gets a permaban 

...

Yep, your warning posts are hilarious... except for that one time I spent about 20 minutes reporting plagiarists on the first 3 pages of a thread only to see your warning on the 4th... 

In this case, I ended up opening the post histories of each of the suspected bumpers in separate tabs which made it much easier to spot plagiarism between them. Supplying an additional report for plagiarism on top of the earlier submissions for duplicate posting seems to have done the trick, as 30 of my 43 unhandled reports were processed overnight. I've already learned that the only surefire ways to get an offender banned are plagiarism and referral link spam - every other rule violation, including the relentless ads that some pool operators post on every single page of a thread, seem to only get the post deleted, if that. And on that note...

*   *   *

You can report also Quoting Pyramids.
...

You can, but in my experience this usually only results in the offending post getting deleted and that is too much work for all involved (both reporter and moderator) to be worth the bother. It's why I rarely report low value "good project" type posts unless the poster has at least 1 merit or copper membership and their entire post history is low value - but even still I recommending nuking the user rather than delete one spammy post out of millions.

*   *   *

It really depends on the individual case for me. I'll delete it if its of low content, and if its particularly a problem I'll message the users involved. If they ignore that or is unbearable I might ignore it so that a higher up member of staff can take a look at it, and decide whether its ban worthy or not. I know this doesn't answer your question, but I guess you sort of see my take on things when I receive reports like this. I get a lot of these types of reports!

I'm really glad you replied since it's always good to get some insight into how a particular mod operates. I think all of us that have made hunting for violators a minor hobby here (or an obsessive quest... like, say, iasenko...  ) realize that there has to be some prioritization of the enforcement of the rules, especially for the more subjective ones like whether a post is low value or when an ad for a mining pool ad goes from being informational to spammy. Since plagiarism is an incontrovertible violation I tend to concentrate on that, but I'm seeing more duplicate posts (ie - the same user/bot posts the same reply in multiple threads) these days and getting some feedback on the priority of handling those reports would be welcome.

[xtraelv]

Yep, your warning posts are hilarious... except for that one time I spent about 20 minutes reporting plagiarists on the first 3 pages of a thread only to see your warning on the 4th... 

In this case, I ended up opening the post histories of each of the suspected bumpers in separate tabs which made it much easier to spot plagiarism between them. Supplying an additional report for plagiarism on top of the earlier submissions for duplicate posting seems to have done the trick, as 30 of my 43 unhandled reports were processed overnight. I've already learned that the only surefire ways to get an offender banned are plagiarism and referral link spam - every other rule violation, including the relentless ads that some pool operators post on every single page of a thread, seem to only get the post deleted, if that. And on that note...

I'm pleased they provide some entertainment. Sometimes it feels like I'm just talking to the bots on the thread.

Reporting the individual posts is still important. The accounts get a warning and the progressively more serious bans.

It is a bit frustrating though because I reported numerous of them for plagiarized content (copy and pasted their entire conversation on multiple unrelated threads).
The timing shows it must be bots talking to each other (who can write and post a reply in 10 seconds between posts)
This morning I see the accounts shit-posting again.

[MagicSmoker]

...
Reporting the individual posts is still important. The accounts get a warning and the progressively more serious bans.

It is a bit frustrating though because I reported numerous of them for plagiarized content (copy and pasted their entire conversation on multiple unrelated threads).
...

Yeah, I basically just report individual posts now, and mainly for plagiarism, repeatedly posting mining pool ads on every page of an ANN thread, and referral link spam.

I do have some good news to report though: many of the people I mentioned in the OP have been banned and the threads they were bumping have come to a screeching halt.

EvenCoin
SafeInsure
Neluns
DBX - I saw your shill alert in this one, and no surprise it went unnoticed by the bumper bots.
NEOGAME.IO
Biohal

So now it's time to go back to those threads and post a warning message in each letting them know why their sleazy tactics backfired, and the above listing will make it easy to keep tabs on them.

EDIT/UPDATE - fixed quote, also, the boomertoo and Klacik bots have fired up again; I just reported two more plagiarized posts for each.
2nd UPDATE - Added Biohal & Neogame.io to list of shilled threads.

[morvillz7z]

I have been doing something like that recently. Reporting bots for plagiarism. If I remember correctly had around and over 100 good reports (100 accuracy).
The results I got were different, one part of these 100 accounts was immediately banned, one part after a week or two, and a small part is still active shilling scam projects. All accounts I reported was with just one example of plagiarism. (usual one-liner with 50/60 characters)

I wasn't happy with the results, so I decided to do a little experiment :

1. Reported one account as I gave more than one example of plagiarism, it was either 3 or 4. The account was banned almost immediately.
2. The other, I only had one report again, but this time someone else helped me as he also reported the same post. The account was gone right away.

Basically, if you can give more than one example of a copy/paste post or someone else/several people report the same post with you ...you'll get them banned, that's for sure.

Don't forget mods are human after all. 

[coinlocket$]

Old thread done by me was with around 70 accounts here:

  Bumping ico-bounty service allowed? 69 accounts involved so far. Need DT or MOD

Some accounts of this list are now sold.

[MagicSmoker]

...
Basically, if you can give more than one example of a copy/paste post or someone else/several people report the same post with you ...you'll get them banned, that's for sure.
...

Yeah, I was coming to the same conclusion right around the time you posted this, so I loaded up the post histories of some of the bots I'd already reported and found at least 1 more example of plagiarism for each of them. All the new reports are currently marked unhandled so I'll wait another day to see if that does the trick. Pretty much all of the threads I thought I had shut down by reporting the bump-bots are back in full spamming swing again.

*   *   *

Old thread done by me was with around 70 accounts here:

 Bumping ico-bounty service allowed? 69 accounts involved so far. Need DT or MOD

Some accounts of this list are now sold.

Outstanding work! One of the names on your list came up on mine - CoinNextE - which is a bit depressing. Scrolling through that account's history there is a huge gap in dates on p27 as well as a change in wording/style so I'd have to agree that the account was likely sold. That's gonna hurt but good when it's nuked, as it's a full member account.

*   *   *

FWIW, here are the users I've reported at least two different examples of plagiarism if anyone wants to pile on:

bitokman
amanai
slovenia1
12coins
Tiny_Prism
kk777
peetah
Klacik
boomertoo
Green Lantern
guarino


UPDATE - All of my reports providing additional examples of plagiarism were handled/marked good overnight. I also saw that xtraelv posted a shill warning in each of the 4 threads most heavily employing the bots - EvenCoin, SafeInsure, Neluns & DBX. There are other threads they are active in, but those either had less plagiarism or more real conversation going on in between all the bot-chat (with some poor schmucks replying to bots...).

[MagicSmoker]

It's been more than 24 hours the 6 threads I listed above have come to a screeching halt!

So it looks like submitting at least 2 plagiarism reports per user did the trick as all but a couple of the bump-bots logged in this morning around 8AM my time (UTC-4) but haven't posted.

While this took a lot more work than the usual plagiarism reporting, it was also way more satisfying.

[morvillz7z]

All these topics are now like ghost towns, completely abandoned. I'll definitely visit those projects. Bumping bots go hand in hand with scam projects. Let's see if I can find something.

but a couple of the bump-bots logged in this morning around 8AM my time (UTC-4) but haven't posted.

Accounts mentioned above are banned now, they can still log in but cannot do anything else.

As far as I know, these services are quite profitable, and even if they get banned, they will come back as long as someone is willing to pay for their scammy project to be shilled.

So it looks like submitting at least 2 plagiarism reports per user did the trick

Sticky worthy.

[MagicSmoker]

All these topics are now like ghost towns, completely abandoned. ...

Yep, it looks like the bump-bot ring has been well and truly busted! I'm kind of surprised the shilling went on as long as it did - it started on the very first page of the EvenCoin, SafeInsure, Neluns & DBX threads, page 2 of the Biohal thread, and page 4 of the Neogame.io thread. Pretty much all of those threads are just bots talking to bots.

Two other interesting tidbits: the Neogame.io OP is claiming innocence while the SafeInsure OP only has 3 posts and last posted on Sep 18th (also the day he/she/it joined).

...
As far as I know, these services are quite profitable, and even if they get banned, they will come back as long as someone is willing to pay for their scammy project to be shilled.

Indeed they are profitable... as long as bots are doing the typing, anyway: I recall seeing an ad that charged 0.5 ETH per day to keep your thread in the top 10 in the ANN section; that's not really a lot of money to have to type out messages every 5-10 minutes (hence why real people aren't doing it).

So it looks like submitting at least 2 plagiarism reports per user did the trick

Sticky worthy.

I hope that requiring 2+ plagiarism reports and/or more than one person reporting the same post isn't necessary in general. Just one example of plagiarism should be sufficient to be banned. Perhaps we just aren't at a high enough rank for a single report from us to be sufficient, or maybe this is the reason for thread here in meta to report plagiarism - I thought it was redundant/superfluous, but if the idea is to get multiple people reporting each post then it makes sense.

[MagicSmoker]

Bad news... a new crop of bump-bots have been brought online and shilling has once again resumed on the following threads:

Neluns
DBX
SafeInsure
Biohal - not sure about this one; just 2 new shitposts by newbies.

So far there is no new bump-bot activity (nor really much activity at all) on the EvenCoin and Neogame.io threads, but I'm watching them closely.

The new bump-bot suspects are:

adamkiev
nof21 - reported 2 times
appotus
doggie
microman14 - reported 2 times
maxi23 - reported 1 times
sade12 - reported 2 times
MinceCraft111 - reported 1 times
sigma45 - reported 2 times
drugrehablocator - reported 3 times
Maison - reported 1 times

I think at this point the better strategy might be to get the threads nuked, rather than try to chase down an infinite supply of bump-bot conscripts.

EDIT - update reported counts on above list of suspected bump-bots.

[morvillz7z]

It's a never-ending battle. They can make as many new shill accounts as they want. In the end, it falls to who is more persistent; we who report these idiots or people behind the bot bumping industry.

Anyway, I'll help you out with what I can,...so far for plagiarism/multiposting I have reported the following accounts:

sigma45, drugrehablocator, microman14, nof21 and sade12.

Will check/report more profiles later today.

[MagicSmoker]

...
Anyway, I'll help you out with what I can,...so far for plagiarism/multiposting I have reported the following accounts:
...

Outstanding! I was hoping to recruit a few more people this go around because, yes, it is a never-ending battle. One possibly good thing is that all of these accounts are <30 activity newbies so should be much easier to get banned (over 30 and a global mod or admin has to do it).

Oh, and I owed you a merit for your earlier suggestion about requiring more than one report, but the above post is worthy, too.