36 spammers, one person. Is this kind of affiliate spam allowed on the forum?

[TMAN]

There still are a ton of users I have missed in the threads I've researched.

PM me in 30 days dude, this effort deserves a rank up, ill make it rain in merits for this action..

you will feel like a strip club hoe with me making merits rain on you.

well done

[1714707728]

1714707728

[1714707728]

1714707728

[1714707728]

1714707728

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Originally gave you 20, but that much effort deserves and extra 10 merits!

I think I'm going to up the number of merits I gave him as well, since this obviously took a lot of effort on his part and he presented the evidence very well.  Great job sniffing this BS out, OP. 

These idiots are sneaky and many times they just fall under the radar, especially when they make their spam posts in sections that are already heavily-laden with shitposts.  They know exactly what they're doing--but I'm glad this particular ring got busted.

[20kevin20]

PM me in 30 days dude, this effort deserves a rank up, ill make it rain in merits for this action..

you will feel like a strip club hoe with me making merits rain on you.

well done

Haha, this gave me a good laugh. I've seen you rain merit on so many users, your username should've been TMAN50. Thank you so much. Will not forget about the PM

I think I'm going to up the number of merits I gave him as well, since this obviously took a lot of effort on his part and he presented the evidence very well.  Great job sniffing this BS out, OP. 

These idiots are sneaky and many times they just fall under the radar, especially when they make their spam posts in sections that are already heavily-laden with shitposts.  They know exactly what they're doing--but I'm glad this particular ring got busted.

Thank you (and everyone else I haven't thanked yet) for the merits. I'll keep doing this, it's fun to be honest.


Meanwhile, I have found two more alts of this guy. Therefore, the list expands for now to 58 total number of members. Will update OP and extend the research later as I promised. Here you go:

57th user: Molekulabig (Newbie)

Great article, thanks for sharing with the community. There needs to be more articles like this to allow mass adoption.

Also thanks for the blogging platform, i've signed up and i've already started earning established tokens! It's great and i would recommend it to anyone who is looking for some crypto for free. You can sign up through the article on this thread.

58th user: champagneboudoir (Newbie)

Great article thanks for sharing the content with the community.

Also thanks for sharing the crypto blog, it's great and i've started earning through it for free. You can sign up through the blog post in this thread.

[mole0815]

i also cleaned up these 2 users directly.

there are a few more alts that belong to it.
this is not forbidden in principle... so i only took action against real rule violations like ref link spam and plagarism.

//edit: the "easy ones" have already been solved. the tricky part will be users with 1, 5, 100 or 115 merit i can't just clean up. someone else has to help now:

https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-101/how-earn-crypto-part-1-top-websites-find-crypto-jobs-xkxpxx?a=GELe3POa69

https://www.publish0x.com/earning-crypto/crowdholding-review-bounty-hunting-with-a-difference-xxlrr?a=GELe3POa69

https://www.publish0x.com/interesting-crypto-projects/games-blockchain-2019-xdqjjz?a=GELe3POa69

https://www.publish0x.com/bat-fans/bat-token-integrated-tipping-publish0x-xooyrg?a=GELe3POa69

https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-101/5-ways-earn-crypto-without-investing-or-mining-xozwx?a=GELe3POa69

and so on... there are many more

[TheBeardedBaby]

Doesn't copying another member's reply count as plagiarism?

I meant that they are very similar but not a direct copy/paste, it's more like a text spinner used which the plagiarism bot won't detect. They surely can be reported as plagiarism.

[20kevin20]

Just for the record, look how many of his (Jr. Member+) accounts have posted in only one page of a thread created by one of his alts: http://archive.fo/xDCVO

Phoenixdowndee's history is scary. Going through the pages (page 2, archived) only proves more and more how much of a spammer he is (plus he's using link shorteners, probably to hide the affiliate). But I think that's already been proven through my OP..

This spamming ring has a damn long history. After a few hours of research I haven't found very helpful new information such as other alts. I think I've found all of them, so the total number of alts stays at 58 for now. I found a few more details and links though - I'll just leave them here as it might come handy to someone in the future deciding to research an user:

• phoenixdowndee hosted a Crowdholding Trezor giveaway and his own alts have joined.
• phoenixdowndee most likely has a direct link to Crowdholding. The account's first ever post was the Crowdholding ICO closure announcement. He also hosted a referral campaign, his own alts joined it. (I tried to use the information they've posted hoping to discover something else but no.)
• jimsteel, one of the spamming members, posted a thread asking why "their friend" had an account suspended on BitcoinTalk (digital_weezer) back in 2017. His "friend" digital_weezer, jimsteel and phoenixdowndee have all posted at least once a very similar reply: digital_weezer's, jimsteel's, phoenixdowndee's. There are more alts of his who've done it, but I won't go through all 58 I've found so far.

Seeing how all these accounts link together and all of them have excessively shilled Crowdholding, I am starting to suspect I just exposed an operation launched by Crowdholding themselves to pump their coin and show a very false image of it and to convince people through fake threads, giveaways and accounts that Crowdholding is a thing and people should bet their money on it. In other words, fake publicity.

Here is phoenixdowndee's reply to the ICO's ANN:

Hi. I just want to tell you that you site is not working.

Can you please contact me via a private message or on our Telegram Channel to discuss what is specifically not working? The website is up and running.

By using the pronoun "me", it sounds like he is directly affiliated to Crowdholding. If we go back to my OP, 6 out of the links I have quoted are publish0x affiliate links about Crowdholding.
I went through almost every single page of his alts hoping to get a crypto address, a Telegram/Twitter username, anything.. but apparently they were smart enough not to post them anywhere to avoid getting exposed. So I guess the fun ends here.

Hopefully the remaining unbanned accounts will be taken care of too. Thank you, mole0815 for your efforts!