[LIST] ANN threads that are using bumping services

[Welsh]

Yeah, someone else has already moved it to the trashcan, if you find bounties which are offering an incentive to post, report them right away, and they'll be handled appropriately. Usually, by moving the thread to the trashcan, and then banning the OP, which is exactly what has happened in this case.

Good job. There's a lot that tend to do this by the way.

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[GazetaBitcoin]

Heads-up:

Since my lat post I cleaned the following topics:

Two announcement threads from the list changed their  status to "Inactive"

• Crybet stopped with their bumping activities 2 weeks ago, soon after being busted for plagiarized content, accounts tagged and bunch of posts deleted

Cleaned - 179 posts reported.

You can take a look on [ANN] BURSTEX.io - Crowd Owned Exchange - Profits Shared Among Token Holders

Cleaned - 246 posts reported.

If you check ARC IRIS Hydrogen announcement thread, and Burstex announcement thread, you will see that they have similar configuration [...] Another thing that both Burstex and ARC IRIS Hydrogen have in common is that both are having those fake conversations going on. They are using Ann bumper service, without knowing that bumping doesn't work as it was before, so they are just wasting money on  that. And no wonder that no one is answering your questions, as they are too busy shilling this.

I found this topic by pure chance, while cleaning the above mentioned one. I saw Rikafip's post and I found this ANN thread. I found it and it was also full of spam. I don't know why it was not added here, but I reported 427 posts of this thread.

please add this thread to your list:

ILCOIN ANN thread
Pyro network ANN thread
Old thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215017.0 (locked)
New thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5221130.0
MADANA ANN thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4796017.msg53916938#msg53916938

Cleaned all 4 threads - I reported a total of 1326 posts. ILCOIN was second biggest topic I ever cleand, after PHORE, with 71 pages / 1169 reports and it took a lot of effort to clean. At the moment the topic was reduced to 32 pages but I still have hundreds of unhandled reportes from it, which means it'll remain very short. What amazed me though was that this ANN thread was started by a member with reputation here, btcltcdigger. He is a Hero member and I really wonder why he allowed that spam inside his topic... What is even more interesting is that he never involved in his own thread. He just posted the ANN and that was all. Perhaps, if he sees this post, he may come with an explanation.

All in all, I reported 2262 posts from all these topics!


Having these topics also cleaned, the remaining ones are the three monster topics mentioned in my previous post, summing a total of 469 pages:

[ANN] Emirex Official - The Infrastructure for the New Digital Economy
Cocos-BCX has old ANN thread where they massively used bumping services for months

Another ANN added to the list, thanks to @iasenko who reported one old thread that is being bumped for a  few years one, and made by questionable account.
[ANN][PRE-ICO] 🚀🚀 ModulTrade : The Freedom To Trade 🚀🚀

I will try to take care of them this week.

I looked through this entire thread and found 17 shitposts that have already been safely deleted by the moderators:

Great job, Ratimov, thank you. If you can, please take a look at this other Russian topic. I mentioned it in a previous post.

Cheers for the help

Cheers!

definitely feels quite therapeutic to clean up the forum, doesn't it?

Ohhh yeahhhh! Imagine that since January 1st I reported almost as many good reports (10400) as I did it in previous 2 years (13727)! It feels amazing! 

[Welsh]

What amazed me though was that this ANN thread was started by a member with reputation here, btcltcdigger. He is a Hero member and I really wonder why he allowed that spam inside his topic... What is even more interesting is that he never involved in his own thread. He just posted the ANN and that was all. Perhaps, if he sees this post, he may come with an explanation.

btcltcdigger was likely the announcement manager, and wasn't involved with the project itself. The amount of spam, and sockpuppets communicating there was ridiculous. I started to delete each post individually, however I quickly come to realise that pretty much no one else posted on the thread, but the same accounts that continued going back, and forth with mostly nonsense. I removed the thread completely. I suspect it was the people behind the project that hired a bumping service, and not necessarily the announcement manager. Though, that's largely an assumption rather than a matter of fact.

Anyway, most of the accounts that were going back, and forth were banned already, so a global moderator had already dealt with most of them.

[Rikafip]

Yeah, someone else has already moved it to the trashcan, if you find bounties which are offering an incentive to post, report them right away, and they'll be handled appropriately.

Will do! Can you please check the case that I mentioned in one of my previous posts, where project advertised giving tokens in exchange for comments, but they did it via thier telegram group. Isn't that breaking forum rules as well?

I started to delete each post individually, however I quickly come to realise that pretty much no one else posted on the thread, but the accounts that continued going back, and forth with mostly nonsense. I removed the thread completely. I suspect it was the people behind the project that hired a bumping service, and not necessarily the announcement manager.

Great to hear that is possible! Back in October 2020 I started thread in Meta asking exactly that

I am going straight to the question: Is it possible to delete announcement threads that have no real interest, OP is not sharing news/updates and basically only ones that are active are shill accounts? I know that usual practice is to delete those threads that organize giveaways in exchange for payment (breaking the rule nr 28) , but why not expand it to announcement threads that are doing almost the same thing by hiring one of those "marketing agencies"?

Here are few examples  of threads which are tirelessly spammed for months and meet the above mentioned criteria (no activity from legit members, inactive OP, huge amount of posts deleted due shill account spam):
...

Unfortunately I never got a reply from forum stuff regarding my question. but for me it was kinda logical  to remove those thread completely if there is absolutely nothing else going on, except those thread bumpers leaving their crap. By using that approach, you can make your life much easier as bunch of those threads that can be found on the list fall under that category.

[Welsh]

Will do! Can you please check the case that I mentioned in one of my previous posts, where project advertised giving tokens in exchange for comments, but they did it via thier telegram group. Isn't that breaking forum rules as well?

PDX? I thought the bounty thread was moved to the trashcan or are you talking about another one I've missed?

Great to hear that is possible! Back in October 2020 I started thread in Meta asking exactly that

I don't usually, I generally try to give the benefit of the doubt, but this one in particular was so painfully obviously using a bumping service, and the fact that it was a locked thread, and pretty much no one else showed an interest the entire thread, apart from a few who happened upon it at some point, asked a question, and never returned. So, usually I don't completely remove threads unless I get proof of bumping, but since most of it was already gone, their social channels etc, I could only use my common sense, and it was just one of the worse ones out there.

I have seen global moderators take a similar approach now, and again. Probably for the more extreme examples. I wouldn't expect it every time though, as I usually like to take the cautious route, and go through it all one by one. However, this was just an exceptional case, and the users which were contributing to the spam were already banned, presumably because of the bumping.

[Rikafip]

PDX? I thought the bounty thread was moved to the trashcan or are you talking about another one I've missed?

Not PDX, another topic that had similar situation like PDX but it wasn't deleted, my report is still unhandled. In past, similar threads usually got deleted so I was surprised that such an obvious case was ignored.

So, few days ago I reported to mods announcement thread that has bitcointalk reply as one of the requirements for their airdrop, which is against the rules.  Few days passed, and nothing happened so far so I am asking if others can report the thread as well, maybe that helps.

Ann thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5379058.0

Here is the proof

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf3_1D2OpBWsbHndFYg3BBE2Xm2CrZziVp_StPp-DoXc-XP6A/viewform

Their TG group where that airdrop is spread https://t.me/fundraiselaunchpad

However, this was just an exceptional case, and the users which were contributing to the spam were already banned, presumably because of the bumping.

Well, good to hear that it's still possibility, no matter how rare it happens.

[Welsh]

This thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5379058.0 has been trashed/removed. So, I'm assuming it has been handled, but your report has remained unhandled for whatever reason. Wasn't me that handled it, I don't recall seeing it in my report queue either. So, not sure of the specifics of why your report has remained unhandled. Usually, when threads are removed, they're automatically handled. Though, I think I do recall in certain situations reports don't get handled for whatever reason, but disappear from the queue. I thought this was when moving it to the trash can, which we generally only do in specific situations.

[Rikafip]

This thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5379058.0 has been trashed/removed. So, I'm assuming it has been handled, but your report has remained unhandled for whatever reason. Wasn't me that handled it, I don't recall seeing it in my report queue either. So, not sure of the specifics of why your report has remained unhandled. Usually, when threads are removed, they're automatically handled.

Yeah, looking now at my report history, thread is marked as deleted  but last time I checked (I think it was yesterday), thread was still there, that;s why I mentioned it again. Anyway, good to see that its been deleted, no matter who did it. And for status still remaining unhandled, it's not a problem as I saw it happened before, not a big deal.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Heads-up:

Since my last post I cleaned the following topics:

I made a triple check over the threads posted since December 2021. Two of them are still active:

[ANN] Intelly Tech - Enhancing property development and real estate with the pow

Topic: (ANN) Fundraise Launchpad- Happy New Year 2022 Offers!

It seems the newbies spamming them are very tenacious. I reported 107 posts from both threads. It seems that Fundraise topic was completely trashed after my reports from today.

Miner Performance-Boosting Firmware By MSKMINER

I found MSKMINER topic by pure chance. Following Rikafip's previous post,

I am going straight to the question [...] @icopress recently created topic in scam accusation board about few similar threads ANN Removal Request: Uncommonn, Amepay, MSKMINER, Monolith

I noticed he quoted icopress there and icopress mentioned 4 topics full of spam. Uncommon was already clean; AMEPAY and Monolith were previously cleaned by me, but MSKMINER needed cleaning services though. I reported here 83 posts.

Then I started cleaning the biggest thread ever mentioned here, this one being one of the 3 which I still want to clean:

Another ANN added to the list, thanks to @iasenko who reported one old thread that is being bumped for a  few years one, and made by questionable account.
[ANN][PRE-ICO] 🚀🚀 ModulTrade : The Freedom To Trade 🚀🚀

This thread has 251 pages and 5016 posts   and I started cleaning it from page 251 backwards. Now I am at page 215 and I reported 607 posts so far. I will continue tomorrow, hoping to finish it. This topic is absolutely amazing, in a way, as the total spam goes from 2018 to 2020 without stop. While reporting post after post from last page backwards, from posts made in 2020 to posts made in 2018, I noticed that about 3 "generations" of newbies spammed. What was even more incredible was the fact that during 2019 and 2020 99% of the posts were made almost only by these newbies. It's like someone paid for bumping services for more than a year and also paid for different generations of newbies. Who would do something like that, seeing that his shitty product does not attract any other user? I would understand if the topic was spammed for a while, to keep it look like it's active, in order to attract other users curious about the product. But seeing that only 2-3 posts were made by other members in more than a year, this means that the service provider paid for these bumping services... for nothing! I really don't understand the logic behind this. It's like... OP was not even interested in selling his product anymore... like he simply paid to harm the forum through spam!

All in all, I reported 774 posts from all these topics!

btcltcdigger was likely the announcement manager, and wasn't involved with the project itself.

I believe that too. However, I think that a topic starter has responsibility for what happens inside his topic. At least, this is what I think about my topics. As the situation is now, the following questions pop in a natural manner: did btcltcdigger know that his topic will be used for bumping services?; if so, was he paid too, to allow the spam?; why didn't he do anything to defend his reputation (e.g.: clean the topic or state somewhere that he is not involved anyhow in that spam nor he was paid for initiating a topic for pure spam)?

The amount of spam, and sockpuppets communicating there was ridiculous. I removed the thread completely.

The topic was removed indeed, but prior trashing it you flagged as Bad a few reports I made there. It's not fair :p Since you completely deteled that topic, you could also mark as Good those reports which were flagged as Bad  

spam from bots quickly ended (at the moment there is none)

Thank you again for your help, Ratimov!

[Welsh]

Think the record for reporting might be broken this month. There's been a lot of reports, and not just in relation to this thread.

I believe that too. However, I think that a topic starter has responsibility for what happens inside his topic. At least, this is what I think about my topics. As the situation is now, the following questions pop in a natural manner: did btcltcdigger know that his topic will be used for bumping services?; if so, was he paid too, to allow the spam?; why didn't he do anything to defend his reputation (e.g.: clean the topic or state somewhere that he is not involved anyhow in that spam nor he was paid for initiating a topic for pure spam)?

That would be difficult to confirm. It doesn't seem like all of his threads are using bumping services. So, there's a lack of data to make any sort of accurate conclusion. Also, can't comment on defending their reputation, doesn't seem they're active in the reputation section. I've taken a look at a few of their other topics, though. They don't seem particularly concerning.

It might just be that they post it, and then don't monitor it much afterward, which definitely wouldn't be the way I go about it, but I guess some users do that.

[decodx]

<...>
It might just be that they post it, and then don't monitor it much afterward, which definitely wouldn't be the way I go about it, but I guess some users do that.

Yes. It seems they were hired by the project owner just to create and publish an ANN topic. Much like the translators in the local sections do.

<...> this means that the service provider paid for these bumping services... for nothing! I really don't understand the logic behind this. It's like... OP was not even interested in selling his product anymore... like he simply paid to harm the forum through spam!

There might be a simpler explanation. Someone may have set up a bumping bot and forgotten about it.
While I don't know too much about it, I suspect something like that is possible.

[Rikafip]

<...> this means that the service provider paid for these bumping services... for nothing! I really don't understand the logic behind this. It's like... OP was not even interested in selling his product anymore... like he simply paid to harm the forum through spam!

There might be a simpler explanation. Someone may have set up a bumping bot and forgotten about it.
While I don't know too much about it, I suspect something like that is possible.

Nah,  I don't think that someone forgot to turn off the bot. One of the selling points that those "marketing services" like to use when selling the bumping is that some ICO tracking sites are giving ratings based on activity on their bitcointalk ann threads.

For example, this is from ICObench, probably the most popular ICO tracking site. As you can see, they track social media platforms, and among them you can find bitcointalk. Only newbies care about ICObench rating but then again, that's their target audience.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Heads-up:

Since my last post I cleaned the following topic:

Another ANN added to the list, thanks to @iasenko who reported one old thread that is being bumped for a  few years one, and made by questionable account.
[ANN][PRE-ICO] 🚀🚀 ModulTrade : The Freedom To Trade 🚀🚀

This thread has 251 pages and 5016 posts  

This topic was the most difficult to clean I ever encountered. 1.5 years it was spammed by newbies. About another 1.5 years it was spammed by members with various ranks, from Jr. Member to Legendary. I never saw any other topic spammed by so many users with high profiles. This is also why it took so many days to finish cleaning it. If you are curious, LoyceV made a list with all the spammers from this topic. Actually, I encourage you to take a look!

All in all, I reported 3936 posts from all this topic! It's length reduced to only 56 pages / 1101 posts, but I still have 105 unhandled reports from it so it will probably remain with only 50 pages out of 251. I think I'll perform a double check on it though, to ensure I reported everything that deserves to be reported.


Having this topic also cleaned, the remaining ones are the ones below, summing a total of 218 pages:

[ANN] Emirex Official - The Infrastructure for the New Digital Economy
Cocos-BCX has old ANN thread where they massively used bumping services for months

I will start with Emirex, as it's longer than the other one. It has 115 pages and 2296 posts. Let's see how much it will shorten...

Sadly, I did not manage to clean all the topics from this thread before end of January, as I hoped so, but still, I was very close to reach that deadline, as only 2 topics are now remaining to be cleaned I hope I'll finish with these ones in a few days.

Think the record for reporting might be broken this month. There's been a lot of reports, and not just in relation to this thread.

I certainly hope so I myself made 15.100 good reports in January hihi (and there is still some time left until end of the day ).

[Welsh]

For example, this is from ICObench, probably the most popular ICO tracking site. As you can see, they track social media platforms, and among them you can find bitcointalk. Only newbies care about ICObench rating but then again, that's their target audience.

Yeah, this is basically why threads still get flooded to this day. When the bumping changes were implemented by theymos that did contribute a lot to the reduction of spam, but things like this continue to fuel the underground market of bumping announcement threads unfortunately.

I see ICOBench's logic in wanting to have this as a measurement, however they probably don't realise how much this harms Bitcointalk in terms of spam.

I certainly hope so I myself made 15.100 good reports in January hihi (and there is still some time left until end of the day ).

Yeah, you've definitely been busy as of recent. I've probably only handled around 5000 of them. Who knows, we might get a 30-35k report month.

[Rikafip]

Just identified new group of ANN threads that hired bumping service. What's weird here is that one of them is a really old project from 2015 (DECENT) that has 800 pages but suddenly decided to push their thread once again via this useless service. Others threads are recently created so might be the best idea to start reporting posts written there. Here are the threads:

🚀 [ANN] PadLock | Decentralized Communications And Security Solutions 🚀
Cryptoprosol - The Best Solution To Any Issues You Have Concerning Cryptocurreny
[ANN] Gentlemen's Baby Club [GBC] NFT CLUB #ETH #blockchain
[ANN] DECENT - Decentralizing Content Distribution
🚀 [ANN] Stabila Public Chain (STB) | Decentralize the financial system. 🚀
{ANN} Income Finance 20% Reflection rewards paid in BUSD!

[Welsh]

Just identified new group of ANN threads that hired bumping service. What's weird here is that one of them is a really old project from 2015 (DECENT) that has 800 pages but suddenly decided to push their thread once again via this useless service. Others threads are recently created so might be the best idea to start reporting posts written there. Here are the threads:

I'll work through the backlog of reports I have, and I'll then manually go through these threads myself, and actively monitor them from then on wards. Added to the list of others, my list is nearly as long as my leg now. Appreciate the heads up though.

Definitely a strange case for them to start bumping with such a long period of inactivity, but if they're bumping it now, no doubt they did it back in 2015. I'll go through the entire thread.

[Rikafip]

Definitely a strange case for them to start bumping with such a long period of inactivity, but if they're bumping it now, no doubt they did it back in 2015. I'll go through the entire thread.

Maybe I didn't express myself properly; they weren't inactive since 2015, they started this project back in 2015. They almost certainly used some bumping service as you don't 800 pages thread for a completely unknown project (at least to me) without some push. On CMC they are listed as "untracked listing" while I couldn't even find them on Coingecko. Looks like they gave up yet they are trying with this marketing technique.

Anyway, definitely reporting material, at least last page or two as that's when this new group appeared.

[Welsh]

Maybe I didn't express myself properly; they weren't inactive since 2015, they started this project back in 2015. They almost certainly used some bumping service as you don't 800 pages thread for a completely unknown project (at least to me) without some push. On CMC they are listed as "untracked listing" while I couldn't even find them on Coingecko. Looks like they gave up yet they are trying with this marketing technique.

Anyway, definitely reporting material, at least last page or two as that's when this new group appeared.

I think I understood correctly, been inactive since 2015, but recently started back up again, right? This isn't really the norm, most projects seem to push it hard when they've just started to launch the most, though as you've rightly pointed out before, some do it to keep up ratings from external websites.

I haven't had a look at it yet, I've gotten through my report backlog though, so I'll likely start taking a look in the morning. I usually treat actively viewed threads as a priority, and revisit the older stuff when I have time. For example, threads which are in the first few pages on the Altcoin section, usually get seen to first, at least that's the idea. There's a bunch of threads that are currently active, and have been for a few years, but somehow managed to avoid being cleaned up.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Heads-up:

Since my last post I cleaned the following topics:

[ANN] Emirex Official - The Infrastructure for the New Digital Economy
Cocos-BCX has old ANN thread where they massively used bumping services for months

From Emirex I reported 2094 posts and it was reduced from 115 pages to 11. From Cocos I reported 2062 posts and it was reduced from 103 pages to 23 (I have a few more reports unhandled yet so it will shorten even more).

I think I'll perform a double check on it though, to ensure I reported everything that deserves to be reported.

After another check through all remaining 50 pages of ModulTrade topic I reported 25 more posts.


Just when I thought I finished cleaning all topics from this thread I just saw Rikafip's new post!

Just identified new group of ANN threads that hired bumping service [...]

🚀 [ANN] PadLock | Decentralized Communications And Security Solutions 🚀
Cryptoprosol - The Best Solution To Any Issues You Have Concerning Cryptocurreny
[ANN] Gentlemen's Baby Club [GBC] NFT CLUB #ETH #blockchain
[ANN] DECENT - Decentralizing Content Distribution
🚀 [ANN] Stabila Public Chain (STB) | Decentralize the financial system. 🚀
{ANN} Income Finance 20% Reflection rewards paid in BUSD!

5 topics were almost clean (I had only 5 posts to report), the only one remaining being the one of 800 pages (OMG!). I will take a look through all its pages and I hope in one week or so to finish cleaning it as well. Wish me luck However, I'll do it after going once more through all topics posted here, as I stated before I intend to do once I finish with all of them.

All in all, I reported 7784 posts from all these topics! (I mean together with all reports from Modul topic as well)

There's a bunch of threads that are currently active, and have been for a few years, but somehow managed to avoid being cleaned up.

If you know their names, drop them here and they'll be taken care of

[Rikafip]

So, while checking if spammers reappeared on one of the already identified threads, I stumbled upon a new group of accounts that are doing the same in another thread, [ANN] My Crypto City (MYCTY) Mobile game using Solana infrastructure. In last month or so, they managed to churn out 23 pages of the one-liner crap.

Accounts "working" there can be divided in two groups: those that are made specifically to spam MCTY thread, and other group that did the same thing in [ANN][GOPX ] The GOPX Token is the FIRST Patent Pending Cryptocurrency!, but that thread is inactive for some time now. Those two are obviously connected as OP of MCTY (BulkWaks1) was very active in GOPX and vice versa, OP of GOPX  (HBUS is very active in MCTY thread.

@Welsh here is the list of approximately 100 sock puppet accounts that are either exclusively working in MCTY thread, or worked in GOPX before starting in MCTY that IMHO deserve to be nuked/banned. For those wondering, those numbers after the name are amount of posts written in MCTY thread.

gotrosen [7]
sinogrape [7]
oppatoad [6]
FedukWj [5]
GeeS [5]
Kyt5bat [5]
linoclef [5]
AmaliaGF [4]
Loiusm [4]
Lurecs [4]
Manuelis [4]
anteuglove [4]
mrenis [4]
nepthnriver [4]
ventoris37 [4]
Armstronds1 [3]
DemDasa34 [3]
Doppelganger777 [3]
ELmortFar [3]
Freesun [3]
Huid23 [3]
HummW1 [3]
ReyWestf [3]
TeeShet [3]
WizziSax [3]
ZanBenGuru [3]
erkminetag [3]
jontantpie [3]
lertmneo [3]
leximari [3]
lochew [3]
rambVar [3]
ronetteplsk [3]
Akm4gclock22 [2]
AliHas [2]
AvenWe [2]
Berryvery394 [2]
Bestcryptotoo [2]
Chicagophan22 [2]
Cryptohero 89 [2]
Cyujx [2]
DamaT [2]
Fildfor [2]
Gyli2 [2]
HayatT [2]
IVYICO [2]
IninnA [2]
Jane Catler [2]
JorohMo [2]
Jremy1 [2]
Karheart [2]
KrahU [2]
Maxtrench [2]
Noth7mone [2]
ReviranXR [2]
Rezolusion99 [2]
RonaldSadr [2]
Ruslana1999 [2]
SenSeQ15 [2]
Sloujoke [2]
TreeesW [2]
TyelorWer [2]
VeraWad [2]
WestKy13 [2]
XxxradD [2]
YTTTDIM [2]
Yioper [2]
Ytreeth [2]
Ytresa [2]
ailmplum [2]
dodryhalo [2]
frytvirga [2]
jinbi-official [2]
junkproharry [2]
mandlyrt [2]
mayoflute [2]
minartictag [2]
monlgolf [2]
novarice [2]
r_victory [2]
reshards [2]
satfrattg [2]
tongta9 [2]
Awi345 [1]
AzazaF [1]
Bon963 [1]
Bustykins [1]
CelinD [1]
Coolman258 [1]
Dandelegle [1]
Dora1245 [1]
DumnaE [1]
DypeA [1]
EXA LAB [1]
ErtyW [1]
Fornik [1]