Growing SEO spam on Bitcointalk

[arabspaceship123]

When he did it did you should've asked why he posted his link on your quote. Deleting posts isn't a solution but posts can't stay after being reported. Banning or having stricter procedures won't stop ppl they'll find ways. If they're banned they'll make new accounts.

This problem happened to me once in the forum, when I wrote a post containing a link, and I was surprised the next day that a member quoted my post with his own link, I reported immediately and the post containing the suspicious quote was deleted.

Reporting such spam is completely healthy, but deleting posts is not a solution. There should be stricter procedures with members who publish such spam, such as banning or at least preventing them from having the power to include links.

[examplens]

So in this case, I believe that Theymos should change the attribute to rel="ugc" to solve this problem.

This is great suggestion. One weird thing i just found, URL on signature already use rel="ugc". But URL on post doesn't have such attribute (previously i only did quick check and assume all links already use such attribute).

Spammers often won't see things like this and will continue to do the same. I want to say that this kind of improvement will not reduce the spam rate on the forum.
I would suggest a different type of change, that is, Newbies (maybe even Jr. Members) cannot leave a clickable link in their post. Something like restriction in signatures, they can write a link, but it will be just plain text.
Certainly, this type of SEO spam comes from accounts registered only for the purpose of that post. If they cannot do that, it will discourage them, because they certainly have no intention of participating in the forum and building accounts. Higher-ranked members generally do not engage in this method of spamming, so that would be enough from that side.

[jokers10]

I would suggest a different type of change, that is, Newbies (maybe even Jr. Members) cannot leave a clickable link in their post. Something like restriction in signatures, they can write a link, but it will be just plain text.

There is a statement from theymos above why he hardly will like to do so. But I walked down some posting of SEO spammers today (and there are really many of them, probably many hundreds or even thousands) and I think there's one thing which can be done for easier visibility of SEO spam: turn off text decorating for at least newbies and better for Jr. members as well. Those who report will easier see where spam is.

Next is that if someone quoted spam there should be no surprise that a post with such quote could be deleted (some are still not and I'm not sure they will be; I hope mods at least will modify those posts and delete a spammy link).

It will not solve the problem entirely, but IMO at least will help with reporting, deleting and banning.

[arabspaceship123]

If SEO spammers actively dwell in numbers you've said action's got to be taken. Turning off text decorating for newbies won't give permanent solutions because they'll avoid getting caught. Their Activity's going to grow over time so they'll post with high ranks. It's sensible to let them make posts to get caught. They should have accounts nuked they've been reported.

There is a statement from theymos above why he hardly will like to do so. But I walked down some posting of SEO spammers today (and there are really many of them, probably many hundreds or even thousands) and I think there's one thing which can be done for easier visibility of SEO spam: turn off text decorating for at least newbies and better for Jr. members as well. Those who report will easier see where spam is.

Next is that if someone quoted spam there should be no surprise that a post with such quote could be deleted (some are still not and I'm not sure they will be; I hope mods at least will modify those posts and delete a spammy link).

It will not solve the problem entirely, but IMO at least will help with reporting, deleting and banning.

[jokers10]

If SEO spammers actively dwell in numbers you've said action's got to be taken. Turning off text decorating for newbies won't give permanent solutions because they'll avoid getting caught. Their Activity's going to grow over time so they'll post with high ranks. It's sensible to let them make posts to get caught. They should have accounts nuked they've been reported.

There is a statement from theymos above why he hardly will like to do so. But I walked down some posting of SEO spammers today (and there are really many of them, probably many hundreds or even thousands) and I think there's one thing which can be done for easier visibility of SEO spam: turn off text decorating for at least newbies and better for Jr. members as well. Those who report will easier see where spam is.

Next is that if someone quoted spam there should be no surprise that a post with such quote could be deleted (some are still not and I'm not sure they will be; I hope mods at least will modify those posts and delete a spammy link).

It will not solve the problem entirely, but IMO at least will help with reporting, deleting and banning.

Of many SEO spammers accounts I saw majority is newbies and there also were several Jr. members. They don't get merits so they hardly will grow. If to turn off text decorating links will stay, but they will lose an option of changing the color to black so that the links looked like the rest of the text. So it will be easier to see them and then to report.

This is the link and this is also the link.

Of course spammers are nuked then, but to catch them we should see SEO spam links.

[jokers10]

I decided to spend some time for this problem recent days. The result of this hunt is a bit less than 200 nuked spammers (of course not all caught, just small part of). So now I have some representative enough sample for some conclusions.

1. Main problem is that users for some reason don't want to report spam when they see it. Some spammers had several dozens of SEO spam posts for months or even years. If they were reported, they'd be nuked with all that dozens of spam posts. I guess those who read this topic know how to report already, so no need to urge for reporting here. But if not to urge users to report spam we'll stay with this problem.

SEO spam is not so intensive, it's just not reported.

2. Mostly all spammers have 0 merit, very few have 1 occasional merit. I guess if you are hunting on spammers you can ignore users from member rank and up.

3. I see no way of automating this process. Human eyes should see posts before deleting. Legit and natural posts with links can look technically the same way as SEO spam. Human will see the difference easily, but technically it is just a post with a link. Of course it can be helpful for a spam hunter if there will be a list of posts with links from newbies and juniors, but only if someone will decide to look through them all. And I think that much more than a half will be natural or legit posts.

So if users will report SEO spam as soon as will see it, this problem can be easily solved. Moderators promptly nuke spammers and all their spam posts when reported.

[komisariatku]

I once thought I would do this when I was an active blogger. But my moneysite blog has nothing to do with crypto so I don't spam SEO with links in this forum.

I think every attribute linked to a site has an impact on Google's crawling. Either dofollow, nofollow, or dead address (text only). In my opinion, the safest way to overcome this problem is to use short links, if want to be even more secure, make dead short links (not direct links). so everyone who wants to open the link must copy and paste in a new tab. However, this may be inconvenient and discourage people from reading related references

edit:
Or if possible there are new rule that accounts with a certain level can attach a link. If the level is insufficient then the link will become a dead link

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Those are hard to find, but it has been going on for years. I report them with "Spammer. Nuke please.".

I'm not exactly sure if what OP presented is the same as this example:

Sometimes not. Here we can see a message left three and a half years ago (I deleted link in a quote not to help a spammer):

No, I think Anyone is not a writer here.
If you know more about Top SEO Company in India, IndeedSEO is the most trusted SEO Company which offers top quality services in one package. Also, improve ranking and generate more traffics.

Because I've definitely seen shit like the link jokers10 pointed out, but not the AI-generated post with that code OP described (that I know of anyway).  Have we got a new form of link spam here or what?  I ask this as someone who is not a coder and is basically an idiot amongst geniuses when it comes to this kind of stuff.

I do agree that bitcointalk has been the stomping ground for all sorts of spammers for years, though.  I've seen all kinds of it, and a few years ago there was some group (or an ambitious individual) that was posting advertisements for mens' products and other garbage, and I recall doing a lot of reporting back then.  I'd support anything to cut down on this shit, because the quality of most discussions is lousy to begin with and we definitely don't need SEO spam being inserted into posts and going undetected, thereby encouraging spammers to keep doing it.

[arabspaceship123]

If they aren't reported it's encouraging them so we don't have options. I've said I haven't found them but I'd report if I did see them. If SEO spam's a problem isn't it possible to catch offending posts earlier. It'd make life difficult for SEO spammers if they're banned they'll be creating increasing numbers of brand new accounts.

I do agree that bitcointalk has been the stomping ground for all sorts of spammers for years, though.  I've seen all kinds of it, and a few years ago there was some group (or an ambitious individual) that was posting advertisements for mens' products and other garbage, and I recall doing a lot of reporting back then.  I'd support anything to cut down on this shit, because the quality of most discussions is lousy to begin with and we definitely don't need SEO spam being inserted into posts and going undetected, thereby encouraging spammers to keep doing it.

[jokers10]

Have we got a new form of link spam here or what?

If classical SEO spam is inserted in rather short posts, nowadays some spammers make long AI written posts for a several paragraphs. But the idea is the same, to put a link in it. AI detectors work good for this kind of spam, because their main idea is to place a link and not to rank up. So easy to report as well.

Those who use AI to rank up is harder to catch. They don't place links, they usually edit posts, etc. But it is another topic.

[jokers10]

I decided to spend some time for this problem recent days. The result of this hunt is a bit less than 200 nuked spammers (of course not all caught, just small part of). So now I have some representative enough sample for some conclusions.

200 is plenty.

If to go deeper I guess there could be several times more. But it takes time and I hope even this hunt can a bit demotivate spammers: they can see that their work for many months has been deleted so it's not as interesting to spam here as previously. If their new spam will be reported as soon as appears, there will be less those who want to spam on this forum.

P.S. And sometimes I'm not so sure... for instance this guy is definitely promoting his site in several posts, but... is it useful or should it be reported?

[examplens]

If to go deeper I guess there could be several times more. But it takes time and I hope even this hunt can a bit demotivate spammers: they can see that their work for many months has been deleted so it's not as interesting to spam here as previously. If their new spam will be reported as soon as appears, there will be less those who want to spam on this forum.

On markets focused on SEO services, you can often see offers xy backlinks from guest posts, comments, forum posts... I think that in most such cases such an active link is only needed for a few days, the delivery of the report on the service performed and the payment for it represents the end of the need for that spam post with a link.

Is there any consensus on how to report these SEO spammers? Since a ban is requested in such cases, I assume that just reporting the posts to the moderator is not enough.
For example, this user and his new post

[NotATether]

Is there any consensus on how to report these SEO spammers? Since a ban is requested in such cases, I assume that just reporting the posts to the moderator is not enough.
For example, this user and his new post

We have dedicated threads for reporting plagiarism and AI spam - perhaps you should start a thread to collect SEO spam reports to use as references in case moderators for one reason or another do not see the reports in the mod section. It would probably do better in the Meta section though since there's a unanimous consensus that posting SEO spam has nothing to do with "reputation" but is really just bot activity.

[jokers10]

We have dedicated threads for reporting plagiarism and AI spam - perhaps you should start a thread to collect SEO spam reports to use as references in case moderators for one reason or another do not see the reports in the mod section. It would probably do better in the Meta section though since there's a unanimous consensus that posting SEO spam has nothing to do with "reputation" but is really just bot activity.

And then users who will use it as a report model will quote spam posts to that topic helping spammers and there will be a need of explaining that it shouldn't be done, each time. Maybe in exceptional cases explanation of why is it SEO spam can be left even here, but I don't think we should motivate to collect spam posts. Moderators usually see when you report them (it's not so long message for a report form) and delete messages or ban spammers basing on exact case.

[jokers10]

Can rwaltz.coom be considered as SEO spam. I tried to report these topics but they are deleted on the basis of topics, not account. For example, @cyrilmorris^[1] created 36 posts, all of which contain a rwaltz.coom link.
The same thing with Bitget^[2], which now has a signature campaign, but in the past there were a lot of accounts that created topics for nothing but promoting this service.

What is the appropriate reporting format given that not individual topics are deleted but banning the account.

[1] https://ninjastic.space/search?content=rwaltz.com | https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2594741;sa=showPosts
[2]

There are some members who promote their services in all their posts without intending to discuss, and so all posts are considered spam because there is no intention to discuss here. For example, these accounts:

 - Grace366 (rwaltz.com SPAM)
 - Vivageneviv (Bitget SPAM) alt (ananyabushra

Well, I want to bring up this topic once more. Are there any ideas what to do with all that shilling? I still see sometimes posts with Bitget shilling and I'm not sure what to do with that.

Now we have a started wave of 0xfutures shilling. I tried to report one of them (NFTflow8545) for AI posting but my reports are still unhandled. Today we have someone with the closest name NFTking84530 who pretends to be not knowing much about 0xfutures. And we have also Eugene_1, John306 and CryptoFit99055 who shill 0xfutures also.

If not to delete all that shilling, there will be lots of spammers with it, but how to report that effectively?

[jokers10]

Now we have a started wave of 0xfutures shilling.

Well, posts of two most active shillers were deleted by my reports and by someone else's reports, so let's fight with spam shillers further.

Usually there's no need in reference post to report, but this time I need rather big explanation about why do I suppose that there is a group of shillers or a shiller farm.

Accounts involved:
nennanem
frank07a
n0tailbg
Mart1ncrypto
aria.newman

All these accounts were used for spam shilling cryptogeek website. Usually their posts have no content, only motivation to follow the link. One of the posts for example, not to advertise the link I'll show it with a picture:



Later frank07a and n0tailbg woke at once after about a year of inactivity just to start to shill xgo exchange. Others, except nennanem, woke at the same time after a year of inactivity, and aria.newman to quote one of a xgo shill posts of n0tailbg.

As many shillers usually do, this group is using AI bot for their posts.

Hello everyone,

I've been following this discussion with great interest, as the concern of sending digital currency to the wrong address is something that's crossed my mind many times. It's true that due to the decentralized structure of cryptocurrencies, once the funds are sent to a wrong address, recovering them becomes nearly impossible.

However, recently I came across a service called WalletID that introduces an interesting solution to this problem. Instead of using the long, complex traditional crypto addresses, WalletID allows users to receive crypto on a short, personalized WalletID that they can create for themselves. It's like a username for your crypto wallet. You can send from popular wallets like Metamask, Coinbase, and Trust Wallet directly to these WalletIDs. This approach greatly reduces the chances of sending funds to a wrong address because the ID is more memorable and user-friendly.

It's not a foolproof solution, but it's an innovative step towards minimizing errors in transactions. Worth checking out if you're concerned about sending funds to the wrong address.

copyleaks AI Content Detected
hivemoderation 99.9% likely to contain AI Generated Text

Starting online investment, particularly trading, can be a rewarding endeavor, but it's not without risk. As a beginner, the key is to first educate yourself thoroughly about the markets, trading strategies, and risk management. Understand that it's not a get-rich-quick scheme; it requires patience, discipline, and continuous learning. Start small, diversify your investments, and only invest money you're prepared to lose. It's advisable to consider seeking advice from a financial advisor. Your success in trading largely depends on your ability to make informed decisions, stay updated with market trends, and manage risks effectively.

copyleaks AI Content Detected
hivemoderation 99.6% likely to contain AI Generated Text
sapling.ai Fake: 100.0%

There are several more users mentioned xgo several times this year, but I'm not sure they are also shillers, so will report these 5 accounts for first.

[DYING_S0UL]

But later it's edited add SEO spam link, which wouldn't be noticed by most member.

Those are hard to find, but it has been going on for years. I report them with "Spammer. Nuke please.".
But they're hard to find, and I only find them when I stumble upon them. MindlessElectron can't find them, as it only sees new posts.

One way to find them all would be if Bitcointalk creates a page like patrol, but for edited posts only.

I don't know what just happened but I clicked that link of yours. In that patrol page, everything is massed up, overlapped.  Maybe because of extension.

[mprep]

While the discussion seems to have expanded beyond just site-wide technological solutions (to detecting, catching and discussing larger cases of SEO / link spam), rel="ugc" attributes on links posted by Newbies (so essentially anyone without any merit points) are already being added since around January, 2021:

Not sure what they're trying to do. In case it is some SEO-motivated thing, I added rel="ugc" to all newbie links. While I was at it, I also added this to all links in signatures.

Thanks to everyone reporting them!

Someone did notice the rel="ugc" attributes on signature links but I haven't seen the change to newbie links mentioned here (hence this post). Nevertheless, do keep reporting any cases of SEO spam you notice - especially if posted by non-newbie users. Also, the age of the post doesn't really matter if it's SEO spam.

[mprep]

rel="ugc" attributes on links posted by Newbies (so essentially anyone without any merit points) are already being added since around January, 2021:

Not sure what they're trying to do. In case it is some SEO-motivated thing, I added rel="ugc" to all newbie links. While I was at it, I also added this to all links in signatures.

Thanks to everyone reporting them!

Thanks for letting us know. I didn't inspect link posted by newbie user earlier. Anyway, i did further research and Google say other way to discourage spammer is by adding "noindex robots meta tag"[1]. But it's not practical option since entire page wouldn't be index by google. But on other hand, one of Google documentation mention it's possible to include multiple values inside rel[2]. Anyway i have following question to people who own website,

Do you think using all possible value (such as rel="nofollow,noindex,ugc") would further discourage spammer from performing SEO spam?

[1] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/prevent-abuse
[2] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links

AFAIK rel="ugc" sends the same signal to Google as the old rel="nofollow" - "I don't endorse or vouch for this website". The only difference is that the signal has more granularity (identifiying the particular reason as to why the website doesn't vouch for the URL). Anyone still spamming with the effective nofollow-like links on their SEO spam is most likely doing one or more of the following:

• Doing it as a hired marketing agency and partially deceiving their client who expects dofollow links.
• Hoping to rank up to where their links become dofollow
• Are fine with getting nofollow backlinks (e.g. if the link is visible, to entice potential visitors)
• Havent bothered figuring out or monitoring if their links are dofollow

There's other reasons, but in general, those that are still spamming links that have been nofollow for 2 years now are probably not going to stop as those who do care have already figured it out and directed their efforts elsewhere.

[arhipova]

A site that existed for 10 years does not just lose its authority.

Just one Google update and this could change in a blink of a second.

I wish this never to happen though. I like the forum because of the awesome members present here.