Bots among us :)

[sonysasankan]

Of late I had been noticing a series of deja vu's when it comes to comments. It would be the exact same comments posted on different threads by different users. Here is an example. One is from the Guncoin thread and the other from Pinkcoin:

Short-term may be unstable, but I think the long-term worth the investment

Short-term may be unstable, but I think the long-term worth the investment

These are newbie accounts slowly generating activity and post counts and I've also noticed accounts like these act as a sort of "peer pressure" on new coin announcements and to bump them up organically. There was a funny incident once in the guncoin thread where Dabs's escrow announcememt was copy pasted by a bot (just a random pick i suppose) on the same thread, making it look like the bot was the escrow

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is an old issue that has always been there or something's that cropped up recently. Its a little hard to notice them because no one reads all the comments in all the threads. You might come across them by coincidence if you are following a few threads and the same exact line is dropped by different people. Just letting the mods know that there are bots among us

EDIT: Post history for above example bots are deleted by the mods

[goozman96]

Interesting find, especially considering the posts were made only a few minutes within each other from different accounts.

[DubFX]

There are are few more for sure, some of them copy and paste text or other posts somehow.

[hamza171]

The have noticed how much account's are being sold for, so they start to 'invest'

[DubFX]

The have noticed how much account's are being sold for, so they start to 'invest'

They will be repoted and banned sooner i think...but i've seen someone selling accounts claiming that people are working for him on accounts.

[goozman96]

Buying and selling accounts is not against the rules on this forum. So they're technically not doing anything wrong.

[DubFX]

Buying and selling accounts is not against the rules on this forum. So they're technically not doing anything wrong.

Not if they are posting on topic.

[Hazir]

How do you know that it is bot and not just some user who is raising his activity by copying post all over tha place?  Is there a difference really?

[Zebra]

How do you know that it is bot and not just some user who is raising his activity by copying post all over tha place?  Is there a difference really?

Either it is a bot or a spamming real user, so the account should be reported and get banned.

[Zebra]

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is an old issue that has always been there or something's that cropped up recently.

Indeed, you can find reports here in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=390303.0;all from time to time.
Some bots are smarter and have the paraphrasing skills, like this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=390303.msg6081854#msg6081854

[sonysasankan]

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is an old issue that has always been there or something's that cropped up recently.

Indeed, you can find reports here in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=390303.0;all from time to time.
Some bots are smarter and have the paraphrasing skills, like this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=390303.msg6081854#msg6081854

Damn.... that's some smart bots out there!!  I guess its like growing chickens in a farm.... sold to coin devs once it reaches maturity. just roughly eyeballing the number of zombie one liner posts on almost all threads, I'm pretty sure a big chunk of the user names here in this forum are bots.

Any solutions to this pest problem? How about newbie accounts requiring captcha while posting? That should deter newer ones atleast right?

[cahirlet]

Maybe trying to push their post count up to try to join in signature campaigns. There is already rate limiting to the post for newbies. Should be able to stop some spams.

[sonysasankan]

Ya... signature makes sense as well. Lots of POS coins cropping up with their giveaways to people with so-n-so minimum activity etc.

[DubFX]

Maybe trying to push their post count up to try to join in signature campaigns. There is already rate limiting to the post for newbies. Should be able to stop some spams.

Yep may also be for that, but anyway for example Stunna checks the post history manually and i don't know if he would pay anyone with questionable history on these forums.

[hilariousandco]

Maybe trying to push their post count up to try to join in signature campaigns. There is already rate limiting to the post for newbies. Should be able to stop some spams.

Yep may also be for that, but anyway for example Stunna checks the post history manually and i don't know if he would pay anyone with questionable history on these forums.

You can't expect him - or anyone else - to check every single post manually. I've no idea what the bots are intended to be used for but I'm sure they'll get busted before they even get the chance to build up enough activity to participate in a sig deal. Even if they did I think they'd certainly get busted after pretty quick.

[sonysasankan]

Maybe trying to push their post count up to try to join in signature campaigns. There is already rate limiting to the post for newbies. Should be able to stop some spams.

Yep may also be for that, but anyway for example Stunna checks the post history manually and i don't know if he would pay anyone with questionable history on these forums.

But that's a little hard to confirm when they copy paste other random users "human" posts right? Like those paraphrasing bots.... they just sound like people not fluent in English.
Also those two examples in the OP. Their posts history is all deleted now. Guessing its the mods...

[shorena]

-snip-
You can't expect him - or anyone else - to check every single post manually.
-sni-

Afaik, Stunna has someone helping and it takes them ~2 days. So we are talking about ~32 workhours, which to me sounds enough to check every post at least quickly. Not sure if this is actually done, but its certainly not impossible or an inhumane task.

[DubFX]

-snip-
You can't expect him - or anyone else - to check every single post manually.
-sni-

Afaik, Stunna has someone helping and it takes them ~2 days. So we are talking about ~32 workhours, which to me sounds enough to check every post at least quickly. Not sure if this is actually done, but its certainly not impossible or an inhumane task.

Yep that's true it's why i've mentioned his deal, althought ritz has auto payout.

[cahirlet]

-snip-
You can't expect him - or anyone else - to check every single post manually.
-sni-

Afaik, Stunna has someone helping and it takes them ~2 days. So we are talking about ~32 workhours, which to me sounds enough to check every post at least quickly. Not sure if this is actually done, but its certainly not impossible or an inhumane task.

Yep that's true it's why i've mentioned his deal, althought ritz has auto payout.

I heard of some giveaways that only require activities, these bots may be used for claiming giveaways. It is also hard to find similarities in post from two different users at two different threads. It would take Stunna a really long time.

[u9y42]

-snip-
You can't expect him - or anyone else - to check every single post manually.
-sni-

Afaik, Stunna has someone helping and it takes them ~2 days. So we are talking about ~32 workhours, which to me sounds enough to check every post at least quickly. Not sure if this is actually done, but its certainly not impossible or an inhumane task.

To be honest I doubt he really does that manually; if you think about it, it's a lot of work, considering the number of participants, the stupid amount of posts they'd have to go through, and the language barrier of many of those. And on top of that, it would still only be a quick glance, perhaps looking at size and a bit of content, but certainly ignoring context. In other words, even the bots mentioned here could probably fool such a method of verification. It's not impossible they do it, as you mentioned, but it seems like it would be a waste of time. On the other hand, it's probably not difficult to create a bot that does just that, and flags users that are suspicious for further manual verification.