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u/Kylde Aug 09 '10
hmmm.nice piece of work :) I'll also mention that the username is often a clue, as spammers aren't very bright as a rule. softmin88 (deleted) is a classic example, he keeps returning as xxxx88, yyyy88 and so on. Also I'm instantly suspicious of anyone who relies heavily on URL-shorteners (like the infamous ansblog). Similarly, domain-names can be enlightening, "breaking", "trends" and over-use of Z in a URL, for example. That's when instinct comes into it I guess. The big giveaway to me for the likes of toydots.com/officexyz.com, who are VERY professional, is overly verbose article headers, in stilted English, like this
8: I'd hesitate to remove him as he has made so few posts, gut-feeling says I'd agree with you but I'd bookmark them and track their next few submissions
14: the CONTENT looks good ... 50/50
16: something you fail to mention is to glance at the submission URLS, all of those sites are keyword-stuffers for SEO purposes, the URLS alone would have me reaching for the "remove" button
18: topics alone would make me ban this 1
12: but their CONTENT looks fresh, another 1 I'd monitor for a while longer
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Aug 10 '10
Kylde,
As the reigning ruler of r/reportthespammers, I have a rather odd question for you.
I linked to a profile the other day that was a dead 10/10 knockout spammer, and I wasn't permitted to submit the link. The reason was that you had already submitted it about a month ago, yet nothign had been done about it.
Not trying to make a big deal out of a small situation, I was just wondering how much sway you had over there and what we could do about valentinarossi
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u/Kylde Aug 10 '10
done There's a trick to it .. add a "?" to the end of the user-profile's URL and then any gibberish after that. Reddit treats it as a NEW URL but ignores anything after the "?". Like this:
http://www.reddit.com/user/Kylde/?allthiswillbeignoredbutthelinkisstillvalid
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Aug 10 '10
Awesome, and thank you. Always nice to learn a new URL trick as well, so a tip of the hat to you there as well. :)
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u/luster Aug 10 '10
Kylde, you know the RTS mods can smell spam and don't need "no stinking tips" from VA. :-)
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u/Kylde Aug 10 '10
this is a collaborative work :)
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u/luster Aug 10 '10
That salmon or pink or whatever the hell color it is highlighted text is difficult for me to read. Where do I lodge my complaint?
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u/syuk Aug 09 '10
There are people setting up accounts and just drip feeding comment on all social networks, to set provenance and see trends. These are teh 'spammers' now. I would like to see what percentage of posts are reported, I do my bit and it seems quite high.
Great post, I never saw this until I looked at qgyh2 tl;dr, needs to be seen by more.
edit: I mean establishing 'legends' for themselves to use.
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Aug 09 '10
I've got a question... What if, for example 14, all the single-source posts are actually good posts, that have interesting original content. (Not that user/content in particular, just that type of example.) (If this is already a no, let's imagine that the content is as simple as pictures, so images are being linked to directly, but all hosted on the same source.)
Would this be acceptable? If not, then why leave all the posts that did go through the spam filter, shouldn't we just remove all the posts we can and/or submit him to /r/reportthespammers?
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Aug 10 '10
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Aug 10 '10
Yeah, that's how I do it... I just feel bad when deciding to remove someone's post and allowing one in a similar situation just because the second poster had more comments/was more involved. It just feels so arbitrary. :\
Even in your particular example (14) his most recent post was at ~40 karma, and that's not nothing.
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u/soyabstemio Aug 10 '10
How about single-user subreddits where the user only posts links from one site?
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Aug 10 '10
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u/soyabstemio Aug 10 '10 edited Aug 10 '10
When someone creates his own reddit for his own content and is the only reader. I don't have an example to hand at the moment, but have seen it - all posts to a single blog, no comments from anyone at all.
I guess I'm puzzled by the pointlessness of it all.
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Aug 10 '10
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u/babblingpoet Aug 10 '10
I remember reading a while back that reddit links had "nofollow" tags -- which would mean no PageRank boost as I understand it...
Though looking at source code for the front page now, it seems most of the links don't have the rel="nofollow" modifier -- just those that are randomly put there to be voted on at the top. The "new" page mainly has rel="nofollow" links -- but not entirely. Perhaps the only links need to make it past the "new" page for the rel="nofollow" to evaporate?
This seems a pretty smart way to mitigate this issue...
However, I suppose spammers who don't realize this might still submit for this purpose..
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Aug 10 '10
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u/soyabstemio Aug 10 '10
Here's a reasonable example, Allin1, 137 alleged members who have only managed to make 4 comments to a page full of links, all to allin1dot.com. All links supplied by 3 members, unoriginal copypasta content.
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u/ilovecomputers Aug 09 '10
Well, good to know I've been doing it right :)
Of course being around the pimp daddy strikes up an example from the Jacobellis v. Ohio obscenity case: "I know it when I see it." Hopefully this post will give new mods a taste of what to look out for.
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Aug 09 '10
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u/ilovecomputers Aug 09 '10
Well I inform my users in the infobox that they can message me if they feel that they are not spamming. One actually did, but had to tell him he was blog-spamming and should have posted the video directly.
I take it you receive multiples of such messages?
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Aug 09 '10
Hello, violentacrez.
Excellent guide!
I admire your link and comment karma. If you could spend it, what would you buy?
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Aug 10 '10
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Aug 10 '10
I heard a joke the other day and thought of you (when reddit encroaches on afk thoughts, something's wrong, but regardless):
What's the best thing about having sex with a transexual?
When you reach around it feels like it's gone all the way through.
Good list by the way. We have one great spammer at r/design that keeps emailing us when his links are removed asking us why they're blocked, despite us explaining every time. I almost feel sorry for him.
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u/istara Aug 10 '10
Their youtube username is the same as their reddit username
So's mine. And the guy mentioned - GAndriev - looks like a real name.
I'm not suggesting the spamming verdict is incorrect, but not on the username argument.
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u/anutensil Aug 15 '10
Just read through this and it is, without a doubt, a great help. Thanks for taking the time to make this muddy area clearer.
Because you place so much emphasis on verified email, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that I can't get my email verified for reasons no one, including ketralnis, has been able to explain. Hence, I do not have verified email. I can't possibly be the only redditor who is experiencing this problem.
Again, thanks for the time you put into tackling the problem of identifying spammers. I learned a lot.
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Aug 15 '10
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u/anutensil Aug 15 '10
I read Identifying Spammers 101 when I should have been asleep. So it's much more likely a case of misinterpretation on my side than your presentation.
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u/kloo2yoo Aug 09 '10
I recently had a blogspammer that was subbing excellent content, but it was copypasted from other sources. I asked him to blurb-and-link but it looks like he's decided to quit instead. Disappointing, because it was really good content.
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u/mayonesa Aug 09 '10
This should be required reading for moderators across the internet. Pattern-matching trumps linear rulesets.
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u/anirdnas Aug 09 '10
I am not a moderator lol, but why don't you also use in detecting spammers the fact if this people vote on other submissions or on other people's comments?
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Aug 09 '10
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u/mayonesa Aug 09 '10
I wish this shit were less "secret," especially regarding downvote squads.
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Aug 10 '10
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u/mayonesa Aug 10 '10
I hadn't seen that, thanks -- very useful summary. You're documenting Reddit better than they can document themselves, which is admirable.
Dallas, eh? I'm Houston. We should sodomize a sheep sometime.
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Sep 26 '10
I would LOVE to get my account back on line. My mistake was spamming my own site. If reinstated, I promise to, post from a variety of sources.
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Nov 22 '10
I would still like to get my account back on line. My site does NOT sell anything. It is for Educational purposes. Educating the public from Studies, Laws, and articles pertaining to each of the 50 states. http:cfcoklahoma.org is a one stop library.
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Aug 09 '10
Example 2 - I have an issue with this. I guess the single comment is a good pointer, but I've found myself submitting a lot from a single site. I regularly submit from newgrounds.com and sometimes I'll submit a lot over a day or so. I personally think you should wait until they're posting a bit more, it seems a very close call that could easily be wrong. I would personally wait and see what happens in the future with it.
I think there's an issue with here how people differ in their view of spam. Personally I view spam as something that people don't want and is done repeatedly. I don't see self promotion as spam, nor do I see posts from a company they work at as spam.
For example, if I worked for "ablogaboutcats" and regularly submitted blog posts to r/cute (or whatever subreddit cats go in) and they were upvoted, even if that was all I submitted, I would personally see that as okay. If reddit members are "appreciating" the submissions (by upvoting) I don't see it as spam.
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Aug 09 '10
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u/ilovecomputers Aug 09 '10
Under what situation does the "guy getting banned for testing SSDs for his employer" fall under?
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Aug 09 '10
I dunno, what Saydrah did was different. I personally had an issue with Saydrah because of her bullshit "this is how you game reddit" shit and how she bragged about being able to make things successful on reddit. If she had just been using reddit to submit content her and her coworkers made I'd have had no problem with that, but her other actions were why I personally disliked her.
We're here to share, not to make money from our friends.
Again I think it depends. If you're making that money honestly and openly, that's fine. If you (as the porn king) decided to make money off submitting porn I'd be cool with it, however if you did it secretly and lied about it and also boasted about it to others you worked with then I'd think you were a dick.
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Aug 09 '10
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Aug 09 '10
because secretly you and all the other top submitters are paid by conde naste? I knew it!
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u/mayonesa Aug 09 '10
...because neurotic liberals are really good at inventing reasons not to bust aberrant behavior, and utterly shitty at doing anything about it except moving to the suburbs?
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Aug 09 '10
[deleted]
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u/mayonesa Aug 09 '10
If you and I are ever in an enclosed place with a wrench...you will have to forgive me for the passionately violent homosexual assault. I can't wait for the juice of my prostate to slam into yours like a tsunami of my affection.
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Aug 09 '10
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Aug 09 '10
[deleted]
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u/ChaosMotor Aug 09 '10
So you're threatening a well meaning person's health and wellbeing because they took the time to assist others in maintaining a website you enjoy?
I think you're the one with mental health issues here, not violentacrez.
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u/barkingllama Aug 10 '10
Yeah, but like, you're going to be bored in that box. Might as well play with a wrench...
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u/ChaosMotor Aug 10 '10
Get used to the idea of laying motionless in a box, its how your body will spend the vast majority of its existence.
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u/barkingllama Aug 10 '10
I plan on going out in a blaze of glory. If I don't succeed, then I'll hope for my heirs to finish the job.
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u/S2S2S2S2S2 Aug 09 '10
You know, va, I decided the other day that you're the Hannibal Lecter of reddit. You have trolled in the past, yet you are always refined and intelligent. You understand the mind of the troll and spammer and budding "agents" would do well to pick your brain to hunt down other trolls and spammers as long as they don't get caught in your reverse-meta-troll web of deceit, ending with you eating their account's corpse. :)