A Pinterest spammer tells all • Hacker News Board

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#91

Post by nullflux » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 6:42 AM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #55

DanBC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simply doing it at scale That's the most abusive part. As a Pinterest user I want to see what other real users are pinning. I don't want to see what 4,000 bots are pinning.

I had a real love affair with Pinterest for one semester. Spammers or not, it is simply too crowded now. Last week, I found Piccsy. I'll be using it now in place of Pinterest until spammers arrive.

What ruined the product for you? In what way is it too crowded?

(I am not affiliated with Pinterest. Just curious from a product perspective.)

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#92

Post by tjoff » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 6:48 AM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #27

MichaelApproved wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payment would be the unique identifier. Creating a ton of email addresses to uniquely identify each account is easy. It's a lot hard to find multiple unique payment methods so you won't show up as the same person.

Does Paypal not allow multiple accounts tied to the same bank account?

Why would you tie your paypal account to a bank account?

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#93

Post by webjunkie » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 7:04 AM UTC

First of all: They believe a screenshot to prove identity?

I could've faked that in 10 seconds with Firebug and then told them I make like $10,000 a day with my super hardcore h4ck0r bots and the would have believed it I guess.

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#94

Post by koopajah » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 7:22 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #73

joshuahedlund wrote: post #11

Will Skimlinks (or someone similar) offer a reverse-affiliate service that strips affiliate IDs from links on your site instead of adding them? Does this already exist? (It would be trivial for Pinterest to manually do this, say, for Amazon, which could instantly crush a spam model based only on Amazon, without any spam network detection/banning required) Personally, though, I think affiliate links in social networks…

You'll always lose in an arms race that you didn't start. If you start stripping affiliate IDs, I'll just write a redirector and link to that, or link to an existing redirector. Are you going to ban all of bit.ly? Or t.co? or letter.obscure_tld from your website?

Isn't it possible to first check if the URL behing a bit.ly is an affiliate link ?

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#95

Post by pepijndevos » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 8:31 AM UTC

"Trust me when I say Pinterest is NOT invite only."

How is that? Where is the hidden registration button? Or do you simply get an automated invite after you request one?

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#96

Post by KeithMajhor » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 8:44 AM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #21

pavel_lishin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spammer in the article makes two thousand dollars a day from his army of spambots. Even if he started running two thousand bots on monday, he'd be pulling a profit by tuesday.

Payment would be the unique identifier. Creating a ton of email addresses to uniquely identify each account is easy. It's a lot hard to find multiple unique payment methods so you won't show up as the same person.

If the unique id didn't work out you could charge per post instead. Spammers would post more than other users. Extra accounts or not. Is there any way to make payments like this easy?

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#97

Post by justincormack » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 8:58 AM UTC

nullflux wrote: post #90

DanBC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simply doing it at scale That's the most abusive part. As a Pinterest user I want to see what other real users are pinning. I don't want to see what 4,000 bots are pinning.

Everyone talks about authenticity in social media (that somebody wants to see "real" content from "real" people) which really makes sense because it is the most human thing. But what if the bots pass a Turing test and deliver relevant content with said links? Does it not become spam anymore? That's the weird part. All of the spam I get in my email I don't want because it is completely irrelevant. Same goes for ads on…

A Turing test for spam?

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#98

Post by weirdcat » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 10:08 AM UTC

pepijndevos wrote: post #95

"Trust me when I say Pinterest is NOT invite only." How is that? Where is the hidden registration button? Or do you simply get an automated invite after you request one?

The latter. The delay (if there is one) isn't too long.

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#99

Post by akrymski » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 10:43 AM UTC

Wouldn't be surprised if 90% of their amazing growth is actually spammers creating accounts by the million daily.

The interesting thing is that Pinterest founders have an incentive to look away, while promoting their growth to the VCs, raising massive rounds whilst potentially cashing out big time. Tumblr seems to be going a similar route, maybe its a Twitter-initiated trend of bot-generated companies?)

Re: A Pinterest spammer tells all

#100

Post by mattmanser » Wed, Mar 28, 2012, 10:57 AM UTC

nullflux wrote: post #90

DanBC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simply doing it at scale That's the most abusive part. As a Pinterest user I want to see what other real users are pinning. I don't want to see what 4,000 bots are pinning.

Everyone talks about authenticity in social media (that somebody wants to see "real" content from "real" people) which really makes sense because it is the most human thing. But what if the bots pass a Turing test and deliver relevant content with said links? Does it not become spam anymore? That's the weird part. All of the spam I get in my email I don't want because it is completely irrelevant. Same goes for ads on…

It's not going to be cool though is it? AI is nowhere near being able to know what cool is.