Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
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Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#2Nice. I run a site that depends on user submitted content, and it's really interesting to observe how some people try to get around the guardrails. Not sure if your tool does this, but I would perform some additional checks for comments that have links in them.
Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#3I subscribe to handful of investment-related YouTube channels. This pattern has been common for years. A bot will reply with a comment loosely related to the video and about how something worked for them. Another bot will reply asking how they did that. Another bot (not the original commenter) will reply that they worked with so-and-so or invested in such-and-such, and then there will be maybe four or five more comments responding to that. All obvious bot accounts.
It's obvious on the channels, because these reply sets usually don't contain a lot of replies to comments (if there are any comment replies, it's almost always from the channel owner). It's so obvious, in fact, that I'm surprised YouTube hasn't done something to address it.
Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#4I subscribe to handful of investment-related YouTube channels. This pattern has been common for years. A bot will reply with a comment loosely related to the video and about how something worked for them. Another bot will reply asking how they did that. Another bot (not the original commenter) will reply that they worked with so-and-so or invested in such-and-such, and then there will be maybe four or five more comme…
They also talk like people in a national ad.
“Wow! Seems like it’s so easy to change over with savings like that!”
Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#5This also is absolutely rampant on reddit in the past months.
Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#6This also is absolutely rampant on reddit in the past months.
This has been rampant on reddit for years.
Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#7This also is absolutely rampant on reddit in the past months.
Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#8I subscribe to handful of investment-related YouTube channels. This pattern has been common for years. A bot will reply with a comment loosely related to the video and about how something worked for them. Another bot will reply asking how they did that. Another bot (not the original commenter) will reply that they worked with so-and-so or invested in such-and-such, and then there will be maybe four or five more comme…
Oh I love these comment threads! I like to add another reply saying something like “oh my goodness, I used Elizabeth Ferguson for my investing too!! She went to my college, so I thought I could trust her. But then I found out she was cheating on me with my wife! We got a divorce and i lost half my assets in the separation. Elizabeth Ferguson probably is enjoying them now :(. Just one experience, but buyer beware!”
Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#9I subscribe to handful of investment-related YouTube channels. This pattern has been common for years. A bot will reply with a comment loosely related to the video and about how something worked for them. Another bot will reply asking how they did that. Another bot (not the original commenter) will reply that they worked with so-and-so or invested in such-and-such, and then there will be maybe four or five more comme…
They also talk like people in a national ad. “Wow! Seems like it’s so easy to change over with savings like that!”
The bad ones seem like this, the scary part is not knowing if there are good ones
Re: Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
#10This also is absolutely rampant on reddit in the past months.
I’m not a heavy Reddit user but I’ve noticed a sharp increase in comment spam disguised as real discussion.
I think the turning point was when they allowed accounts to hide their comment history. Before, when you could click on an account and read all of their other comments it was easy to tell when an account only existed for fake conversations about a product they were spamming.
Now the spam accounts hide their comment history so they can do nothing but spam similar comments all over Reddit and walk the line where it’s not obvious if any single comment is spam or an one off comment from someone trying to be helpful.
Users are using Google and other services to find their other posts and post warnings, but it takes so much more effort now.