While no system is impenetrable, our registration system makes it difficult for comment spammers to post to our site in any kind of automated fashion. We've always had relatively little comment spam because it's generally not worth the time to register, respond to an email and fill out a profile before spamming.
But we've seen an uptick lately. It's not onerous yet, but I've deleted more comment spam in the past two months than in the past two years.
And they're getting more sophisticated. Today we saw someone post two fairly legit comments before a third one that was clearly spam.
So what does this mean?
- Has our search ranking gotten so good that it's worth the labor? It doesn't appear so to me.
- Has the economy gotten so bad that there are enough out of work people spamming for pennies?
- Tangential to that, have innovations like Amazon's Mechanical Turk made human-posted spam scalable?
Other theories I'm missing? At any rate, rest assured that we'll continue to be quick on the deletion of spam.
Comments
Teresa Gubbins Staff
i do so appreciate the new user's name and avatar photo, though
10 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Billusa99 Anonymous
It's all the fault of that stupid Hawaiian Spam cafe up north. Their clients have gone hog wild.
10 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Scott Doyle Verified
What are the primary topics being spammed, aside from sex toys and smoking? Pretty sure the correlation here is that you can't have your post-vanilla-sex cig in public...and that's infringing on YOUR RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN!!!
10 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Mike Orren Staff
What are the primary topics being spammed
Schools, drugs, drug treatment
10 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Collin Gouldin Verified
There was one promoting a soundtrack on some record label.
10 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Scott Doyle Verified
Not renaming any major street possible to your ethnicity's preference? What about gun control, birth control, creationism...all the above conglomerated?
Also, what's the most off-the-wall spam to date? Black-market appendages that may or may not come with hep?
10 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Mike Orren Staff
The soundtrack was pretty off the wall. And today's sex toy spam was, ahem, interesting.
10 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Jason Rice Verified
Of all days I should pick to pay attention to may gainful employment. Rats.
10 months, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
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