Not sure this is quite the right forum for the topic, but I don't know which one would be.
Purely an observation - and just venting because it irritated me today - but from other forums I visit (not AT so much, perhaps because it's relatively high-traffic?) I've noticed spambots seem to be getting more sophisticated. Seems as if they can recognise keywords in threads and will cut-and-paste old comments from other similar forums that are vaguely relevant to the topic. Even changing the odd word to make it look more genuine. Then they later edit to add links to the sites they are hyping (I assume this is about SEO and google rankings)
Am I the only one who gets annoyed by spambot posts to a degree that is probably irrational? I'm constantly reporting the things. It's not as if I'm an admin and have to fight them off so I shouldn't be that bothered by them. But it's just the sheer selfish cynicism of the practice that annoys me. As with obviously bogus product reviews ('This is great product. Does whatever it is supposed to do better than all other products. Is great. I recommend this product"), or email phishing scams full of spelling errors, it's just insulting that they think their crap, even the relatively sophisticated crap, is going to fool anyone.
There's just something about seeing how robotically people behave in the face of economic incentives that I find very depressing. They know it's anti-social and annoying, with probably a very low rate-of-return, but they calculate they can make some small gain from it, so they do it. Apparently this is how humans roll.
Purely an observation - and just venting because it irritated me today - but from other forums I visit (not AT so much, perhaps because it's relatively high-traffic?) I've noticed spambots seem to be getting more sophisticated. Seems as if they can recognise keywords in threads and will cut-and-paste old comments from other similar forums that are vaguely relevant to the topic. Even changing the odd word to make it look more genuine. Then they later edit to add links to the sites they are hyping (I assume this is about SEO and google rankings)
Am I the only one who gets annoyed by spambot posts to a degree that is probably irrational? I'm constantly reporting the things. It's not as if I'm an admin and have to fight them off so I shouldn't be that bothered by them. But it's just the sheer selfish cynicism of the practice that annoys me. As with obviously bogus product reviews ('This is great product. Does whatever it is supposed to do better than all other products. Is great. I recommend this product"), or email phishing scams full of spelling errors, it's just insulting that they think their crap, even the relatively sophisticated crap, is going to fool anyone.
There's just something about seeing how robotically people behave in the face of economic incentives that I find very depressing. They know it's anti-social and annoying, with probably a very low rate-of-return, but they calculate they can make some small gain from it, so they do it. Apparently this is how humans roll.
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