Probably this topic isn't a perfect fit here, but it seemed better than anywhere else. I'm a member of a small forum focused on history and exploration in a specific area of the country. Recently we had a couple of threads started by newly registered accounts. The pattern was the same in each case: an initial message, seemingly intelligent and fairly well written, on some topic completely unrelated to the forum. In these two cases the initial post appeared to be someone inquiring about getting training in crime scene forensics. This would be followed by a few posts from forum members about the topic being inappropriate, likelihood that it was spam, etc.
A few posts down another new account would reply giving the information requested, which of course included links to providers of crime scene forensics training. Without any other evidence, it just seemed like the pattern of off-topic posts and ignoring intervening replies from forum members feels like an automated pattern.
So what do you guys think? Are these viral marketing bots? Possibly they're just people paid to post messages without really reading anything.
A few posts down another new account would reply giving the information requested, which of course included links to providers of crime scene forensics training. Without any other evidence, it just seemed like the pattern of off-topic posts and ignoring intervening replies from forum members feels like an automated pattern.
So what do you guys think? Are these viral marketing bots? Possibly they're just people paid to post messages without really reading anything.
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