Something that sometimes appears in this forum is what I would call slow-motion spam.
A bot creates an , waits a few days, then posts a new thread with some text later. The thread topic, and sometimes the content of the post, is recycled from something posted elsewhere in the same forum many years ago.
Then a few days later the bot will come back and edit the original post, replacing the content with SEO spam: a keyword-laden wall of text with web links in it. The point is not for it to be seen by humans here, but rather to game Google's algorithm by having links to that site posted on a legit forum. Any real human replies to the thread just end up boosting its legitimacy and Google rankings more. The correct thing to do is not to engage, but to just report the post as spam.
The trick is recognizing it when you see it. I saw one today that had a legit-sounding topic title, but the content was just 2 words. People had replied, either taking the piss or trying to be helpful. I checked the and it was recently created and has no activity. I searched the forum for the topic title, and sure enough, it was copied from someone else's post from 8 years ago. Of course, this won't always work; the post content might be copied from the original thread, or might be some convincing AI-generated thing, so you wouldn't know to be suspicious in the first place.
Mostly in forums on other sites, I've seen a similar kind of spam, but it's in the form of replies to old threads. The bot resurrects a dead discussion, posting something very generic like "thank you for posting, this was so very helpful, good day sir" and then signs off with a spam link, or it comes back later and edits the post to add such a link.
I - as well as many other s here - am reporting obvious spam threads all the time. But what can we do as long as the thread in question is still fresh and we're not sure if it's spam?
Maybe we should use this thread here to link suspicious threads in order to avoid correspondence, and report that thread as soon as it turns out to be spam (- or delete the mentioning later if not).
I've spotted, and reported, a few of these. I have a notepad document for the URLs of those that look suspicious and check back after a few days. I call them spam foetuses. Little spams waiting to be born.
They've been doing this for years, recycling old forum posts.
But now you"ll also see AI generated ones with "new" text that can seem to be somewhat relevant. They're not that hard to spot; as someone pointed out they usually make some sense which distinguishes them from most new threads here ;-) Sometimes there will be more than one carrying on a *conversation". Often there will be a URL embedded somewhere, either in the text or the profile.
There is a running thread for scolding people who reply, if you're into that kind of thing.
AmazingDiscoveries
But now you"ll also see AI generated ones with "new" text that can seem to be somewhat relevant. They're not that hard to spot;
Very often they'll start by over-explaining the original issue, congratulating the people in the post for how great the thread is, and then go on to explain a very very obvious answer in an unnecessarily wordy manner. Like they've been trained on Indian call-centres.
I wonder if these are not always spam, but sometimes AI training/testing of some kind. I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of it.
xceque
I wonder if these are not always spam, but sometimes AI training/testing of some kind. I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of it.
This is exactly my impression too. The reason being, I'm finding less and less of the editing-to-add-links, the posts just stay as they are while people reply.
Kinda scary to think this is merely the amoeba stage of AI. Give it 20 years and we'll be in Blade Runner
Yes, sorry.
My reply above that I now adressed to rugogs was originally meant for you. But since I coudn't find out how to ping you, I simply changed the 's name to rugogs (who answered my post before also). That's all - never mind. :o)
rugogs
AI should be able to write a proper sentence.
You can ask them not to. Just had some funny results.
ok - new post, this time asking how to fix the flux capacitor in my spaceship. sprinkle in a couple of spelling errors and one silly gramatical mistake
.
GPT-4o mini
Subject: How to fix flux capasitator in my spaceshhip??
Hey! I got a spaceship and the flux capasitator is broken. It not working right. How do I fix it? Do I need special tools or magic? Plz help me so I can go to the future! Thanks a million! 🚀
Blackpapercrown
Do we need to add or even mention dubious posts here? I simply reported that one as "possible AI spam nonsense".
You should not report something unless you're sure it should be removed, because it will be. Discogs don't give a literal fuck about what they remove. They'll just do it without even checking. Posts, threads, reviews, comments, whatever. They don't even look.
Friends don’t let friends spam, but since this forum is infested with smart-arse clever lads who prize their two-word snarks, it’s presumably easy to block both humans and bots that do so. Or report them as spam to make them disappear.
