I’ve seen at least 5 OPs today that are spam for reddit.
I don’t get it - why reddit spam?
Do they get something out of directing people there?
The links go to a post filled with web streaming spam.
Ah
OK, so there’s a ton of this crap on the dope today (well, at least several in GQ alone so far as I saw) and I was going to ask about it in ATMB, but did a search and this came up.
I’m still confused as to what use these re-directed links have to the spammers. Do they get paid for enough views or whatever?
It would seem just about no one these days would fall for this crap.
Forgive my admitted ignorance here, but I just don’t get it.
Also, why the idiotic and nonsensical titles like “Help allow drug sniffing baby ammo”?
???
Not spam. Sporting events. ESPN charges us for em whether we watch or not. This is a little payback.
I blame Daniel.
I blame Jose Mourinho. Boy has he screwed this season up.
Let’s move this to ATMB.
Yeah, there’s been a plague of these guys lately. We were a little slow on clean-up this morning. (I guess some of us must have been out partying last night.;)) I just banned seven of them, and I see Asimovian got a bunch more. If they’re posted during waking hours, we usually get them with a few minutes, so you don’t see them.
As has been mentioned, the links to reddit actually are to sports streaming sites. (We get plenty of direct links to those too.)
I assume that the nonsense titles are generated at random. However, lately they’ve been modifying their behavior and copying or partly copying actual thread titles in the forum, or making up titles that seem to be announcements by the board admin.
At least we seem to be forcing them to put more time into composing each spam message than they were.
College football and real football seasons are just starting up is my best guess.
No, it goes on all the time. Sometimes it’s Wimbledon, or the US Open, or whatever happens to be going on.
God I hate Jose Mourinho. Totally with you, man.
So why don’t they just copy the same links from the Reddit posts when they post here? Why link to Reddit? And does Reddit not delete the spam posts?
I saw one today and reported it. I guess most of us have no idea how much spam Mods deal with.
All the time
I guess that it is to evade any spam filters the SDMB might have. If they directly posted the links, SDMB would quickly filter out any post that contains that domain. But if they post reddit links, SDMB can’t really block those without blocking all of reddit.
On the spammer topic - Often (usually?), the OP is edited. I assume they are trying to evade some filter or verify that they can post or something.
What do they put in the original message, before the edit?
If we had bot capabilities, we could have a link checker that would see how long a subreddit had been up, or even read the text to know it’s spam. But we’re not that sophisticated. Though, as long as the humans can handle it, I guess it doesn’t matter.
And, anyways, we’d probably first go the “new posts with links from new posters go to a mod cue” option that exists with vBulletin. If it’s not bad enough for that, it’s not bad enough for a bot.
If your business is live streaming sports, why not just advertise or otherwise legitamately promote your site. That way, people who want to go there can. Tricking people to click would seem to be a terrible business model. Most people, I assume, don’t click on random links, and how many cents can each click be worth anyway? If no one wants live steaming football websites, why bother setting up the site?
Someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but the broadcast rights to a sportscast belong to either the home team, the network that airs the broadcast, the league, or some combination thereof. So those streams are essentially illegal - advertising openly is bound to call attention to the illegal stream and lead to men in suits asking awkward questions.
Out of curiosity, are those illegal sports streams filled with viruses and other pitfalls? Or are they generally safe?