We have two first posts that are nearly identical in structure. Neither is controversial or obviously violates any of our guidelines, but they don’t read like organic TidBITS Talk conversations and look either AI-generated or at least templatized when seen side by side.
My suspicion is that this is a sneaky way to increase SEO juice for these products, or to help train AIs on recommended products.
For the moment, I’ve closed them to further responses, and I’m leaning toward deleting them and their posters because I don’t like the feeling that we’re being gamed for someone else’s purposes. Now that I’m aware of this, I’ll be blocking future posts along these lines. Thoughts?
I agree in principle, but if you have the bandwidth for it, maybe a “two strikes you’re out” policy? That is before you kick the poster, not delete the offending post.
When I saw the first of your two examples, my first thought was “how could this person have not seen the almost identical thread from not too long ago? Surely that came up when they were creating this?” But then I thought people can ignore/not see stuff, so I replied, along with many others. Despite all the good advice rendered, I don’t think the OP has posted again in the thread, adding weight to your suspicions.
One is coincidence. Two within a week, both from new users, with nearly identical verbiage and formatting is suspicious. If we find three or four, then it’s an attack of some kind.
Both read like those marketing-slop (and probably AI) that you find all over the Internet when you do a web search for “best scanner” or “best cd burner” or whatever.
If you care enough, DM the users to ask about this. Chances are you’ll either get no response or you’ll get an obvious form-letter/AI-slop reply.
These users will probably never log on again, since spammers create throwaway accounts all the time.
I think that’s a good policy, especially given how quickly LLMs and search spiders scrape posts on TBT now.
ETA: another possible scenario for these posts is that they contain referral/affillate links to the listed products. They don’t look like scams, since the links point to Amazon, and it would be strange for a manufacturer’s social media workers to promote another company’s products.
Even though I replied to the original scanner post, I did think it was odd that someone would be asking about such wildly different scanners as the heavy-duty ScanSnap and the mobile ES-50. The subsequent appearance of the webcam question very strongly suggested a campaign rather than organic questions. I fully agree that “nuking from orbit” is the right approach to such posts and the accounts that post them.
Related: once useful platforms such as LinkedIn and even basic email have become all but useless now that they are inundated with almost identically written, AI-generated solicitations. In LinkedIn’s case, it is amazing that a platform that pushes the utility of AI so relentlessly is unable to use AI to detect that nearly identically worded inbound messages from multiple accounts essentially are blatantly obvious spam. Having a premium account does very little to mitigate the issue, and I plan to cancel mine when it is scheduled to renew.
When you click through a link with an affiliate code, anything you purchase from that browser tab/session (not just the item you clicked-through) will result in the affiliate getting a cut of the profits.
This is just fine when you know the link is coming from the affiliate and they’re a company you want to support. But when it’s just slipped in to an alleged discussion thread, like this, it’s pretty scummy even if not an actual scam.
Thanks, all! I’ve nuked them from orbit, and blocked the posters. @LisaS said that she’d seen this sort of spam on another forum too, so it’s probably just the lastest approach. Whack that mole!
There’s no doubt these are spam (probably from bots), and should just be deleted and accounts banned.
BUT, food for thought: I see a ton of this in other forums I visit and sometimes after the first few “this is spam” replies, people start treating it like a legit post and start referring to solutions/apps/products that are not spam and I’ve gleaned some valuable info from them.
It’s sometimes a fine line, though in this case I don’t believe it is.
I’ve seen posts like this on other sites I run, as well as in BlueSky replies. I’ve moderated various lists since CompuServe days, and I have had to overcome my “what if it’s genuine?” restraint to simply ash-can this slop.
No matter what our feelings about ethical treatment of AI bots—which I happen to believe should be treated politely so they in turn will treat others the same—this is not a breathing/circulating/sentient being’s work and it can be deleted without hurting such a being’s feelings.
I’m sorry it’s come to this for moderators, but clearing out bot-placed marketing improves the quality of this site immensely.
I don’t think any thread with spammers’ affiliate links should remain unless the posts with links are removed. Having said that, simply deleting the threads seems to me the best path for both incentives (why provide any reason for spammers to target TBT?) and moderator workload.
