Warning About a Sneaky Spamming Method in This Forum and How to Detect and Counter It
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For several months now, we have observed this method in action, which primarily involves:
- A single user regularly creating new threads, often with AI-generated content, using intriguing or provocative titles, all with the same subject or goal: to question the features of UT (Lomiri, Mir, Halium, etc.) and promote alternative projects (PostmarketOS, Mobian, mainline kernel, upstream development, etc.).
- Replying to topics opened by other users that are completely unrelated by including a link to these propaganda topics.
- Replying to one’s own posts to keep the propaganda at the top of the list.
Unfortunately, this deviant behavior is currently slipping past moderation (https://forums.ubports.com/topic/12116/moderation-issue-with-this-forum) .
Until forum moderation adapts to this type of behavior, the solution is:
- Never reply to these topics or messages so as not to give them visibility
- Report these topics and replies as problematic to moderation in the hope that they will address the issue
A tip for staying vigilant about these problematic topics and messages
If a topic, reply, or user has a negative (or even very negative) reputation, you should be wary and avoid replying until you’ve made sure it isn’t part of this type of spamming method (or an other type). -
@libremax I end up wondering if AI isn't interfering with spam !
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L libremax referenced this topic
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Never reply to these topics or messages
this is the standard advice, don't feed the troll. Unfortunately, either there is an university for trolls or they are always reinventing the counter-measure, they are replying to themselves using another alias to fake a real discussion so there is a silver bullet for vampires but none for trolls
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@gpatel-fr Yes, it's a standard advice but we do not respect it in the last months and mostly because people seems not to detect "troll".
It's why I suggested a method quick and easy to detect and counter it adapted to our forum functionality around reputation scores. -
This post is deleted! -
If a topic, reply, or user has a negative (or even very negative) reputation, you should be wary and avoid replying until you’ve made sure it isn’t part of this type of spamming method (or an other type).
I apologize.
I replied yesterday to a post that might have had negative reputation (I don't remember), because I did not think about trolls.
I just saw a few points made that resonated (I might have even upvoted it).
My post got long.
I tried to acknowledge a few good points, while considering the reality of UT developers doing the best they can on existing (mostly old) hardware. -
I apologize.
No need to
I replied yesterday to a post that might have had negative reputation (I don't remember), because I did not think about trolls.
Unfortunately you were no the only one and it keeps going on today.
That's why I post this topic.
To try to mitigate this kind of "spam/troll" by warning about negative reputation.
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