Topic: How to deal with bumping via fake conversation? (Read 1515 times)

Sweet mother of Crisco... forward and 30stomachs are still posting, despite that I have submitted 3 reports of plagiarism for each on them! Well, a new day with plenty of new plagiarism to report so I just nailed them for a couple more infractions each, bringing their totals up to 5!

It will definitely be interesting to see if milonite deletes any of our "off-topic" posts, but I'd really like to see the little spaz banned for "incentivizing posting" through the use of bump-bots. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but a man can dream...


EDIT 1 - 3 of the 4 reports I submitted a few minutes ago have already been marked good; let's see if Neluns grinds to a halt for at least a few hours before a new pair of bots are brought online!

EDIT 2 - Keep your eye on the SafeInsure thread as two ancient accounts from 2013/14 have been wiped clean and started posting gibberish so these are likely bump-bots running a new script (no plagiarism yet).

EDIT 3 - posts 1126 & 1127 in the SafeInsure thread are plagiarized and reported.

EDIT 4 - bots from earlier were nuked (ie - accounts banned and all posts deleted) but new bots came online to replace them and I've already nailed each for 1 plagiarism report so far.

I see that the NELUNS [ANN] thread OP milonite logged in today for the first time in a couple of weeks, answering briefly on another of his bounty threads, for MINDOL the [ANN] of which has also received the Pong Bot treatment.

It will be interesting to see whether

a) He indulges in mass self mod deleting
b) The Pongs continue to stink the place out

The same bots currently in operation the Neluns thread - 30stomachs and forward - are going strong on a thread I targeted early on here: EvenCoin. Also as mentioned in my last post to the Neluns thread, the same bots - though not this pair - have been used on the Neogame.io thread.

Finally, another thread that I also targeted in the beginning - DBX - appears to have been trashed, as it is no longer available and I didn't add that section to my ignore list. So, global mods are taking some action against these artificially bumped threads, it's just taking a lot of reports to get to that point (or someone higher ranked than me to do the reporting - xtraelv helped with nailing DBX).

Well their paj**t bumping scam has rather rebounded.
This link summarizes quite well my suspicions that the whole NELUNS structure was/is a complete scam (and saves me an effortpost, so just a lazy linked Scam Accusation instead)

https://ttrcoin.com/threads/neluns-io-scam.2796/

The italicized is precisely why I started this thread: this new scheme of simulating a conversation could be an insidious way of spamming the forum with little recourse available in the current set of rules. Right now we are able to take them out - albeit highly inefficiently - because they are committing plagiarism by recycling entire conversations over and over again, but if the bots get just a little bit more clever and start spouting random gibberish instead of copying and pasting we'll just be left with reporting them for "low value posts," and mods are far more reluctant to nuke/ban for that offense compared to plagiarism.

Really, the OP for each of these threads needs to be banned for "incentivized posting" and the threads locked or nuked since both threads are self-moderated and the vast majority of the posts therein are plagiarized. However, the mods are not only leaving the reports in which I have requested such unhandled, they are requiring 3 or more examples of plagiarism for each user before banning them. I hear you on not coming down too hard on the mods because they have a shitty job, but in some respects they are the ones to blame for making the job shittier than it need be. Mind you, I understand why they might be reluctant to nuke a thread just on the report of a full member like me, but when you or xtraelv or others that have been here for years join the fray they really ought to take more notice.

Think the mod should really give Neluns the critical look - or even make an example off. I've seen the guys offering these short of services proudly approaching and pitching how they can keep your ANN as a top 3 thread (not even just the first page anymore, but the top 3!). Legitimate projects may feel pressured to hire these guys just for visibility sakes (or some shitty CMO who doesn't know jack about marketing, community engagement, and retention). What worries me the most is if such services are being patronized in a bear market, what will happen during bull?

I have half an hour before the pub opens, so having a little fun there.
I don't like criticizing mods, they have a shit job and generally do it very well but I can't help thinking that, unless they take firmer action, this could be the thin end of the wedge and this type of Pong spam will become the New Normal.

Her expression is priceless, and that graph might as well have a drawing of the moon in the upper right corner!

I see you are trying to fight the good fight in the Neluns thread, but the mods failed to nuke the two old newbie accounts brought online yesterday - 30stomachs and Forward - even after I provided 2 examples of plagiarism for each of them. I submitted a 3rd example for each this morning but, really, one should be sufficient for banning anyone, much less a <30 activity newbie!

One can't simple turn off bots.
They are working hard to list tokens on exchange in October. Discussing on time machine, back to the future III, using some bounty money to upgrade delorean and so on.

Or maybe when they exit scammed, with the minute real percentage of the claimed $136m, they forgot to turn off everything in their short term rental offices?
Or maybe they sent the missing bounty money to the bumping service by mistake?

What's 200,000,000 * $1200? About half a Warren Buffet.
No wonder the woman on the right looks skeptical. She's their Marketing person, the one who hasn't tweeted anything for a month.
A New York marketer, hasn't used Twitter for four weeks? Must be dead, or smth.

This clip from LA Story is exactly how this is playing out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVMTfGQe51g

I guess MagicSmoker has to report fake conversations in Neluns thread for two more years. 

According to whitepaper they will run IPO in 2020, maybe that's why?

Oh yeah, I meant announcement threads in general, sorry I didn't specify which one I had in mind.

As for self-moderated ones, if those who started them allow plagiarism and spam posting behavior for an extended period of time, they should be held accountable, no doubt about it.

Ah, but both the Neogame.io and Neluns threads are self-moderated... Like I (successfully) argued for the locking of the Roomdao ANN thread, if there is that much spamming/plagiarism going on - where conversations are literally recycled from just a few days ago - then the OP can and should be held responsible.

I don't think that moderators will be willing to take action and lock/trash announcement threads because of:

• bots and shills
• % of deleted posts
• banned accounts
• pyramid quotes and fake conversations

As you said, it could be used as a tactic to damage/undermine legitimate projects and because we can't prove that these accounts have any direct connection with the project itself, although they bump threads with spam and copypasta, mods can't do anything other than delete posts and ban individual accounts reported for plagiarism...this is at least what I noticed so far.

---

They had a lowkey shill topic in 'Economics' claiming project have raised $1 billion dollars _{(smart contract contributions are around $150k USD)} 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5044166.20

Welp, I just reported 3 posts each of the latest pair of plagiarizing bots, but, yes, the far better solution at this point - and the one that would truly punish the projects - would be to ban the OPs and lock the ANN threads.

I imagine the global mods are reluctant to lock a thread, especially if only recommended by a single full member (ie - me), but if more of you report the OP for likely using a paid bumping service and cite the vast number of posts being reported for plagiarism (as in, pretty much all of them!?) there's a better chance the thread gets locked/trashed and the OP banned (and for your reporting convenience I provided direct links to the OP of each thread in a post above).

This $136,000,000 ! ! ICO seems to have flown under most people's radar on here, including mine.
Not only an exchange, a bank too. Not only an exchange and a bank, an insurance company too....

I'm looking at a rather complex scenario which interests me at the mo involving several U.S. based entities. I came upon Neluns thru the back door, so to speak, so decided to test the water with a post or two in their [ANN] thread.
The behavior described (and other factors) has piqued my interest further and, although I'm some way from an effortpost, it's likely that Neluns strange media approach may well end up being counter productive in the bigger picture.

---

Today's bot interaction confirms the average time between each post in this game of spam Pong is six minutes, involving sets of ~eight posts/replies.

If these bots are bumping the treads with posts in every 5-10 minutes, you just won't be able to report (and mods to delete) the posts in time before the next bumping post if I understand it well.
If you report the most recent post, by the time it gots deleted, a new bumping post will come and the whole work with the previous post would worth little because the topic would still be on the top, thanks to the new bump...
We need something else for the bumping bots because pure reporting seems just waste of time and resource...
What happens if we start to deal with topics instead of individual posts?
Let's say if a topic has 100 posts in it and 10 of the posts has been reported (and deleted by a mod), it means it's not a 100% topic, but just 90%. If 50 posts are deleted, the topic is only good for 50%.
If a topic reaches the 50% in reported posts, worth locking or delete or anything...
I know that bumping bots and shills could use this to kill the competitor topics, but in the ANN section this is the same with bumping the first 10 topics, all of the others are nearly killed because people just can't find them on the first few pages...
Just an idea...

According to ICOBench, Neluns completed their ICO a month ago, didn't they? Why are these shill/bot accounts still active? There is no point in creating fake buzz now after everything has finished. Hmm, I'm missing something here...

Maybe bots are hired for a certain period of time, which obviously has not ended yet... and they have to fulfill their contract, otherwise, these hardworking employees might not get paid by Neluns.

Yeah, but we managed to provoke a real response out of one of the paid bumper accounts! Now, if only mprep would just go ahead and lock both the Neluns and Neogame threads rather than individually nuke what may be a nearly infinite supply of stolen accounts this would go a lot smoother. I mean, I have personally had 100+ accounts posting in those two threads banned for plagiarism over the last month - how much proof do the global mods need that something nefarious is afoot?

The Neluns thread farce continues; it now averages ~4 views per post, with tag teams of reactivated 2013/4 spammers ready and waiting to replace those which are deleted, with bumping pseudo conversations.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if milonite (OP of the Neluns thread) reacts to our posts. The OP of the Neogame.io thread deleted one of my warning posts 3 days after I made it so he/she/it is relatively on the ball, but milonite might be a stolen or sold account - much like the bots being used to bump the thread - as prior to starting the Neluns thread he/she/it mainly wrote low-value comments about less well-known Equihash coins (e.g. - Sumokoin and Komodo).

Yeah, it's like talking to the wife - completely ignored

Re: Self mod, that was part of the experiment, OP hasn't been online for a couple of weeks.

Thanks for the help, but notice that the plagiarizing bump-bots just rolled right over both of us!   You would think they'd be happy to have some new material to work with, but no, they are too busy recycling the same conversations that their (now banned) bot brethren used before them. The only good news is that the bumping service is only deploying 2 or 3 accounts at a time now, and the accounts are "old newbies" - that is, dating from 2015 or earlier (ie - from before this forum was hacked) but with their entire post history zeroed out.

Oh, and be on the lookout for your post to get deleted by the OP since it is a self-moderated thread.

Let's see what, if any, human response we can get with the direct approach too....

Ehmagerd... All of the aforementioned threads are still getting bumped because replacements are being brought online within hours of the existing bump-bots getting banned. I then tried reporting the OP of the Neogame.io thread with the recommendation the thread itself get locked/trashed, but that report has remained "unhandled" for 5+ days now. Since the global mods appear reluctant to deal with this in an efficient fashion on my word alone I am asking for at least a few other people to report the OP's of the Neluns and Neogame.io threads for using a paid bumping service (ie - a roundabout way of incentivizing posting) and recommend that the threads be locked.

(Unpaid) bump - I've been reporting more users for plagiarism in the Neluns, Neogame.io, DBX, SafeInsure and Biohal threads but I think at this point these threads need to be either locked or outright trashed as more newbies are being brought online to bump and not all of them have committed plagiarism (lawd knows I'm looking for it).

Yeah, the approach currently being taken by the mods just isn't going to work. There's a new batch of bump-bots (apparently using stolen accounts; see next reply below), some of which aren't plagiarizing (yet), but clearly the conversation is manufactured. I mean, what are the chances than an ANN thread will have 10-100 pages of conversation among 6-12 users then when that group of users are banned the thread grinds to a complete halt only for a new batch of 6-12 users to show up and have the exact same style of low-value conversation once again?

I mean, any human can see these conversations are totally fake, but even when I nail some of the participants for plagiarism the reports are staying unhandled 2+ days later. One report of plagiarism with proof provided should be sufficient to get a user banned. Period. Since that isn't happening for me, I have to assume that mods either don't trust my reports (despite 99% good) or else they just aren't processing them. Regardless, it's getting rather difficult to believe anyone on the staff really cares about addressing the spam problem when the reports from people like me who take the time to investigate abuse on an organized/massive scale are ignored.

Really, at this point the NEOGAME.IO, SafeInsure, BIOHAL, DBX and Neluns threads should be locked, if not totally nuked, as they all are filled with fake conversation between bump-bots and precious little real discussion.

---

Yeah, we figured most if not all of these accounts are stolen, as many of them date back to 2014 but with little or no post history until this year (likely the older posts were wiped to cover up a glaring change in style or language used).

Hello, I'll explain what happened: how you see my account is CoinNextTrue, up to a few months ago my account was CoinNextE, then I was stolen, I tried to make it present to the assistance of the forum, but I have not had an answer .

 So, the "gentleman" who stole my account, he did it with others and now (according to my opinion) easily has multiple accounts that serve to make false arguments, and then cheating the people involved.

 Now, if you want you just have to check and see that I opened the account in July 2015 and I'm Italian, and I did business with Italian forum users, who stole my account is not Italian. Anyway, I told you, ban and give me back my account. Just read the 2015 forum posts to understand that the current "owner" of the CoinNextE account is a scammer.

I forgot, when I was stolen the account I had more than 80 messages and I was Junior Member, this to tell you that the "gentleman" who steals account does not do it by chance, but chooses accounts that are unlikely to be suspicious.

Bye.

Read: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11822698

Ugh.  I wouldn't want your job.  The problem with what MagicSmoker is talking about is that these posts look just enough like legitimate ones that you'd be hard-pressed to state with 100% conviction that they're not actually people responding to one another.

What can you expect when you hire someone to bump your ANN thread?  If it's completely obvious that it's being bumped with "great project" posts, the entire thread might get shitcanned.  This way, it puts enough doubt in a mod's mind (if it's even noticed) such that the thread stays alive--and always on top. 

There will come a day when the ICO market crashes.  People are going to figure out that most of them are scams and that there's no money to be made by investing in them.  When that happens, none of this is going to be a problem anymore.  Can't wait till then.

Outstanding! I was hoping to recruit a few more people this go around because, yes, it is a never-ending battle. One possibly good thing is that all of these accounts are <30 activity newbies so should be much easier to get banned (over 30 and a global mod or admin has to do it).

Oh, and I owed you a merit for your earlier suggestion about requiring more than one report, but the above post is worthy, too.

It's a never-ending battle. They can make as many new shill accounts as they want. In the end, it falls to who is more persistent; we who report these idiots or people behind the bot bumping industry.

Anyway, I'll help you out with what I can,...so far for plagiarism/multiposting I have reported the following accounts:

sigma45, drugrehablocator, microman14, nof21 and sade12.

Will check/report more profiles later today.

Bad news... a new crop of bump-bots have been brought online and shilling has once again resumed on the following threads:

Neluns
DBX
SafeInsure
Biohal - not sure about this one; just 2 new shitposts by newbies.

So far there is no new bump-bot activity (nor really much activity at all) on the EvenCoin and Neogame.io threads, but I'm watching them closely.

The new bump-bot suspects are:

adamkiev
nof21 - reported 2 times
appotus
doggie
microman14 - reported 2 times
maxi23 - reported 1 times
sade12 - reported 2 times
MinceCraft111 - reported 1 times
sigma45 - reported 2 times
drugrehablocator - reported 3 times
Maison - reported 1 times

I think at this point the better strategy might be to get the threads nuked, rather than try to chase down an infinite supply of bump-bot conscripts.

EDIT - update reported counts on above list of suspected bump-bots.

Yep, it looks like the bump-bot ring has been well and truly busted! I'm kind of surprised the shilling went on as long as it did - it started on the very first page of the EvenCoin, SafeInsure, Neluns & DBX threads, page 2 of the Biohal thread, and page 4 of the Neogame.io thread. Pretty much all of those threads are just bots talking to bots.

Two other interesting tidbits: the Neogame.io OP is claiming innocence while the SafeInsure OP only has 3 posts and last posted on Sep 18th (also the day he/she/it joined).


Indeed they are profitable... as long as bots are doing the typing, anyway: I recall seeing an ad that charged 0.5 ETH per day to keep your thread in the top 10 in the ANN section; that's not really a lot of money to have to type out messages every 5-10 minutes (hence why real people aren't doing it).


I hope that requiring 2+ plagiarism reports and/or more than one person reporting the same post isn't necessary in general. Just one example of plagiarism should be sufficient to be banned. Perhaps we just aren't at a high enough rank for a single report from us to be sufficient, or maybe this is the reason for thread here in meta to report plagiarism - I thought it was redundant/superfluous, but if the idea is to get multiple people reporting each post then it makes sense.

All these topics are now like ghost towns, completely abandoned. I'll definitely visit those projects. Bumping bots go hand in hand with scam projects. Let's see if I can find something.


Accounts mentioned above are banned now, they can still log in but cannot do anything else.

As far as I know, these services are quite profitable, and even if they get banned, they will come back as long as someone is willing to pay for their scammy project to be shilled.

---

Sticky worthy.

It's been more than 24 hours the 6 threads I listed above have come to a screeching halt!

So it looks like submitting at least 2 plagiarism reports per user did the trick as all but a couple of the bump-bots logged in this morning around 8AM my time (UTC-4) but haven't posted.

While this took a lot more work than the usual plagiarism reporting, it was also way more satisfying.

Yeah, I was coming to the same conclusion right around the time you posted this, so I loaded up the post histories of some of the bots I'd already reported and found at least 1 more example of plagiarism for each of them. All the new reports are currently marked unhandled so I'll wait another day to see if that does the trick. Pretty much all of the threads I thought I had shut down by reporting the bump-bots are back in full spamming swing again.



Outstanding work! One of the names on your list came up on mine - CoinNextE - which is a bit depressing. Scrolling through that account's history there is a huge gap in dates on p27 as well as a change in wording/style so I'd have to agree that the account was likely sold. That's gonna hurt but good when it's nuked, as it's a full member account.


FWIW, here are the users I've reported at least two different examples of plagiarism if anyone wants to pile on:

bitokman
amanai
slovenia1
12coins
Tiny_Prism
kk777
peetah
Klacik
boomertoo
Green Lantern
guarino


UPDATE - All of my reports providing additional examples of plagiarism were handled/marked good overnight. I also saw that xtraelv posted a shill warning in each of the 4 threads most heavily employing the bots - EvenCoin, SafeInsure, Neluns & DBX. There are other threads they are active in, but those either had less plagiarism or more real conversation going on in between all the bot-chat (with some poor schmucks replying to bots...).

Old thread done by me was with around 70 accounts here:

  Bumping ico-bounty service allowed? 69 accounts involved so far. Need DT or MOD

Some accounts of this list are now sold.

I have been doing something like that recently. Reporting bots for plagiarism. If I remember correctly had around and over 100 good reports (100 accuracy).
The results I got were different, one part of these 100 accounts was immediately banned, one part after a week or two, and a small part is still active shilling scam projects. All accounts I reported was with just one example of plagiarism. (usual one-liner with 50/60 characters)

I wasn't happy with the results, so I decided to do a little experiment :

1. Reported one account as I gave more than one example of plagiarism, it was either 3 or 4. The account was banned almost immediately.
2. The other, I only had one report again, but this time someone else helped me as he also reported the same post. The account was gone right away.

Basically, if you can give more than one example of a copy/paste post or someone else/several people report the same post with you ...you'll get them banned, that's for sure.

Don't forget mods are human after all. 

Yeah, I basically just report individual posts now, and mainly for plagiarism, repeatedly posting mining pool ads on every page of an ANN thread, and referral link spam.

I do have some good news to report though: many of the people I mentioned in the OP have been banned and the threads they were bumping have come to a screeching halt.

EvenCoin
SafeInsure
Neluns
DBX - I saw your shill alert in this one, and no surprise it went unnoticed by the bumper bots.
NEOGAME.IO
Biohal

So now it's time to go back to those threads and post a warning message in each letting them know why their sleazy tactics backfired, and the above listing will make it easy to keep tabs on them.

EDIT/UPDATE - fixed quote, also, the boomertoo and Klacik bots have fired up again; I just reported two more plagiarized posts for each.
2nd UPDATE - Added Biohal & Neogame.io to list of shilled threads.

I'm pleased they provide some entertainment. Sometimes it feels like I'm just talking to the bots on the thread.

Reporting the individual posts is still important. The accounts get a warning and the progressively more serious bans.

It is a bit frustrating though because I reported numerous of them for plagiarized content (copy and pasted their entire conversation on multiple unrelated threads).
The timing shows it must be bots talking to each other (who can write and post a reply in 10 seconds between posts)
This morning I see the accounts shit-posting again.

Yep, your warning posts are hilarious... except for that one time I spent about 20 minutes reporting plagiarists on the first 3 pages of a thread only to see your warning on the 4th... 

In this case, I ended up opening the post histories of each of the suspected bumpers in separate tabs which made it much easier to spot plagiarism between them. Supplying an additional report for plagiarism on top of the earlier submissions for duplicate posting seems to have done the trick, as 30 of my 43 unhandled reports were processed overnight. I've already learned that the only surefire ways to get an offender banned are plagiarism and referral link spam - every other rule violation, including the relentless ads that some pool operators post on every single page of a thread, seem to only get the post deleted, if that. And on that note...



You can, but in my experience this usually only results in the offending post getting deleted and that is too much work for all involved (both reporter and moderator) to be worth the bother. It's why I rarely report low value "good project" type posts unless the poster has at least 1 merit or copper membership and their entire post history is low value - but even still I recommending nuking the user rather than delete one spammy post out of millions.



I'm really glad you replied since it's always good to get some insight into how a particular mod operates. I think all of us that have made hunting for violators a minor hobby here (or an obsessive quest... like, say, iasenko...  ) realize that there has to be some prioritization of the enforcement of the rules, especially for the more subjective ones like whether a post is low value or when an ad for a mining pool ad goes from being informational to spammy. Since plagiarism is an incontrovertible violation I tend to concentrate on that, but I'm seeing more duplicate posts (ie - the same user/bot posts the same reply in multiple threads) these days and getting some feedback on the priority of handling those reports would be welcome.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4901699.1140 the whole thread deserves to be nuked. It is just an account farm bumping it with pyramid quotes.

It really depends on the individual case for me. I'll delete it if its of low content, and if its particularly a problem I'll message the users involved. If they ignore that or is unbearable I might ignore it so that a higher up member of staff can take a look at it, and decide whether its ban worthy or not. I know this doesn't answer your question, but I guess you sort of see my take on things when I receive reports like this. I get a lot of these types of reports!

You can report also Quoting Pyramids.
This is taken from the Rule  1, examples >

Someone should stop this flood
- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pomz-the-next-big-step-in-the-evolution-of-digital-marketing-4901699 [archive]

You can report the conversations when they are low quality.

I prefer to just put up a public notice like this one:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.46561855

Make them fun, make them all different and make sure to be "on topic" so they violate no rules.

The other way is to look at their other conversations and report them for plagiarism which gets a permaban  



Exact same content posted in multiple threads.





To be investigated : BTCFaucets, CoinNextE, amanai, bitokman, guarino, 12coins, SamuelN, peetah, Tiny_Prism, boomertoo, kk777, Klacik.Green Lantern nicrnicr

Permaban eligible and reported = deleted


It is clearly BOT activity because try posting this fast :

Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:59:41 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:55:14 PM
Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:49:57 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:44:39 PM



Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:59:53 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:55:24 PM
Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:50:09 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:44:51 PM


Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 04:00:04 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:55:36 PM
Quote from: guarino on October 02, 2018, 03:50:23 PM
Quote from: 12coins on October 02, 2018, 03:45:03 PM

Just look at the times between posts and replies on multiple topics between the two alt accounts.







Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:43:06 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 12:34:04 PM
Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:24:41 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 12:18:55 PM
Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:06:42 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 11:56:32 AM

Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:24:53 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 12:19:11 PM
Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 12:06:59 PM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 11:55:50 AM
Quote from: 12coins on September 21, 2018, 11:41:19 AM
Quote from: nicrnicr on September 21, 2018, 11:27:43 AM

Yep, that's the primary counterargument I expected. The ATLANTICO example has more of a classic spam megathread kind of feel, but the EvenCoin and SafeInsure examples are, I feel, much more insidious in that they give the appearance of a genuine conversation occurring until you really pay attention to what is being said, e.g. from the EvenCoin thread -

Post 2662 makes a typically generic assertion found in most spam megathreads:



Post 2663 then responds to that generic assertion with a generic question:



Post 2664 provides generic answers to the previous generic question - I mean, what crypto doesn't "support cross-border transfers"?:


Etc.

The evidence can be quite strong but if there is no concrete proof, the line between a scripted conversation or not is very small. I mean they will always try to find any type of excuse to say no it isn't with every argument possible.
But in another side, the posts can surely be deleted for a low-quality one, which I am sure is the case

In order for a thread to maintain a position on the first page of the altcoins/announcements subforum it needs a post every 10 minutes or less, something that seems unlikely for all but the most followed projects and/or ones undergoing some controversy. For a project too small to show up on CMC, however, the more likely explanation is the use of paid bumping. Previously I found plagiarism or duplicate posting (ie - when someone writes the exact same response in several thread) to be most common, but the last few days I have noticed a new technique which appears to be a fake conversation. That is to say, two or more people seem to be having a conversation because they are asking/answering a series of questions between them, but this conversation does not seem to be authentic as it is strictly about generalities and often times doesn't even make sense.

Unfortunately, this behavior (absent plagiarism or duplicate posting) does not seem to be excluded by the (un)official rules hence I thought I'd present my evidence here and get a discussion going on how to address this going forward. Below are a few threads whose conversations seem fake and the users who appear to be involved based on posting more than two generic questions or answers to the thread:


The first two examples - EvenCoin and SafeInsure - seem to be employing the same group of people: BTCFaucets, CoinNextE, amanai, bitokman, guarino, 12coins, SamuelN, peetah, Tiny_Prism, boomertoo, kk777, Klacik.

The 3rd example - ATLANTICO - is run a little differently as it is less of a conversation and more just random postings (mostly from people on the sig campaigns for GigTricks and EraSwap): Justenjoy1903, Anya Doreen, Maryqueen Finez, HappyCaptain, imopogicute, 25espia1994, larry1994, clarise123, pogicute1234, 123pogi123, jackielim

I have already reported some of the users above for plagiarism or duplicate posting (though the latter is less clearly an infraction*) but if they haven't plagiarized or posted the same post to multiple threads I'm not sure what to do. A few months ago a similar situation occurred with the RoomDao ANN - discussed here Bumping RoomDao ICO ANN - and that thread was nuked by mprep, but some people argued that bad actors or competitors could report threads for paid bumping to get them nuked for their own benefit. I dunno about that - "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" springs to mind.


EDIT - got clarification that duplicating one's own posts is treated the same as plagiarism by hilariousandco: