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Topic: [LIST] ANN threads that are using bumping services - page 2. (Read 7377 times)

staff
Activity: 3304
Merit: 4115
As you can see, all are similar to previous reports I made from this topic; most of them contain swearing or zero value; and all previous similar reports were flagged as Good. As a consequence, I am thinking (1) this is either a mistake from the mod which handled these reports; or, (2) another mod and not you handled them and considered them too old and flagged them all as bad, which was my main fear, as I wrote above, but this was for posts older than Jan 1st 2017 and, as you can see these are from Jun 2017.

@Welsh if you agree, I can dig more inside this topic, even earlier than the date of Jan 1st, 2017, but I am afraid that I can have my reports marked as bad if I keep making them. I mean, in case my reports will come to you, I believe you'll mark them as good, but maybe they will arrive in another mod's hand? (I'm saying that thinking that these bad reports where flagged as bad not by you, but by another mod; even so, do you have any idea why they were flagged as bad?) However, in case we can make an agreement, thus just you will take care of this thread, I am more than willing to dig also through the posts made earlier than Jun 9th, 2017, and also earlier than Jan 1st, 2017. Please let me know.
Yeah, it wasn't me that handled those reports. Going forward, you can always report a thread as being artificially bumped or something along those lines. We're all pretty well aware of Decent, and pretty much all of these threads now, so combing through them, and reporting each post probably isn't necessary. I'll be periodically checking most of these, and cleaning them up as time goes on. As you can imagine, older content might be seen as lower prioriity than current spam, and hence why some moderators might disagree with reporting old content.

That's probably a better workflow going forward, since that doesn't spam the rest of the moderators report queues, and when reporting just the thread, whoever sees that report can go through the thread, delete what they think is necessary, and then mark the report as handled.

I prefer to handle spam if it's spam, especially if the thread is still active. I do think questions need to be potentially asked what's the best way of handling a  thread which has effectively been deleted e.g decent, however I don't feel comfortable just trash canning it since there's a lot of history in that thread which could be of use to someone. I'm thinking potentially archival, and maybe that'll prevent the constant conversations going on currently.

However, to be clear on your question; I think reporting just the original thread, indicating bumping services or accounts have been artificially bumping it would be better, to prevent clogging up other moderators report queues. Then, the moderator handling that report, can either decide to leave it to someone who's willing to go through the thread, and sort it out or they can go through it themselves, and then mark it as handled once completed. At least this way, we're still cleaning up some threads, and also making moderators aware that there's a problematic thread, but it also doesn't clog up other moderators queues that might want to attend to more urgent reports.

Although, I can't really comment on why the moderator might have marked those bad (I haven't always handled your reports in the past, and others have, and marked them good), I do believe some of them were borderline. Some were potentially raising up legitimate concerns, despite the use of profanity. So, a moderator could have seen them as on topic enough. I know I've marked a few of yours bad in the past for reporting content which is basically half on topic, and half sort of abusing each other, but I just lent towards it being on topic enough. Although, some of those posts you've mentioned to me are low quality, and/or off topic, and I would have likely removed at least some of them.


legendary
Activity: 1680
Merit: 6524
Fully-fledged Merit Cycler|Spambuster'23|Pie Baker
what's the address for checking that report status?

If you click on "Report to moderator" button, you reach this page:



Within this page you have to click on "Your report history" button. The next displayed page is the page where you can see the status of your reports, as it follows:
- all reports made within past 30 days (if they are less than 5000)
- only last 5000 reports, in case you made more than 5000 reports within past 30 days (5000 reports displayed is the maximum displayed limit, so if you make 5000 reports in only 1 day, you will not see the reports you made yesterday -- as example).

However, you will not see that button ("Your report history") unless you have made already 300 good reports. It's like a perk, if you want, which unlocks you this feature after reaching 300 good reports.
legendary
Activity: 2632
Merit: 1462
Yes, I'm an asshole
What do you think about this thread [ANN][PX][PRESALE] ProtocolX Decentralized Trading Protocol on BSC [METAVERSE]⚡⚡? Their thread started to get infested by the bumping accounts on the list referred above as well as several bumping accounts tagged by lovesmayfamilis

I'll keep it under watch, but when I opened it first time it was clean I opened it when you mentioned it. And now, days later, it's still clean.

Yeah, AFAIK, Welsh took a very quick action on that issue, soon after I posted my suspicion --maybe within minutes, if not seconds-- he wiped them clean by himself.

P.s.: what's the address for checking that report status?
legendary
Activity: 1680
Merit: 6524
Fully-fledged Merit Cycler|Spambuster'23|Pie Baker
Sup fellas (big lol again)

As I stated above, I started cleaning DECENT topic with much enthusiasm. The topic was not full of spam, nor used bumping services, therefore it was harder to clean it than I expected. Most of the reported posts were made by frustrated users, probably because they bought high and the coin dumped. So far I made 1237 reports, all but 1 handled already. This means that I reduced the topic with 61-62 pages. However, the topic is reduced now with 199 pages and this was possible only due to Welsh, which worked in par with me, and deleted 137 pages on his own. Thank you Welsh for the big help! We can say that's Decent enough (pun intended Smiley ).

I parsed all posts made from most recent until page 299 (which contains posts from June 2017) and my intention was go keep parsing until the date of Jan 1st, 2017, being afraid to have my reports flagged as bad, for reporting posts too old, if I would have gone beyond that date.

However, something happened and for the moment I will stop here, as I need some information from Welsh.

The problem is that 11 out of my last 13 reports were flagged as bad although, in my opinion, they should be deleted.



The posts in question are the following:

- post made by vincentcm: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19866553
- post made by SwapStick: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19866612
- post made by vincentcm: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19866719
- post made by nathalie20: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19866749
- post made by SwapStick: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19868122
- post made by Hunterwolfie: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19868179
- post made by Marvell1: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19868350
- post made by Hunterwolfie: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19870134
- post made by Number 1: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--1162392
- post made by nathalie20: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19871774
- post made by whorehay https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.19872044

As you can see, all are similar to previous reports I made from this topic; most of them contain swearing or zero value; and all previous similar reports were flagged as Good. As a consequence, I am thinking (1) this is either a mistake from the mod which handled these reports; or, (2) another mod and not you handled them and considered them too old and flagged them all as bad, which was my main fear, as I wrote above, but this was for posts older than Jan 1st 2017 and, as you can see these are from Jun 2017.

@Welsh if you agree, I can dig more inside this topic, even earlier than the date of Jan 1st, 2017, but I am afraid that I can have my reports marked as bad if I keep making them. I mean, in case my reports will come to you, I believe you'll mark them as good, but maybe they will arrive in another mod's hand? (I'm saying that thinking that these bad reports where flagged as bad not by you, but by another mod; even so, do you have any idea why they were flagged as bad?) However, in case we can make an agreement, thus just you will take care of this thread, I am more than willing to dig also through the posts made earlier than Jun 9th, 2017, and also earlier than Jan 1st, 2017. Please let me know.

The posts made until Jan 1st, 2017, reach page 232 of the topic, thus I could still parse 67 pages more. However, I need to know how to proceed, as I don't want to end up having my next ~1000 reports flagged as bad (I calculated 20 posts per page multiplied by 67 pages of posts made between June 9th, 2017 and Jan 1st, 2017 and the result is 1340 posts; however, not all of them need to be reported, this being why I estimated that I'll probably made 1000 more reports from these pages).

In case another mod handled these reports as bad not by mistake, but because he considered the posts too old, I think that best approach would be here -- if possible -- to send a note to your mod colleagues and tell them to leave all the reports from this thread to be handled by you. At least, you know what is happening with this thread and why these reports appear, for such old posts. And it's happening because we discussed to clean this monster topic as well. I am more than willing to clean it entirely, but also I would not want to have 1000 bad reports in a row...

Until I'll receive a reply from you I'll make a double-check through the thread, from its most recent page to page 299.



What do you think about this thread [ANN][PX][PRESALE] ProtocolX Decentralized Trading Protocol on BSC [METAVERSE]⚡⚡? Their thread started to get infested by the bumping accounts on the list referred above as well as several bumping accounts tagged by lovesmayfamilis

I'll keep it under watch, but when I opened it first time it was clean I opened it when you mentioned it. And now, days later, it's still clean.
staff
Activity: 3304
Merit: 4115
2 I think I need to start tagging those bumping accounts for my future reference and convenience on tracking which account already reviewed and which account is new
It would be better if you were to report them, maybe we can start getting to the bottom of this. I'm currently compiling a list of users that I suspect are merit abusing, trying to avoid getting nuked. Since, when they have some merit patrollers can't nuke them, and that effectively reduces the chances of them getting banned. However, like I said I'll be collecting a list of usernames, and then pinging that to the higher ups, once I have a substantial enough list.

Although, the merit abuse is only a hunch at the moment, I haven't got anything solid to back that up. It's just weird that this group of users all have one or two merit, and they're from other users which have barely earned anything. It could potentially be a filtering down effect here. Also, I've noticed some also purchase Copper membership, probably in an attempt to appear more legit too.

Relictum was already cleaned by someone, as when I bookmarked it it had 35 pages, but when I started to clean it I saw it has only 13 pages and most of the remaining posts are made by OP. I had to report only 4 posts here.
Yeah, I went through that thread. Obviously, it's easy to miss a few posts when dealing with a large amount. I do have a sort of routine where I go back, and double check after handling the reports in my report queue. I've probably already deleted several pages worth on Decent too. A long way to go, but I think we could potentially sort this one out in a month rather than 20+ years Cheesy.
legendary
Activity: 2632
Merit: 1462
Yes, I'm an asshole
[...]

1. The "sup fellas group" (this sounds so amusing Smiley Maybe instead of my usual "Heads-up" I'll use "Sup fellas" from now on )

I prefer this one, LOL.

[...]
2. Then I took another quick clean-sweep over the previous mentioned topics: the group found by Rikafip on March 3rd and the similar group, found by holydarkness, on March 4th. Fortunately, the lattest group is inactive and no new spam appeared since my previous intervention.
[...]

What do you think about this thread [ANN][PX][PRESALE] ProtocolX Decentralized Trading Protocol on BSC [METAVERSE]⚡⚡? Their thread started to get infested by the bumping accounts on the list referred above as well as several bumping accounts tagged by lovesmayfamilis, such as:

--sorted in order of the oldest to newest post on their thread--
Z1_FINANCIAL - tagged by rikafip on the aforementioned list
LaCucina - on my additional list that completes rikafip's list
Predict Vision - Rikafip's
i8v8i - tagged by lovesmayfamilis
LunaFox - lovesmayfamilis'
SAWACrypto - mine
SDKmaster - lovesmayfamilis'
METASENSE - new one, untagged1
TmHsHel - lovesmayfamilis'

However, it might be wise to mention that Protox.App deviates from the group's pattern as they never posted on other's thread.

As the likelihoodness of the group to do bumping for free --and that thread is certainly being bumped-- if we assume Protox.App is not part of the group, then they're either hired those shillers or --I rather doubted this theory-- those posts are made deliberately to throw off their scent.2



1[ANN] ✨✨✨ METASENS ✨✨✨ Build the universal amusement park another with similar characteristics of bumping group that apparently missed from our initial sweep, their thread is no longer active, though
2 I think I need to start tagging those bumping accounts for my future reference and convenience on tracking which account already reviewed and which account is new



Edit: [in reply to Welsh's post below] Noted, will report these accounts from this point forward whenever I stumbled upon them. I see that you've cleaned those posts on ProtocolX's thread, that was fast.
legendary
Activity: 1680
Merit: 6524
Fully-fledged Merit Cycler|Spambuster'23|Pie Baker
Sup fellas (big lol)

Since my last post I cleaned the following topics:


After 562 reports, MyTVchain was reduced from 37 pages to 8. Relictum was already cleaned by someone, as when I bookmarked it it had 35 pages, but when I started to clean it I saw it has only 13 pages and most of the remaining posts are made by OP. I had to report only 4 posts here.

Having this said, all topics posted by Rikafip in the first two posts of this thread can be considered cleaned. It was a huge work, which took about 4 months, but it's finally done!



Now wish me luck, as I started working on what is, probably, the longest thread ever to be cleaned: Decent thread which had, at start, 788 pages.


I'll let you know when I finish (probably in about 25 years, when I'll also retire from work Smiley  Shocked
copper member
Activity: 783
Merit: 710
Defend Bitcoin and its PoW: bitcoincleanup.com
And from this post made by nutildah we can find out that spammers are paid with 2.38$/post. Or, at least, they were, in 2019. Probably the payment rates are higher now. Pretty good, right? Not many signature campaigns can pay this amount.

TBH I was surprised to see there is a fair number of users on fiverr still ofering bumping services.
On the other hand I was not surprised to see that their reviews are fake Cheesy old habits die hard I guess...

Should there be a new flag type for "fake discussions" ? Not sure if it would break more than it would solve but might be worth discussing at least

legendary
Activity: 1680
Merit: 6524
Fully-fledged Merit Cycler|Spambuster'23|Pie Baker
Heads-up:

Since my last post I cleaned the following topics:

1. The "sup fellas group" (this sounds so amusing Smiley Maybe instead of my usual "Heads-up" I'll use "Sup fellas" from now on )

From these topics I reported 240 posts.

2. Then I took another quick clean-sweep over the previous mentioned topics: the group found by Rikafip on March 3rd and the similar group, found by holydarkness, on March 4th. Fortunately, the lattest group is inactive and no new spam appeared since my previous intervention.

3. Lastly, I took another look over the active topics from the post I made on March 1st.

All in all, I reported 298 posts from these topics!



Starting tomorrow I will take care of last two topics which needed to be cleaned from the old group of threads -- MyTVchain and Relictum -- and, afterwards, I will start digging into Decent thread.



I think Rizzrack answered that question quite efficiently Cheesy.

Yup, all clear now!

I've handled all remaining reports I have in my report queue.

Thank you, Welsh. My last two reports from the trashed SwapZilla thread were also changed from unhandled to Good.



Other than that, in this weekend I achieved a very nice number of reportsRoll Eyes This was possible, of course with all contributors to Rikafip's thread, which mentioned so many topics full of spam -- therefore I thank you all!
staff
Activity: 3304
Merit: 4115
Whenever we get through a pile of threads, there's always more to keep us on our toes Cheesy. I'll take a thorough look of these later on. Though a quick glance suggests a global moderator will likely be needed to ban the higher ranked users.

Although, I'm still going through the Decent thread, and I suspect that'll take pretty much all of this weekend. So, another staff might have taken care of it before then.
legendary
Activity: 2632
Merit: 1462
Yes, I'm an asshole
Another group of ANN threads that hired bumping service just discovered. If anyone has any doubt about what's going on, just look at the screenshot below and the same group of 7 accounts working across at least 6 threads. There are probably more but this was enough to make a point and provide enough proof.

[...]

Uhh... 13, you're missing some others. I color coded them here. Aside from bumping --and shilling as their post shows fake enthusiasm-- they also cheated several bounties by enrolling their accounts altogether. Proof of connection in form of transactions between wallets are also documented.

legendary
Activity: 3444
Merit: 3469
Crypto Swap Exchange
wazzup fellas, I have a question.
I quoted Indacoin as I think that there is a big chance that this account was either sold or hacked. That's the official Indacoin account here on bitcointalk and AFAIK Indacoin is a legit crypto exchanger and somehow I doubt they would bother with thread bumping.Then again, looking at their bpip profile, I don't see any email or password change.

it seems more to me that he was part of the Indacoin team or he is just hired for that part of the job, but at some point, they Indacoin decided they didn't need this forum anymore. so the one who managed it gave him a new purpose, bump spamming over the forum.
this is just based on current feedback on his profile. Also on his profile, we see .com domains while the official indacoin on .io extension. (currently .com has also been redirected to .io)
legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 5937
I would call them "sup fellas..." spammer fellowship.
Hah yeah, I guess person behind those sock pupper accounts is a big Scary Movie fan Cheesy


they all have an identical way of writing, just a few of them from Mavatrix thread (this is how every post starts, I cut out the rest of the nonsense)
wazzup fellas, I have a question.
I quoted Indacoin as I think that there is a big chance that this account was either sold or hacked. That's the official Indacoin account here on bitcointalk and AFAIK Indacoin is a legit crypto exchanger and somehow I doubt they would bother with thread bumping.Then again, looking at their bpip profile, I don't see any email or password change.


legendary
Activity: 3444
Merit: 3469
Crypto Swap Exchange
I would call them "sup fellas..." spammer fellowship.
they all have an identical way of writing, just a few of them from Mavatrix thread (this is how every post starts, I cut out the rest of the nonsense)

sup everyone, please help me.

sup fellas, I need your advice.

wazzup fellas, I have a question.

sup fellas, how are you?

"sup fellas, seems like all this news and updates a

wazzap fellas, I need your help.


legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 5937
Another group of ANN threads that hired bumping service just discovered. If anyone has any doubt about what's going on, just look at the screenshot below and the same group of 7 accounts working across at least 6 threads. There are probably more but this was enough to make a point and provide enough proof.



Ann threads:
Horizon Protocol is a differentiated DeFi platform
[ANN] Cypherdog - innovative company operating in the IT, cyber security sector.
MAVATRIX, THE LEGEND OF REWARDS!
[ANN] WELCOME TO PKT! Internet By The People, For The People!
[ANN] Affyn - Reimagine a Play-to-Earn Metaverse
[ANN] ROBO INU FINANCE The community-owned crypto inspired by NASA



On top of writing in same threads, some accounts also have certain similarities when it comes to merit: 2 Member rank accounts used Bordijo and Efarilino got 10 merit each from two merit giveaway threads, [Merit] Hey Newbies! Can You Sign A Message? and [Merit] Hey Bitcoiners! Can You Send Encrypted Messages? which then they used to rank up other at accounts. That's just the tip of the iceberg though as several other accounts that can be connected to this group did the same; they got the merit from those merit giveaway threads and then shared them to their alts.
staff
Activity: 3304
Merit: 4115
Currently going through all three of the threads, most spam is deleted in the two smaller ones. I will be double checking though as it's easy to miss posts. The bigger thread, I'm currently going through.

Is it just me just really loosing patience and tolerance for these people or has it always been this bad? I really think those sections used to be at least a bit better.
I like to think there has been improvements over the years, I think personally we're in a much better position now, than we were a few years ago. The bumping changes definitely made an impact on that. Unfortunately, as its been pointed out before, other websites actually rate their review higher based on the activity of a Bitcointalk thread, so there's an incentive there to get these bumping changes, also there's the fact that some users will actually fall for the hype from these comments. It's also worth mentioning that sometimes these bumping services don't actually say anything promising about the project at all, it was just a way of creating a discussion, and therefore bumping the thread (when this applied, which it no longer does).

Altcoin section definitely has huge issues, however we are in a better place now than we were years ago. Partly thanks to the changes made by theymos, but also because of the effort being put in by the community.
legendary
Activity: 3500
Merit: 6320
Crypto Swap Exchange
I know I have commented before here, but since I have been busy this last week I have been spending more time just reading through the trash that the alt & token boards are.
I have have to say I just don't get it. If I was looking around and saw what these people are positing I would be running the other way if I was at all interested.

Is it just me just really loosing patience and tolerance for these people or has it always been this bad? I really think those sections used to be at least a bit better.

-Dave

staff
Activity: 3304
Merit: 4115
I think Rizzrack answered that question quite efficiently Cheesy.

And from this post made by nutildah we can find out that spammers are paid with 2.38$/post. Or, at least, they were, in 2019. Probably the payment rates are higher now. Pretty good, right? Not many signature campaigns can pay this amount.
I'm not surprised by users recycling content, I'm sure you've noticed with the amount you've reported, that these bumping services which are being used, are very likely being run by the same people. Since, they're pretty much identical to one another. It's absolutely ridiculous, the amount of accounts which are posting the same stuff every day, and have been doing that for years. Plus, taking a look at that link Nutildah I can now understand why we've got such a problem, apparently its good money to make minimal effort posts. I'll be honest the amount of money these people are earning has surprised me. Although, the bumping changes definitely have impacted it like I've suggested previously, if not the amount that are offering these services, and performing at least nowadays less users viewing the altcoin section are being subjected to the spam. I slowly think we're making progress towards curbing this though.

Do you think that you can take a look at these four posts remaining, please?
I've handled all remaining reports I have in my report queue.
copper member
Activity: 783
Merit: 710
Defend Bitcoin and its PoW: bitcoincleanup.com
Actually, I meant if you can see more than 5000 unhandled reports, all being made in less than 30 days. Imagine someone reporting 1000 posts / day for 10 consecutive days and, for some reason, they are not handled. That user can see only his last 5000 reports. But can you see all 10.000 unhandled reports?

Yes

About that, also the user can not see anymore the reports older than 30 days. They disappear also from user's posting history, not just from mods' queue...

Yes
legendary
Activity: 1680
Merit: 6524
Fully-fledged Merit Cycler|Spambuster'23|Pie Baker
Hope I understood the question...

Actually, I meant if you can see more than 5000 unhandled reports, all being made in less than 30 days. Imagine someone reporting 1000 posts / day for 10 consecutive days and, for some reason, they are not handled. That user can see only his last 5000 reports. But can you see all 10.000 unhandled reports?

If a report is not attended by any mod and after the specific time period, 30 days or what ever, receives the "unhandled" status it is no longer displayed in any report queue. Only the user that reported the post can see it in his/her report history or maybe theymos in the db. It magically vanishes from the mod report page.

About that, also the user can not see anymore the reports older than 30 days. They disappear also from user's reporting history, not just from mods' queue...
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