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Spam teams at social networks typically shadow-ban spammers. The goal of this is to make it as difficult as possible for the spammer to determine that they've b
by austinl 3y ago
Spam teams at social networks typically shadow-ban spammers. The goal of this is to make it as difficult as possible for the spammer to determine that they've been caught (which is why I think the frustration techniques, or simply account suspension aren't widely used).
The field of spam-prevention is fascinating because it's essentially an arms race between companies deploying tactics to detect spam and sophisticated spammers using increasingly complex methods to avoid detection.
So there's an advantage gained by companies if spammers believe they don't need to evolve their methods.
- paint 3y ago[dead]
- sdenton4 3y agoDepending on the context, account suspensions can be weaponized. By making someone you don't like /look/ like they are doing something dodgy, you can get them banned.
- getrealyall 3y agoLike fail2ban. Nothing quite like the anxiety of almost locking yourself out of your own system because you mistyped a password one too many times. It's a delicate balance (although, for something like SSH, I wouldn't even bother, unless the traffic is measurable enough to cause issues. But then you're getting (D)DoS'd, and you probably have bigger problems).
- willcipriano 3y agoModern spam tools I've encountered accept a second account list to be used for verification purposes for this reason. They can automatically purge shadowbanned accounts by spot checking comments for visibility.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoI wondered about that - it seems like an actual spammer would have an easy time checking from other accounts, so it adds at most a minor amount of extra work, while real users who are incorrectly flagged never even think to check.
- qingcharles 3y agoThe problem is real humans getting snared. My TikTok account is shadowbanned (anything I post now gets zero views, and my LIVE gets zero viewers). And my Instagram account got permabanned because they said I was impersonating myself. This was worse because I lost the entire account. They even had me send a selfie of myself and the instant I submitted the image was when they did the permaban lol.
- willdr 3y agoI don't mean to cause offense, but maybe you haven't built a following yet? I see plenty of Lives with 0 viewers.
- jaggederest 3y agoJust out of curiosity, how would you build a following if none of your videos ever receives any views? I'm not someone who uses the tikity tok but it seems like an intractable problem.
- jonny_eh 3y agoShare your videos as a response to a comment on HN.
- yowlingcat 3y agoLeave noteworthy comments on other peoples videos, make noteworthy stitches of theirs. Embrace remix culture, essentially. It only seems like an intractable problem to non power users of social media.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoAnd the irony here is that the leading spam-detection teams work for spammers. Ads are spam, except when it's adtech that's paying your bills.