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Invite only. A site is spam-proof if it makes it hard enough to get an invitation. The relatively few spammers who slip through can be warned and/or banned. U
by armchairhacker 3y ago
Invite only.
A site is spam-proof if it makes it hard enough to get an invitation. The relatively few spammers who slip through can be warned and/or banned.
Unfortunately, we may not be invited.
- throw10920 3y agoThis is what Lobsters does, and it's pretty effective (although the site has other, much worse problems that outweigh that one feature).
- mlekoszek 3y agoWhat sort of problems would you say they have?
- throw10920 3y agoVotes are (to a greater extent than HN) used to indicate disagreement rather than low quality (which leads to more low quality comments); political content is allowed and encouraged (but only that which aligns with the beliefs of the moderators); many users have been banned without any transparency as to why; significant groupthink about technical topics (separate from the political content).
- illiac786 3y agoThat aligns well with their line of thought though, which is that there is a specific political view which is desired. They're basically building an echo chamber and it will starve on the long run because it will become so specific, the chance of a new user fitting in that community on day one will become lower and lower. Being open is hard, very hard, but it's the only long term strategy in my eyes. The rest is an illusion.
- hosteur 3y agoWhat are those problems?
- withinboredom 3y agoHeh, that doesn’t stop spammers. It only takes one spammer getting invited before they start inviting their spammer “friends”. Before you know it, you have thousands of dormant accounts just waiting to spam you. It makes it harder, sure, but that’s not an effective solution by itself. In fact, it leads to a false sense of security.
- throw10920 3y agoDo you have evidence for this claim? As evidence against: Lobsters, which uses an invite tree, has virtually no spam to speak of.
- withinboredom 3y agoThere is nothing I can share because it is proprietary information and would assist in informing spammers on how spam detection works on the platform I used to work on. That being said, if there are lots of dormant accounts on lobsters, they are likely spam bots just waiting to be activated once the rules are deeply understood and there is something to gain, or be waiting until there are more than the mods could actively fight against because they lack the tools to do so (see: false sense of security).
- throw10920 3y agoGiven your refusal to provide any evidence or counterexamples, the cop-out that "there are probably actually lots of spam accounts of Lobsters that haven't activated yet", and the extremely naive nature of your comment that ignores simple modifications that can be made to an invite system to nullify all of the flaws you claim it has, I don't think that you actually have any evidence whatsoever. It's pretty clear that invite trees provide actual value and the opposite of a "false sense of security".
- withinboredom 3y agoI mean, I don't work on lobsters, I have no desire to be a member there. So why would I have any evidence to support my claim about a platform I give two shits about? I'm simply telling you how spammers work on OTHER platforms, quite successfully. Whether lobsters is immune to that or not, I don't know, nor do I care to know. If you think they are immune, then great (see: false sense of security).
- ogurechny 3y ago[dead]
- lelanthran 3y ago> A site is spam-proof if it makes it hard enough to get an invitation. Yeah, but then it's also invisible to search engine users, in which case no one will want to spam the site for SEO anyway.