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Heh, 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 thou

Heh, 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 ago
Do you have evidence for this claim? As evidence against: Lobsters, which uses an invite tree, has virtually no spam to speak of.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  There 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 ago
    Given 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 ago
      I 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).
matheusmoreira 3y ago
If you discover a spammer, ban their entire invite tree and probably the account who invited them as well.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  I wish I could say more about how spammers work ... but this won't work like you think it will. You are assuming all the spammers are distributed among a single branch in the tree, and you'd only realize it wasn't working when you ban someone popular who obviously isn't a spammer and has the clout to do something about it.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure they mean ban the invite tree below the branch of the spammer, not the entire tree that spammer is on. The chances of a false positive are much lower in the former case than in the latter. Users who actually believe in the site and understand how the mechanism works and appreciate the high snr that they've enjoyed, will be understanding for the most part even if they end up on the wrong side of one of these bans, and have to go through an appeal system to rejoin the site on some other trust tree which is much more closely monitored by its members than the one they were on before. Ensuring that future bans will be highly unlikely.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      Out of curiousity, how is a scammer that has hundreds of thousands of actual real people under it handled? Are all of those hundreds of thousands of users banned as well? Not even talking about scammers, if someone near the root of the tree has a bad day and decides to take it out on the community (or simply gets hacked), it seems you could lose the entire community.
      - matheusmoreira 3y ago
        > Are all of those hundreds of thousands of users banned as well? Depends on whether you can trust them. If someone at the top of the invite tree gets hacked or starts shitposting, it doesn't really imply anything about the people they invited, they're all probably innocent users. If they turn out to be a spammer though? Then you can't trust anyone they invited. Any false positive should be handled on a case-by-case basis or reinvited by someone else who is trusted and is willing to vouch for them.

throw10920 3y ago

Do you have evidence for this claim? As evidence against: Lobsters, which uses an invite tree, has virtually no spam to speak of.

withinboredom 3y ago
There 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 ago
  Given 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 ago
    I 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).

matheusmoreira 3y ago

If you discover a spammer, ban their entire invite tree and probably the account who invited them as well.

withinboredom 3y ago
I wish I could say more about how spammers work ... but this won't work like you think it will. You are assuming all the spammers are distributed among a single branch in the tree, and you'd only realize it wasn't working when you ban someone popular who obviously isn't a spammer and has the clout to do something about it.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure they mean ban the invite tree below the branch of the spammer, not the entire tree that spammer is on. The chances of a false positive are much lower in the former case than in the latter. Users who actually believe in the site and understand how the mechanism works and appreciate the high snr that they've enjoyed, will be understanding for the most part even if they end up on the wrong side of one of these bans, and have to go through an appeal system to rejoin the site on some other trust tree which is much more closely monitored by its members than the one they were on before. Ensuring that future bans will be highly unlikely.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Out of curiousity, how is a scammer that has hundreds of thousands of actual real people under it handled? Are all of those hundreds of thousands of users banned as well? Not even talking about scammers, if someone near the root of the tree has a bad day and decides to take it out on the community (or simply gets hacked), it seems you could lose the entire community.
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      > Are all of those hundreds of thousands of users banned as well? Depends on whether you can trust them. If someone at the top of the invite tree gets hacked or starts shitposting, it doesn't really imply anything about the people they invited, they're all probably innocent users. If they turn out to be a spammer though? Then you can't trust anyone they invited. Any false positive should be handled on a case-by-case basis or reinvited by someone else who is trusted and is willing to vouch for them.