Comment on Update: Invitation requests remain disabled for the time being

  1. Diamond_Raven Tue 31 Oct 2017 12:11AM UTC

    I haven't seen any around here, but on my Wraithbait account, I keep getting notifications for "new reviews", and when I check them, they've been left by "legitimate" accounts with names like kjsdkfj232343 and the review consists of hundreds of lines of fashion and clothing name brands (Michael Kors, Prada, Nike etc). Based on what I've heard, these spam accounts also create "stories" that contain the same type of information.

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    1. Delta140 Tue 31 Oct 2017 12:55AM UTC

      I just don't understand why some one would set these accounts up to spam brands

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      1. Diamond_Raven Tue 31 Oct 2017 12:59AM UTC

        It's a marketing tool. From what I understand, the more frequently a name appears on the internet, the higher that page moves on Google's search results (Google's algorithms looks for how popular a certain name is, popularity is linked with how many websites mention the name), so companies are paid by the fashion/tech/whatever companies to create spam bots, which will infiltrate websites like AO3 and Tumblr and put the company name everywhere the spam bots can reach, thus, moving the company's website higher in Google's search results. There's no malicious intent and the companies have no idea where the spam bots are making accounts, but it's annoying for people to weed through this garbage.

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        1. Delta140 Tue 31 Oct 2017 01:02AM UTC

          Well you learn something new everyday, thank you for clearing that up

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        2. RavenMerc Tue 31 Oct 2017 01:42AM UTC

          I disagree with your observation that it's without malicious intent. The fact that they are knowingly spamming anyone just to increase their sales, without regard to server limits or terms of service for the sites they're attacking, is malicious. It's done with a total disregard for the consequences to others, either by sheer man hours to fix, or to the exceeding bandwidth limits, which cost the site owners money. Not knowing whom they're spamming doesn't make it any less criminal. The intent is spamming, which is never benign.

          By the same token, these same companies would be yelling bloody murder if they were in turn spammed in such a fashion.

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          1. Diamond_Raven Tue 31 Oct 2017 01:52AM UTC

            I was only considering 'malicious intent' to be if somebody were trying to steal your information from your computer, but you're right - the end result is malicious, for the reasons you mentioned. I'm not sure if what they're doing is illegal, but in any case, from what I've heard, the companies keep their hands clean by hiring third parties (often anonymous programmers on the internet) to make the spam bots (and they don't openly ask the programmers to spam sites) so even if anybody tried to go after them, the companies can plead ignorance.

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          2. floranocturna Tue 31 Oct 2017 08:35AM UTC

            My thoughts exactly! Those companies are surely aware of what they are up to and they are just avoiding to get their hands dirty by outsourcing the actual spamming to programmers, which in turn might not be aware of the whole extent of what they are doing.
            Forcing other people to work extra hours just to remove unwanted commercials is malicious intent to me. I know it's not like they are trying to steal someone's information, but they are purposefully disturbing a website that has nothing to do with sneakers and streaming videos. Well unless it's a fanfic involving those topics of course ;)

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            1. peppersoap Wed 01 Nov 2017 12:43AM UTC

              Plus, it's theft of ad space. legitimately, companies should be paying for banner ads instead of stealing space in comments. forreal, i wonder if the next wave of generational lawyers will take on spam cases. :<

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              1. floranocturna Wed 01 Nov 2017 08:48PM UTC

                They definitely should, spammers are the plague of our time!

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            3. Kitsu3 Wed 08 Nov 2017 07:29AM UTC

              Kitsu3 icon

              Don't kid yourself; as a programmer slash website developer myself, I assure you, they know exactly what they're doing. They're targeting this site in particular because Google also takes into account the popularity of the websites mentioning your brand or site. This is especially true of links to external websites. It's just lazy and unethical.

              There are legitimate ways to achieve the same results, but I guess that would take too much time/money. For one thing, it would involve actual writing. And why hire a writer to post a well-written, relevant blog post on an appropriate website or three when you can just automatically spam popular sites and get better results because the process is shorter (programmers who do this won't have to create the programs from scratch for each company that hires them, less work, less expensive) and automated?

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