Accounts farming on BHW with AI issue

It’s been around one or two weeks now that I’ve noticed a massive increase in generic accounts spamming the Social Media section with obviously AI-generated threads.

All of these threads follow the exact same pattern:

“Hey/Hi, I've noticed/experienced this [AI generic bs question] do you feel the same?”

They are extremely generic, low-effort, and clearly made to farm post counts or accounts. The same type of threads are being posted thousands of times per day across multiple social media sub-forums, and it’s becoming unbearable to browse.

The forum is getting completely cluttered with fake discussions instead of real questions from real users. You can barely help anyone anymore because half the threads are just engagement bait generated at scale.

What I find crazy is that legitimate users, especially people like me who are not native English speakers and use AI only to help translate or improve wording get restricted because AI usage is considered suspicious.

Meanwhile, there are countless accounts mass-posting identical generic patterns with zero value, and nothing seems to happen for a long time.

Honestly, something needs to be done because navigating the forum is starting to feel like a nightmare.

Here are a few accounts I found in my browser history that were eventually banned by admins after I reported them, but there was at least 3 more than I couldn't find again in my history:

• https://www.blackhatworld.com/members/bill-alex.2322369
• https://www.blackhatworld.com/members/arjen-smith.2319865
• https://www.blackhatworld.com/members/kevin-coster.2321422
• https://www.blackhatworld.com/members/smite-john.2321409

I know these specific accounts are already banned, but I really think this issue deserves a deeper investigation because the scale of this spam is getting out of control.

Thanks @Social Swarm - your thread is pretty similar to the one recently raised and discussed here: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/t...amming-artificial-garbage-everywhere.1811555/
We'll leave this open for more conversation, but the same still applies: rest assured, we're looking into this, sometimes visibly and sometimes not so visibly. Please keep reporting and raising any concerns.

I agree AI slop is flooding bhw but tbh it's not just here it's happening.

Just think about how much AI slop is on the socials we see now.

The worst offenders currently are: "and honestly?", "—" and overly neutral, souless text.

There's also an increase of scammers. New accounts from March/ April DM'ing telegram links.

Stay Safe out there people.

This reply @Samoz is an excellent suggestion, there is no reason to not implement this

We shouldn't be allowing new accounts to post THAT frequently.

Maybe something like new accounts cannot post more than 2 threads within the first hour etc or something similar to that. There should be some form of tighter posting control for new accounts.

Click to expand...

New users should be limited to [insert value here] replies/day for X period.

Also limiting the amount of marketplace threads you can reply to over X period would be good.

This would eradicate people inflating post count by replying with "send discount", "any reviews", "interested DM me", etc.

As BHW uses Xenforo these things would take less than an hour or two to implement. Easy win, zero downside.

UnusualSubstance said:

I agree AI slop is flooding bhw but tbh it's not just here it's happening.

Just think about how much AI slop is on the socials we see now.

The worst offenders currently are: "and honestly?", "—" and overly neutral, souless text.

Click to expand...

It's true that it's a problem widely and not just on BHW, but there are so many ways to improve the current shitshow that new members are creating.

Kilterman said:

There's also an increase of scammers. New accounts from March/ April DM'ing telegram links.

Stay Safe out there people.

Click to expand...

Have you been reporting these? If not, please do. You'll be helping staff and the community enormously.

XrumerGeek said:

New users should be limited to [insert value here] replies/day for X period.

Also limiting the amount of marketplace threads you can reply to over X period would be good.

This would eradicate people inflating post count by replying with "send discount", "any reviews", "interested DM me", etc.

As BHW uses Xenforo these things would take less than an hour or two to implement. Easy win, zero downside.

Click to expand...

Instead of hard-limiting the replies, how about making Marketplace the same as Lounge in that replies don't add to one's message count.

Stavro said:

Instead of hard-limiting the replies, how about making Marketplace the same as Lounge in that replies don't add to one's message count.

Click to expand...

Yeah, another great idea which takes just a minute or two to setup via Xenforo.

Don't even waste your time with it, I've already reported tens of those profiles in my post, I guess one or two were banned, the rest is still here, their posts are still active and some of them are still creating low quality spam everyday, whoever is conducting this mass bot campaign is succeeding without any doubt

The extension I created make them disappeared from my feed
are they doing it manually or automated?

It's getting to the point where you can expect half the replies on any post to come from people who pasted the title into ChatGPT and then posted the response.

As ever, please use report. Just because we don't always respond to a report with a deletion or ban, it doesn't mean we're not using that information to work with further down the 'spam chain'.

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