Facebook bots spamming my group

oatmeal said:

I have a FB group approaching 40K members, very active.
I accept a thousand new members each week. The problem is
that a bunch of them (say about 20-30) are always spamming the
same ad in my group. It's basically the same description and link
but the users/accounts are always different and I don't know how
they can have so many accounts but I keep deleting the posts
and blocking or muting those accounts.

Now I know there are ways to add "keywords" that will show up in my notifications
each time one of the keywords is detected in a post, but I have even a smarter
idea that I'm surprised Facebook doesn't have.

Why can't we set a filter that prevents any posts from being posted if it has a certain
particular word or set of words. For example: "Join my ......" or "make money....."
or "earn cash....."

If we could simply set a filter of these types of phrases, then anybody or any bot that tries
to post their ad in the group page would automatically be denied or the post won't be posted.

That would be SO MUCH SIMPLER and EASIER to manage these spam bots instead of having
to delete 20 or 30 posts per day wasting my time deleting them one by one manually.

Gosh, I have come up with so many brilliant ideas for facebook, youtube, ebay, for years and
sometimes they catch on very late and finally implement what I suggested. I don't know why
common sense or logic seems to be lacking with these billion dollar companies.

Any other solutions to prevent these same bot spam messages from being posted?

Click to expand...

davca3 said:

Make complex group entry questions

Click to expand...

oatmeal said:

I have a FB group approaching 40K members, very active.
I accept a thousand new members each week. The problem is
that a bunch of them (say about 20-30) are always spamming the
same ad in my group. It's basically the same description and link
but the users/accounts are always different and I don't know how
they can have so many accounts but I keep deleting the posts
and blocking or muting those accounts.

Now I know there are ways to add "keywords" that will show up in my notifications
each time one of the keywords is detected in a post, but I have even a smarter
idea that I'm surprised Facebook doesn't have.

Why can't we set a filter that prevents any posts from being posted if it has a certain
particular word or set of words. For example: "Join my ......" or "make money....."
or "earn cash....."

If we could simply set a filter of these types of phrases, then anybody or any bot that tries
to post their ad in the group page would automatically be denied or the post won't be posted.

That would be SO MUCH SIMPLER and EASIER to manage these spam bots instead of having
to delete 20 or 30 posts per day wasting my time deleting them one by one manually.

Gosh, I have come up with so many brilliant ideas for facebook, youtube, ebay, for years and
sometimes they catch on very late and finally implement what I suggested. I don't know why
common sense or logic seems to be lacking with these billion dollar companies.

Any other solutions to prevent these same bot spam messages from being posted?

Click to expand...

oatmeal said:

yep, I know about that but I wonder how much that affects membership join rate? I tend to think that a percentage of people could get turned off by having to ask questions
and just won't bother to join. I do recall myself many times deciding not to join groups because of the questions that popped up and I didn't want to waste my time
answering them and just moved onto the next group.

For me, it just seems easier to have a simple filter in place that prevents/blocks/removes any post that has a certain set of specific words/phrases.
The problem isn't the new posts. I set it so that I have to approve all posts. I only approve the posts I want in the group.

The problem is anyone can post a message in the comment section and that's where the annoying spam ads keep showing up in the comment section and there's
no way to pre-approve comment posts. A simple filter setting that allows comments and disallows other types of comments would be perfect to have.

Click to expand...