InsaneJournal Announcements

Fight Against Comment Spam

squeaky

1/19/18 08:44 am

We have taken additional action against the comment spam that has been happening including banning certain text from comments as well as limiting the rate anonymous users can comment. Hopefully this will make a big impact and keep you guys from having to put up with this annoying problem.

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• needstylenol

  3/11/18 04:46 am (UTC)

  

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but people have already commented to you suggesting actual, legitimate ways to stop the constant harassment these spammers are assaulting your loyal fanbase with.
  
  It's okay to admit when you don't know how to personally fix a thing, because this code is old and made of spaghetti, no one blames you for this. If you can't for whatever reason set up a honeypot to 'catch' all the spam comments, then for the love of god, reinstate captcha on anonymous commenting. Google even has a free one.
  
  I am not personally impacted by the increase in spamming, but none of my journals are all that popular. People who do a lot of work for or have a large presence in your community are being slammed the worst, and I feel for them. You do provide a service to us all, and we are all grateful. But this constant spamming is only going to end up damaging the site, driving people away who support you, and driving down ad revenue that keeps these servers alive.
  
  So please. Affect a solution to this issue that actually works. Thank you.

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  • squeaky

    3/11/18 11:45 am (UTC)

    

    We have captchas on anonymous comments. Have you tried to make one lately?

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    • squidded

      3/11/18 04:11 pm (UTC)

      

      I'm gonna hop on in with a 'clearly, that's not working' then, because yeah, the spam is still insane -you make a journal and before you have time to turn off anon comments (which is a bandaid, not a soloution) there's two-four comments from anon spam bots.
      
      Are you looking into other options? Because really, it is making using the server a pain. Especially for those of us who do pay to support the site.

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      • squeaky

        3/11/18 05:44 pm (UTC)

        

        We understand it’s not working. When I have some time I’m going to work on implementing a new captcha system. Until then it’s just blocking IP blocks and pattern matching. I’m sorry for how bad and annoying it’s Beene we are aware and are doing what we can to stop it.

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    • needstylenol

      3/11/18 11:18 pm (UTC)

      

      OKay, that's a very fair callout. Serves me right for taking the word of my friends and previous comments instead of checking, myself.
      
      In that case, though, is there some way you could just turn off all anonymous commenting site wide until this blows over? Because they've outsmarted the captcha, and that is absolutely terrifying.
      
      Sorry for writing out my own callout before collecting all the facts.

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      • squeaky

        3/12/18 12:22 am (UTC)

        

        It’s okay. Unfortunately anonymous comments are widely used and globally editing peoples settings is not something we are willing to do. However we will continue to battle the spammers and are hoping to have better captchas installed soon.

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