I'd call it spring cleaning, but as we're nearing fall it's not quite that. Regardless, last month I put out a little PSA about bots on the platform and what to look for; And a handful of you helped me clean out bots new and old alike. Compared to July's ~3,187 bots, August yielded an even greater ~7,376 bot accounts that I purged, not including the phishing bot attack at the end of the month (which was roughly another 1,800 accounts on it's own.)
As promised last month, here's a (slightly) more detailed breakdown:
Spambots (Specifically for casinos, sports betting, and any sort of gambling): ~6,422*
*A large portion of these were bulk-banned in large lists that sometimes contained other advertising bots, as the same IP will occasionally be used by bots for both purposes. Some of these can probably be attributed to the advert bot category, but when I'm banning 100+ at once I'm not checking which ones are for gambling and which want to sell you roofing services.
Spambots (Specifically for advertising any non-gambling-related product or service): ~783
Buzzfarmers (In general, including multiaccounters): 385
Unto September:
Going forward, I've already started a new list, and with a few large chains uprooted by happenstance it's already fattening: 2,896 bots and counting - some of you have clearly decided to keep it rolling (and I don't blame you, it's easy reporting buzz).
Thanks, and a little note:
As I said last time, thank you to the folks sticking around despite everything; And as a token of thanks for the ones that went in on helping me clean some of these bots out, you can expect some buzz tips from my own stash headed your way soon after I post this. ~8700 buzz will be going out to 18 users that reported at least 15 bots (with a lower threshold for buzzfarmer reports), based on first-reported status. I decided to 'price' each bot pretty low - spambots are dime-a-dozen, so I'm paying out only 1 buzz each; But pricing buzzfarm-related bots at 5 each. Not a ton, but a nice little bonus for those that made the big numbers possible to settle atop their reporting bonuses.
Also: If you thought something was fishy about the reactions on all the featured images at the start if this month, you'd be right. It was a chain of 5,739 bots made for buzz farming, and has been cleaned out... and subsequently came back with another 2,824 accounts over today and yesterday. Reactions in the feeds may be funky for a little while we deal with these.