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Hello again, folks! While I ended up missing a standalone article for September, I've decided to keep doing these (semi) monthly bot-busting articles going as my own little bit of transparency. If you don't know what this is, the prior two articles are linked at the top of this article.
September opened with quite a massive reaction bot attack, while October was quieter but saw the dismantling of several buzzfarming rings - here's the monthly breakdowns;
September:
Spambots (Gambling-Based): ~4,376
Spambots (Other Advertisements): ~323
Buzzfarmers (Bots, Cheaters, Multiaccounters): ~513
Reactbot Attack (Over Four Waves): ~11,846
Total: ~16,490
October:
Spambots (Gambling-Based): ~929
Spambots (Other Advertisements): ~78
Buzzfarmers (Bots, Cheaters, Multiaccounters): ~3,758
Total: ~4,765
In other Bot-Related News:
The tail end of October saw us roll into production some tools to automatically detect new bot accounts, mute them, and hand them to me on a silver platter; While still not catching everything, it's already shown quite effective at singling out the gambling bots - in theory less of their (new) accounts will be floating around unbanned going forward.
Additional spam & bot detection that doesn't push any account restrictions has also been developed and refined over the last several months: These are now reaching states they can be used more reliably, and will be reviewed by me alongside the prior tools; The two in combination have already net 260 bot bans within the first 3 days of November.
Again, Thank You:
While improving detection will be catching a lot more going forward, reports from you all help us zero-in on the ones that get through the cracks - one user in October reported a string of accounts they found were reacting to their content suspiciously: They had really uncovered a Buzzfarming chain of nearly 2000 accounts in total, which was promptly dismantled. Like last time, a little buzz tip will be going out to those who reported a solid number of bots: ~16,000 Yellow Buzz is going out as tips shortly after this article goes live to 12 users that went beyond the norm (or found a sizable bot chain) in helping me clean out the trash.
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