In the recent months, we’ve been getting more blogspam accounts, and the administrators have been discussing behind the scenes on how to deal with it. Blogspam is against the rules of this Lemmy instance and is treated the same as any other spam. That is, offending posts will be removed and blogspammer banned. I thought I’d share my thought process of moderating stuff like this.

Blogspam is kind of a controversial topic and has a lot of grey areas. It basically involves accounts seemingly made specifically to post links to a specific website, usually with the intent of generating ad revenue. Herein lies the grey area, because simply posting links to your own website or a website you like isn’t spam, nor is it against the rules to post websites that have ads, nor is it against the rules for an organization to have an official account on Lemmy, so it becomes a problem of where to draw the line. You can also run into problems where it’s hard to tell if someone is intentionally spamming or if they’re just enthusiastic about the content of a site.

That said, here are my general criteria on what is considered blogspam, with some wiggle room on a case by case basis:

  • Does the user only post links to one or a few sites? Do they have any other activity, such as commenting or moderating communities?

  • How often does the user post? For example, it might not be reasonable to consider an account to be blogspamming if they only post a few articles a month, even if they only post one site.

  • Does the user post the same link repeatedly? Do they post to communities where it would be off topic? Do they post the same link multiple times to a single community?

  • Is the user trying to manipulate the search feature in Lemmy? For example, by including a large number of keywords in their title or post body?

  • Is the site content “clickbait” or otherwise designed to mislead the reader?

  • Is the site trying to extract data or payment from readers? Examples include invasive tracking, or forcing users to sign up or pay for a membership before letting them read the article.

  • Is the site itself well-known and reputable or obscure and suspicious?

  • Does the site have an “inordinate” number of ads? Are the ads intrusive? (Autoplaying video ads versus simple sponsor mentions for example)

  • Is there evidence that the user is somehow affiliated with the site? Examples include sponsored links or having the username be the same as the site name.

  • Is there evidence that the user is a bot?

Not all of these have to be satisfied for it to be blogspam, and it’s usually up to the administrators to make a rational decision on whether to intervene.

Note that these criteria apply to sites that are generally benign, but is being posted in a way that might count as spam. If the site contains malware, engages in phishing, is blatantly “fake news”, is a scam, is generally malicious, etc, those alone are reason enough for it to be removed and the poster potentially banned, and would constitute as a much more serious violation of our rules.

I’m open to feedback on this, feel free to discuss in the comments!

  • @sirsquid@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    3
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Well, by definition of “blogspam” that would basically ban me and GamingOnLinux.

    Frankly, I really think it’s a gross term that often discriminates against websites doing good work, and I’m not even talking about myself here. The /r/linux community on Reddit is notorious for this, banning multiple sites giving out good news and I see CAP_NAME is here as a moderator of the Linux community - sad to see this. CAP is a power-hungry tool who claims harassment whenever people don’t agree with his way of thinking.

    The problem should not be banning “blogspam”, the issue should be looking at what the sites and the people running/posting them actually bring to Lemmy. Think about the posts themselves. Do they generate discussion? Get regular upvotes? Do the majority enjoy the content. Lemmy itself is small, being hostile to people that might actually help bring traffic is not going to do it any favours right now. I’ve been constantly advertising Lemmy to multiple thousands of people through GOL social accounts, and our website.

    Are the people/websites posting about something other people aren’t? Often yes. Are those news websites the initial source most people get the info from? Usually also yes. People love to claim otherwise (hello CAP_NAME), but the majority do not follow hundreds of mailing lists and RSS feeds to source the info like the news sites do.

    Honestly, If the route we go down here is to start shouting “blogspam” and turn into another Reddit with far less people but the same hostile rules, then I’m out and I won’t look back.

    I love the idea of Lemmy, so please think on all this very carefully.