Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Thu Nov 14, 2024 2:19 pm**

Looks like Olivia101 might be a spammer. She quoted my post here and tacked on a questionable link in very small writing within the quote she created of my OP. The post is below.

viewtopic.php?p=740055&sid=f4c64ea3aa3f ... 67#p740055

Posted: **Thu Nov 14, 2024 5:31 pm**

I'm pretty sure that's a bot. Their writing is quite distinctive albeit correct (perhaps TOO correct?)

Posted: **Fri Nov 15, 2024 2:26 am**

accelafine wrote: ↑Thu Nov 14, 2024 5:31 pm I'm pretty sure that's a bot. Their writing is quite distinctive albeit correct (perhaps TOO correct?)

Yes. That occurred to me too. But I felt erring on the side of human might be better than calling her a bot and it turning out that she isn't.

Posted: **Sat Nov 16, 2024 12:41 pm**

Thanks Gary for the heads up. Yes, absolutely classic behaviour from one of the new AI driven bots. The posting is well written, relevant and believable in order to slip past our defences, and then once the bot is a full member of the forum each new post has a spam link in tiny letters somewhere in it. This one only had three postings so far. Another one I've just spotted called jesse99 has seventeen.

Posted: **Sat Nov 16, 2024 1:05 pm**

Incidentally, these bots can be very hard to spot. I just deleted one that signed up for the forum in January 2023 and then did nothing until recently, the it started to post very plausible posts - often quoting long-established forum members but adding small, hard to spot links in white in the middle of their postings. People then requoted the spammer, unwittingly repeating the spam links. This makes it hard to eliminate them, which draws in yet more bots.