There is a bot that solves CAPCHAs. So that doesn’t work.
lyndump
It’s definitely better than nothing and I’m pretty sure this doesn’t work on the more complex questions
The complex ones are solved by a real human
My Thoughts on December 17
* This statistic shows the number of global unique visitors to the social network Tumblr.com from February 2018 to October 2018. As of that month, the social website had over 558 million unique visitors worldwide, down from 617 million in April 2018 (source)
I started @purgethebots in July when porn bots started to poison this platform. It seriously impacted my Tumblr experience. I can imagine that’s why so many people left Tumblr and the numbers above back this up.
Porn is not a bad thing. But it is a HUGE market and people who want to make money go where they can reach their target audience. Most social media do not allow porn because there are always people who will abuse the platform using bots. Now, Tumblr didn’t mind adult content and the moderate amount of bots at first. According to the statistics, the number of unique visitors seemed steady until July. But then BAM, le Porn Bot Apocalypse.
I think this is the real reason why staff has decided to ban porn: to save Tumblr. It just didn’t work out that well. And the content filter is TERRIBLE.
It’s sad there isn’t a better way to fight the bots. Even Youtube, worth billions, don’t know how to combat the spam in the comment section. Porn is not the problem. The bots are.
Personally, I will stay on Tumblr. I understand why many people are leaving. But I wasn’t on Tumblr for adult content, and I think a Tumblr with fewer bots will improve my overall experience. Though I am going to miss the occasional porn on my dash. A lot.
A lot of people leave Tumblr because of the bots. A decline in users results in a decline in ad revenue as companies pay for eyeballs. And of course, it’s about the ad revenue. Tumblr is a for-profit business. It has nothing to do with ethics and companies not wanting to advertise on a platform were porn prevails. If that was the case, Tumblr would have made this change years ago. The decline in users and the porn bot apocalypse happened at the same. I doubt that is a coincidence.
My Thoughts on December 17
* This statistic shows the number of global unique visitors to the social network Tumblr.com from February 2018 to October 2018. As of that month, the social website had over 558 million unique visitors worldwide, down from 617 million in April 2018 (source)
I started @purgethebots in July when porn bots started to poison this platform. It seriously impacted my Tumblr experience. I can imagine that’s why so many people left Tumblr and the numbers above back this up.
Porn is not a bad thing. But it is a HUGE market and people who want to make money go where they can reach their target audience. Most social media do not allow porn because there are always people who will abuse the platform using bots. Now, Tumblr didn’t mind adult content and the moderate amount of bots at first. According to the statistics, the number of unique visitors seemed steady until July. But then BAM, le Porn Bot Apocalypse.
I think this is the real reason why staff has decided to ban porn: to save Tumblr. It just didn’t work out that well. And the content filter is TERRIBLE.
It’s sad there isn’t a better way to fight the bots. Even Youtube, worth billions, don’t know how to combat the spam in the comment section. Porn is not the problem. The bots are.
Personally, I will stay on Tumblr. I understand why many people are leaving. But I wasn’t on Tumblr for adult content, and I think a Tumblr with fewer bots will improve my overall experience. Though I am going to miss the occasional porn on my dash. A lot.
Important about the Tumblr “Purge”
Tumblr has made and official statement on twitter about what’s going on:
We’re committed to helping build a safe online environment for all users, and we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to media featuring child sexual exploitation and abuse. As this is an industry-wide problem, we work collaboratively with our industry peers and partners like NCMEC to actively monitor content uploaded to the platform. Every image uploaded to Tumblr is scanned against an industry database of known child sexual abuse material, and images that are detected never reach the platform. A routine audit discovered content on our platform that had not yet been included in the industry database. We immediately removed this content. Content safeguards are a challenging aspect of operating scaled platforms. We’re continuously assessing further steps we can take to improve and there is no higher priority for our team.
Please please please, for the love of everything, stop spreading fear in our community. They are not purging your blogs for having NSFW content. If your blog gets deleted and you didn’t have any of the above mentioned content, or something that could be percived as such, then please contact Tumblr Support to regain your blog. They can be contacted via the form here.
Please reblog so people stop spreading false information and cause unnecesary fear.
#signal boost
Alright, I got many many messages about the recent bot epidemic.
The bots are back. But it’s 10x worse. Right now, they only reblog posts with a link. They don’t post photos or use tags, so it’s harder to find them (at least for me). I think we should skip stage 3 & 4 all together. We operate within Tumblr’s framework and it’s kinda limited. So I suggest this:
We report the domains to the businesses hosting them.
I am super tired but I recall that almost all hosts have a clause mentioning you can’t use their service for spam or fraudulent websites.
Take this website for instance: lnjdn.freedating.mobi
I looked up who the host is here: https://www.whoishostingthis.com/#search=lnjdn.freedating.mobi
Amazon is the hosting provider.
My suggestion is that we collect URLs and find out who the web host is, and that we then send an email to the hosting provider with prove they are violating their terms so they take the website down.
There are a shitload of bots promoting only a handful of websites, so this should be more effective.
What do you think?
AWS = Amazon Web Services
Alright, I got many many messages about the recent bot epidemic.
The bots are back. But it’s 10x worse. Right now, they only reblog posts with a link. They don’t post photos or use tags, so it’s harder to find them (at least for me). I think we should skip stage 3 & 4 all together. We operate within Tumblr’s framework and it’s kinda limited. So I suggest this:
We report the domains to the businesses hosting them.
I am super tired but I recall that almost all hosts have a clause mentioning you can’t use their service for spam or fraudulent websites.
Take this website for instance: lnjdn.freedating.mobi
I looked up who the host is here: https://www.whoishostingthis.com/#search=lnjdn.freedating.mobi
Amazon is the hosting provider.
My suggestion is that we collect URLs and find out who the web host is, and that we then send an email to the hosting provider with prove they are violating their terms so they take the website down.
There are a shitload of bots promoting only a handful of websites, so this should be more effective.
What do you think?
Reblog this if you hate spam and have reported at least five porn bots today
When will stage 4 begin?
No idea to be honest. First I would like to see how Tumblr deals with the situation now that they have expanded their team. Stage 4 involves creating accounts on all their forums and posting about our ‘experiences’ that bots are being banned very rapidly in order to discourage them. Basically we pretend we are bot owners ourselves.
Things we have achieved so far
- Tumblr added a report button on mobile
- Tumblr expanded their team to process more reports
- 100k+ bots have been purged so far
Keep hitting that report button! Report those bots and comments. We got this!
September 4, 2018
Dear Tumblr, this is a special operation. We are going to purge the porn bots that follow us.
Porn bots often have real looking usernames. The reason for this is because those usernames once belonged to real users. Bots hijack usernames as soon as it becomes available (Usernames become available if you change your username or delete your blog). They do this because the username (domain name) has more ‘authority’ than a complete new username. Porn bots rank higher in Google and other search engines because of this higher authority. It also makes them look more real.
But don’t be deceived. Let’s purge those bots!
How to tell if a blog is a bot:
First go see who follows you on Tumblr.
A blog is a porn bot when:
- their profile picture is ‘sexy’ (and sometimes their username and description are the same)
- They have links on their blog (if they follow you and have links: 10000% bot)
*Do not report empty blogs. There is nothing to report them for and chances are they are normal users that don’t use Tumblr after they created an account.
How to purge a porn bot
Desktop
- Go to their blog
- Click on the pawn/human icon
- Click 'Report' --> 'Report spam' (do not report for sensitive content; porn is allowed on Tumblr)
- Click ‘Flag & Block’
Mobile App
- Go to their blog
- Tap the pawn/human icon
- Tap ‘report‘
- ‘Report spam‘
Please, report all the porn bots that follow you. Please reblog this post a few times until September 10! We need to act quickly, because chances are, bot owners will stumble upon this post and then start to mass unfollow or mass delete all the posts on their blog so we can’t identify them, only to start again when the coast is clear. Going through your followers and reporting the bots only takes five minutes and it’s going to have such a positive impact on the community. Your help is greatly appreciated! Let us all UNITE.
LET THE PURGE COMMENCE!
Report Button On Mobile Is Now A Thing!
I can confirm, after updating the app on a device that runs on android, that the Tumblr app now has a ‘report blog button’ too!
- Go to the bot blog
- Tap the pawn/human icon
- Tap ‘report’
- ‘Report spam’
This is going to make things so much easier! Please, check the blogs that follow you and report those porn bots!
Please signal boost this. Together we can purge the bots!
Anonymous asked:
So I (and a lot of other people, it seems) have noticed that there’s a TON of bots again. It’s gotten back to the point that about 40% of reblog I see are bots. I’m even getting bots on my posts, and I only have 30-ish followers. Do you know what might have happened?
The enemy isn’t aware of this movement and most likely thought it was the Tumblr algorithm that triggered the mass deletion of their accounts. So, most likely, they are trying again with a different strategy (could be reblogging less, using a different URL shortener etc.) The funny thing is that it doesn’t matter. It won’t work. We are real humans. No matter what they try to fool the algorithm, they can’t fool those eyes.
I went through the notes of your last post, and some people think you mean it's the end of the war. What we did was destroy the 11,000 bot infrastructure, correct? Meaning that there are other infrastructures for us to battle.
That’s correct! Seeing how successful this was, I think I will change our strategy. We are going to get rid of a few million bots in a very short amount of time, but it requires some planning. Is there a warrior here who can put together a MySQL database? I would like it to be able to record at least 75M entries and it should be able to delete duplicates.
We have a software developer and a computer science student in our army. This marks the beginning of the end.
This is not a war anymore. This is a massacre.
I went through the notes of your last post, and some people think you mean it's the end of the war. What we did was destroy the 11,000 bot infrastructure, correct? Meaning that there are other infrastructures for us to battle.
That's correct! Seeing how successful this was, I think I will change our strategy. We are going to get rid of a few million bots in a very short amount of time, but it requires some planning. Is there a warrior here who can put together a MySQL database? I would like it to be able to record at least 75M entries and it should be able to delete duplicates.
'Stage 3: War' starts now!
Oil shall spill today, warriors. I have prepared a small list of 1200 blogs that have to be destroyed today. Our target has approximately 11,000 bots at their disposal. Chances are, if we flag these 1200 bots, we kill all 11,000.
Now, before we begin, I have to assign each of you a role.
Desktop Warriors:
Your mission is to go to @stage3war There you will find lists corresponding to zodiac signs. Join your zodiac division and flag those bots. Mind you, all these bots have porn on them. Feel free to report comments if this is not for you.
Mobile (app) Warriors:
We have for 99%, eradicated the ‘howdy’ bots that once plagued our notes. Some of you have pointed out that they have ‘evolved’ and have started posting different comments ’click here to find a fuckbuddy’ etc. I can assure everyone that the bots haven’t evolved. Those comments simply become more apparent now that we have destroyed the Howdy Legion. It’s just another Porn Bot Lord of whom we shall witness their cries on their pathetic forums. Your task is to report comments and/or purge link posts.
Victory is ours!
TIP: If you are on desktop purging the lists, like the post first. Then go to tumblr.com/likes. Otherwise clicking the usernames will only bring you to your dashboard.
All the bots listed are dead... already. That was surprisingly easy!
'Stage 3: War' starts now!
Oil shall spill today, warriors. I have prepared a small list of 1200 blogs that have to be destroyed today. Our target has approximately 11,000 bots at their disposal. Chances are, if we flag these 1200 bots, we kill all 11,000.
Now, before we begin, I have to assign each of you a role.
Desktop Warriors:
Your mission is to go to @stage3war There you will find lists corresponding to zodiac signs. Join your zodiac division and flag those bots. Mind you, all these bots have porn on them. Feel free to report comments if this is not for you.
Mobile (app) Warriors:
We have for 99%, eradicated the 'howdy' bots that once plagued our notes. Some of you have pointed out that they have 'evolved' and have started posting different comments 'click here to find a fuckbuddy' etc. I can assure everyone that the bots haven't evolved. Those comments simply become more apparent now that we have destroyed the Howdy Legion. It's just another Porn Bot Lord of whom we shall witness their cries on their pathetic forums. Your task is to report comments and/or purge link posts.