Freesound Forums

In the last few days, several bots have been promoting spam sites. Why is it that these comments are now frequent? I reported them all, unfortunately they are still there after days.

Hi Breviceps,

Sometimes for no apparent reason the level of spam increases. When spam messages are reported we get notifications and then we remove the users, but this is a manual process and we do not always have time to do it promptly. Keep on reporting them, that helps

frederic.font wrote:
Hi Breviceps,

Sometimes for no apparent reason the level of spam increases. When spam messages are reported we get notifications and then we remove the users, but this is a manual process and we do not always have time to do it promptly. Keep on reporting them, that helps

Indeed Frederic this works fine.

Just a suggestion, can we possibly ban new users from commenting with hyperlinks?
Say they must upload 2 sounds to be allowed to comment with hyperlinks and the problem would basically be solved.

Erokia wrote:
Just a suggestion, can we possibly ban new users from commenting with hyperlinks?
Say they must upload 2 sounds to be allowed to comment with hyperlinks and the problem would basically be solved.

That is a smart direction to solve this.

Maybe a smart direction, yes.
But, what about users who didn’t upload any sound, and who would still like to promote their websites or YouTube videos in which they use some of our sounds ?

We already have some limitations in place for new users commenting with hyperlinks, but you might need to add more. Thanks for the suggestions!

kevp888 wrote:
Maybe a smart direction, yes.
But, what about users who didn’t upload any sound, and who would still like to promote their websites or YouTube videos in which they use some of our sounds ?

I believe that if we could make it so that freesound detects safe websites such as youtube and other whitelist sites then that so can be allowed but if its possible for the hyperlinks to be scanned before they are live on the website would be wise.

These spam comments would be less likely as they would be automatically fished through with an onsite scan. All of which is beyond my knowledge but there has to be a work around as I really don't trust hyperlinks even if you think they don't do anything other than promote useless websites and collet revenue for website visits.

Call me paranoid but I think they collect data, ip addresses, hidden cookies, ect ect..

Personaly, I don’t think you’re paranoid, as my opinion is similar !
I think your idea is good, but hard for me to guess if it’s practically possible or not.
Probably Frederic and friends could tell us ?

Cheers !

Hi,

Having a "whitelist" could work, but then we have to maintain that whitelist. On the other hand there are blacklists that we can check against, and this we partially do with a service called akismet. The problem is that spam is a business and they always find new ways to post the content. For example, they can create an account, post some nice messages and then start with the spam. We need to revise our rules, we have that on the list and actually Headphaze has already warned us a number of times and made some suggestions.

Meanwhile, every time you see a spam message, just try to think of it as a confirmation of the success of Freesound

Thanks for the discussion

With or without spam, Freesound is successful anyway, for sure !
Thanks Frederic !

Cheers !

Yeah, love the site, concepts and community!
Keep up the great work!