I’m noticing a pattern starting to develop in the community I mod (just barely – it’s only happened 3 times so far) where a user that posts a fairly large amount of relevant content occasionally posts weird spam with a title of alternating letter nonsense (e.g. “zazaz” or “sdsdsds”) and a link that goes to some random domain that serves nothing but a default 404 error (as in the domain is registered and there’s a server responding to requests, but there’s no content for it to serve).

I suppose it could just be bad behavior on the part of said users, but it feels more like a bug or their account getting hijacked or something. Anybody have any insight?

    • grue@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      https://lemmy.world/modlog/3902, ctrl-f for “spam” or “rule 4”

      (ordered from newest to oldest)

      I’ve also noticed that in the “dwazou” cases the post was later edited to remove the link and change the title to “permanently deleted”. The dwazou @ lemm.ee user account has apparently been deleted, but the other two accounts appear to still be active and posting legitimate content.

      Also, the community I mod isn’t the only one this is happening to. See also https://lemmy.world/post/30720233, for example.

      • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        I think “permanently deleted” is when a mod or admin deletes their content administratively.

        • grue@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          3 days ago

          Two of the three I noticed were from different users (but the other two cases were the same username on different instances, so it’s very plausible that they may all be alt accounts of the same human).

          You misspelled the instance name, but that’s a good thing since pinging the user in question with a mention probably wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway.

          The thing that confuses me is that the user has posted a bunch of other content (both posts and comments) such that the ratio of spam to ham is pretty low, and the writing of the comments seems very human (in terms of the inferences it makes and the idioms it uses), so if it’s some kind of repost-bot, it’s a very sophisticated one.

          It really seems like a legitimate user whose account is getting hijacked to occasionally post gibberish spam, which is why I find it so weird.