New people with empty accounts that are suddenly following me, I really need you to do something that looks like a human person. I’ve been here long enough now to remember the old wars, and you are coming into my home wearing the uniform of our enemies.
I am real close to just posting users in a callout if they fail the perception check.
How do I rig a Turing test so people have to prove they exist before they follow me. I am literally looking at your following lists to see if it’s a coherent set so I can guess if you contain organs.
If you are new: We aren’t trying to be assholes. We would love to be welcoming. I support your presence, and I don’t mind if you use a hollow blog to follow from. and then you use side blogs to post. That’s cool. You do you. But. Y'all. With all possible love: You are indistinguishable from the enemy right now, and we’re used to showing no mercy.
Just add a note. Make your blog name ‘stealthy follow blog’ or 'im new’ or 'i’m human stop blocking me’ and put a picture of a random object. I don’t need to know what you post about. But I am very worried you do not posses any bones, and you are hard failing on insight checks.
For those of you wondering, oftentimes bot, spam and scam accounts look pretty much identical to this. If you’re wondering why people block you, this is why. Even something as simple as a headline, a description, and a neat icon is enough to distinguish you from those bot accounts.
Yep. I’ve recently had blogs that look like that follow me, then a day or two later they’re updated to add their payload of spam. Some wait weeks before this happens. It’s impossible to tell which blank accounts are going to do this, and which aren’t.
The reason why we block spam accounts is not just because they’re annoying. Those bots are designed to engage in search engine manipulation: tl;dr, modern search engines are updated by web crawlers, little programs that wander around the internet, clicking on links. The more links they find to a site from trustworthy sources, the higher a result may be placed in the rankings.
These Tumblr bots generate tons of links to the sites they’re promoting, and links to other parts of Tumblr. This is intended to make them look like an integrated and trustworthy part of an established website. How effective is this technique? No idea. But that’s part of the theory behind social media bots.
So for those newcomers who want to help us fight those bots, please go to your blog settings and give us a sign of life! Come join us in this disastrous little ball pit. It’ll be great! I promise.