hi everyone, i wanted to write a note here because i had to delete a spam post that contained AI generated text and suspicious links. removing spam is part of standard moderation and admin activities, but this post stood out because it actually looked like it might contain useful information. however, the longer i looked at it, the more suspicious it seemed. the post was about how to search for gear on local japanese online marketplaces and use a shipping proxy service to let you receive orders from overseas. which, i suppose, is a legitimate and potentially interesting topic for people here. but the specific proxy service it linked to was not well-known and didn’t have any reviews online that didn’t trace back to their own website. also, the user signed up using a disposable email service and then posted immediately, which is a red flag for spam. but we didn’t notice right away, and several people liked the post and clicked the link before it was removed.
as a moderator, i want to emphasize that if you see something even slightly suspicious here, please flag it! any logged-in user can flag a post, and moderators will look at it. i think the easiest way is to click the “…” below each post and then click the flag icon.
i’d also like to touch on AI generated text in general. in this case, it was used to disguise a spam post as a plausible source of helpful information. but even if it wasn’t being used for spam, i strongly discourage using LLMs to write any text that you plan to post here. if i see something that follows the common patterns of AI generated writing and formatting, it makes me very suspicious because if they couldn’t bother typing it out, why would they expect people to bother reading it?
i don’t know that we need to formalize any “rules” about this at this point, since it hasn’t been much of an issue so far, but i figured it was worth at least mentioning, given the recent uptick in LLM-assisted writing. i’ve even seen obvious AI-style writing on websites and newsletters from legit video tool makers recently, which makes me kind of sad. at this point, identifying and removing spam/problematic promotional content is at the discrection of the moderators.
thanks for reading this and thanks for being a part of this community! let me know if anyone else has any thoughts on this.