What are the desired results for new accounts with random first posts....

[icanhazmac]

Perhaps this has been par for the course for a long time but lately I see many new accounts with very odd first posts that are never heard from again. These are not the quickly mod'd spam posts but just things like "I need a recommendation for a dishwasher", etc. I cannot imagine anyone really comes to MR for a dishwasher recommendation, at least for a first post. Most of the time the community sees these for what they are and don't "feed the troll" but other times we get tricked into replying, myself included.

What is the end game for these posts, what are they hoping for? They don't have links or a set agenda like a spam post would. Who takes the time to make accounts, post things like that and then ghost?

 

[Jessica Lares]

Old forums that they can then spam for SEO purposes and create link farms later on I would think. Multiple bots, that are spaced out to create more natural looking traffic and posts.

 

[icanhazmac]

Old forums that they can then spam for SEO purposes and create link farms later on I would think. Multiple bots, that are spaced out to create more natural looking traffic and posts.

Thanks for the reply. So the point is to cultivate a fake social presence with posts that, without site context, seem normal looking which lends some level of credibility to the account so it can be used later? Did I get that right?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Thanks for the reply. So the point is to cultivate a fake social presence with posts that, without site context, seem normal looking which lends some level of credibility to the account so it can be used later? Did I get that right?

That is what I have long suspected that some of these posts (or accounts) are all about.

Actually, in a way, from what I can see, it is an evolution of spam accounts - an evolution that has come about because of more rigorous policing (and termination of) the more traditional (and obvious) spam accounts.

See it as a sort of online "arms race" between spam accounts and attempts to keep platforms sufficiently free from the pest of spam accounts.

 

[adrianlondon]

Thanks for the reply. So the point is to cultivate a fake social presence with posts that, without site context, seem normal looking which lends some level of credibility to the account so it can be used later? Did I get that right?

Yes. Some forums manually approve the first x posts by new accounts and this is a way to get around that too, with innocuous posts which they then edit to add the spam links later.

 

[KaliYoni]

new accounts with very odd first posts

Another possibility is persona bots.
One example of an extension of this technology is the “persona bot,” an AI posing as an individual on social media and other online groups. Persona bots have histories, personalities, and communication styles. They don’t constantly spew propaganda. They hang out in various interest groups: gardening, knitting, model railroading, whatever. They act as normal members of those communities, posting and commenting and discussing. Systems like GPT-3 will make it easy for those AIs to mine previous conversations and related Internet content and to appear knowledgeable.

I also don't think this behavior is restricted to new users or potential bot-accounts. Reasons could be rank-striving, loneliness, boredom, laziness...the list is endless. But some of the threads could be sincere; I believe it's impossible to tell on the Internet.

 

[icanhazmac]

One example of an extension of this technology is the “persona bot,” an AI posing as an individual on social media and other online groups. Persona bots have histories, personalities, and communication styles.

I'm pretty sure our little community has one of those. #justsayin

 

[Apple fanboy]

I'm pretty sure our little community has one of those. #justsayin

More than one I’d say! There is also a large number of members who create an account but never post. I mean what’s the point? I think it’s very strange!

 

[Clix Pix]

What irritates me are people who resurrect old threads from years ago...."zombie threads." That's a common problem for most web-based discussion forums, though, not just this one. Sometimes it is a spammer who does this, other times it is a newbie who does it unintentionally, not paying attention to the date a thread was originally started.

 

[adrianlondon]

...There is also a large number of members who create an account but never post. I mean what’s the point? I think it’s very strange!

I've done that on another forum as I want it to remember my watched threads and respect my viewing settings, but don't want to (yet) actively participate in it.