I think it's that time of the year again

[Impostor]

Spring cleaning!

This forum's on the verge of being overrun by inane chatbots. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Still, a bit of a sweep wouldn't hurt.

[bluebell]

Spring cleaning!

This forum's on the verge of being overrun by inane chatbots. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Still, a bit of a sweep wouldn't hurt.

If I was a bot, I would complain about bots so real people would think I'm no bot

[sunrat]

Spring cleaning!

This forum's on the verge of being overrun by inane chatbots. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Still, a bit of a sweep wouldn't hurt.

If I was a bot, I would complain about bots so real people would think I'm no bot

You realise bots are gonna read this. Shouldn't give them ideas!

We've had a few AI posts on that other forum where I am an admin. Sites like https://gptzero.me/ are really useful to help sort the wheat from the chaff.

[Audiojunkie]

What are the tricks to identifying a bot? I haven’t noticed any here—although others have pointed them out. The only obvious bots I have recognized in the past were those annoying DiscoDSP support comments that were used on KVRAudio.

[Impostor]

What are the tricks to identifying a bot? I haven’t noticed any here—although others have pointed them out. The only obvious bots I have recognized in the past were those annoying DiscoDSP support comments that were used on KVRAudio.

A first-time poster replying to what may be a months or years old post, and actually not saying anything:
viewtopic.php?p=165581#p165581
viewtopic.php?p=163696#p163696

Sometimes they also hide a nonsense url in their post, or in their signature, by minimizing it to a single pixel:
viewtopic.php?p=165897#p165897

[sunrat]

@Impostor good examples. They all need to be banished to digital heaven.
Did you report them? Mods are usually pretty responsive to reports.

[Impostor]

@Impostor good examples. They all need to be banished to digital heaven.
Did you report them? Mods are usually pretty responsive to reports.

I tend to report them.

[Linuxmusician01]

What are the tricks to identifying a bot? I haven’t noticed any here—although others have pointed them out. The only obvious bots I have recognized in the past were those annoying DiscoDSP support comments that were used on KVRAudio.

A first-time poster replying to what may be a months or years old post, and actually not saying anything:
viewtopic.php?p=165581#p165581
viewtopic.php?p=163696#p163696

Sometimes they also hide a nonsense url in their post, or in their signature, by minimizing it to a single pixel:
viewtopic.php?p=165897#p165897

Hmmmm. Sometimes it's pretty obvious that it's AI/bot. That last example is hard to tell for a real person to me. Sometimes newbies can ask weird questions.

BTW, do you know why they would "hide" an url behind a single pixel? I mean, nobody can click it...

[Impostor]

BTW, do you know why they would "hide" an url behind a single pixel? I mean, nobody can click it...

I can't fathom the reason for that either. But fact is, it's done quite often.

Maybe something went wrong with the signature in the example, since I can discern no link behind those yellow* pixels. There usually is:

*I custom-override link colors in firefox.

[Audiojunkie]

What are the tricks to identifying a bot? I haven’t noticed any here—although others have pointed them out. The only obvious bots I have recognized in the past were those annoying DiscoDSP support comments that were used on KVRAudio.

A first-time poster replying to what may be a months or years old post, and actually not saying anything:
viewtopic.php?p=165581#p165581
viewtopic.php?p=163696#p163696

Sometimes they also hide a nonsense url in their post, or in their signature, by minimizing it to a single pixel:
viewtopic.php?p=165897#p165897

Thanks for this info! Fascinating stuff!

[erlkönig]

BTW, do you know why they would "hide" an url behind a single pixel? I mean, nobody can click it...

That's a counter pixel. It's an ancient technique for measuring, how often a page (post) is requested (=user tracking). I would feel ashamed to use such an overcome, old technique. But god bless our marketing experts.

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[tavasti]

BTW, do you know why they would "hide" an url behind a single pixel? I mean, nobody can click it...

At least one use for such is search engine optimization. Search engines give higher rating for pages which have plenty of links from different domains.

[novalix]

At least one use for such is search engine optimization. Search engines give higher rating for pages which have plenty of links from different domains.

Yes. And the funny thing is that these techniques usually don't work. Search engines are well aware of this kind of fraudulent link placements and constantly tune their algorithms to detect them. It is all machine readable after all.

[Linuxmusician01]

Thank you all for the explanations of the "invisible" pixel/link. And thanks for the AI bot warning. I'm getting old: I need this sort of info on how the internet changes.

[tavasti]

At least one use for such is search engine optimization. Search engines give higher rating for pages which have plenty of links from different domains.

Yes. And the funny thing is that these techniques usually don't work. Search engines are well aware of this kind of fraudulent link placements and constantly tune their algorithms to detect them. It is all machine readable after all.

Yeah, but relevancy of 'does it work anymore' is irrelevant, if that worked some time, there will be someone doing it.