A few weeks ago I took the responsibility again to be one of the admins at Omniglot’s Facebook group, being it swarmed by spambots posting offtopic videos. Now, here are some of my experiences.
Before I joined the team of admins, there were three questions introduced for newcomers. I replaced the first one with another one. Well, this measure was totally useless. It doesn’t count what do you ask. Only two things count. 1. The questions should be something that can’t be answered by a yes or OK or I agree. 2. Be serious. If someone didn’t answer your questions, decline them.
Bots are completely dumb. They cannot interpret any question. Hoping they’ll never be taught to. They have a set of answers ready-made, they paste one of them to each question, that’s all. Their answers follow very simple patterns:
a) admins set rules that they must accept;
b) they ask the admin to accept them;
c) they love the group and/or a member.
Some of their answers, with the original spelling (note the weird use of uppercase and sometimes a space before the exclamation point):
Please let me join the group thank you ple confirm Love you all Group! Thanks I like that groupMember in group very fun ok yes i agree I agree. Thanks Pls confirm me. Thank Okay sir Ok admin I want join Group Yes I will seriously abide ! Yes i do thank you ok man ok yes ! I understand. Thanks Yes I Know Please let me join the group, thank you Yes Bro I really like this place I live in australia
The list is far from exhaustive, and criminals can any replace these strings with different ones, but one thing won’t change for a while yet: spambots cannot answer.
Of course they have another choice: giving no answer at all. In this case, I decline them as well. Sometimes it happens that a rejected user returns in a short while and fills in real answers: these are real humans who wanted who join but didn’t take the questions seriously for the first attempt. Seeing how dumb spambots are, I’m approving anyone with at least one real answer (some fill only one answer and let the other two empty, telling everything they consider necessary in the first row).