Title
Phasing out Russian Bots
Short, concise description of the idea
Requiring codes and/or invitations to sign up for new livejournal accounts.
Full description of the ideaI've been added by 14 bots in less than 5 days and I know many other LJ are plagued by this problem as well. The current "report a bot" system is not working
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Comments 23
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They also have several useful anti-abuse features and would also let us reduce reliance on captchas, which hurts accessibility and increases frustration (we get a LOT of support requests from users who can't pass ReCAPTCHA.)
I don't quite understand the second part of your request of 'security codes' - if you mean CAPTCHAs, they don't particularly help. Implementing invite codes and letting the Abuse Prevention Team handle the existing bots would eliminate the problem.
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If we can think of a way for a visitor who has just randomly visited LiveJournal.com to create an account without knowing anyone else on the site and without being forced to pay, while using invite codes, then I would be 100% behind the idea. Otherwise, I just don't see how it's possible.
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Huh, really? Are the bots on LJ so lucrative or useful that it's worth the operators' time to do that?
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Um, it's hard to explain when I'm not too clear on how to explain it, but yes, it's lucrative enough to do.
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So the motivation of these bots is to get listed on the profile pages of other LJ users? In that case, I'm puzzled why they don't simply link to the other bot created journals, as that would have less risk of discovery and deletion by LJ staff.
Anyway, if there was a suggestion saying "option for me to vet all people listed on my profile page under the friends-of part" I would be for it, because this wouldn't impact the ability of people to friend others, only the display on someone's profile, which can already be affected by ban_set.
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The bots situation is DISTURBING, so this might be the only way to stop it.
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