Dear Livejournal: Spammers are going to kill your business.

[mattbell]

I am tired of Russian spammers getting lj accounts and then using them to make comments on my blog.  I really should not have to remove 2-3 per day.  I don't want to restrict comments to friends only.  

Comments

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

that was also one of my biggest complaints when the merger was first taking place, before the spamming even became an issue. i just remember what had happened with orkut, and subsequently killed orkut. i'm on lockdown so i don't have to deal with it personally so much, except for the random screwed up friend adds, and the communities i'm in being spammed. but still, it's like lj should have a much better handle on the spambot issue at this point, since the merger took place years ago and the problem hasn't gone away.

;)

[divergio.livejournal.com]

Catchy title! I'm beginning to like this site more, specifically because of interesting writing pieces like this. This is a very controversial topic, and therefore I won't mention my opinion- but I urge you to write more!
http://www.getfreerunecapemenbership.com/
http://www.getfreenexonca$h.com/

Re: ;)

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

good work, sir.

[radven.livejournal.com]

Indeed - it seems to have gotten vastly worse recently too. I am needing to delete several spam comments to ancient posts a day, and it is getting very very old. *grrr*

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

closing off new comments on a few high-traffic old posts seems to have helped the problem a lot.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I especially hate the sly marquee hides that mask themselves as "Ooh, very interesting!" comments.

It's the same elsewhere

[brad-templeton.livejournal.com]

I get fake spam comments on my blog all the time, and it is not LJ. They pay somebody who answers the Turing question, and then from time to time I have even seen real, meaningful comments -- not stellar, but not just copied from other comments and the posting as you also see -- but with spam in them. All this in spite of the fact that the comment page says there is nofollow on all links so that search engines will ignore them.

Re: It's the same elsewhere

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Good to know.

I figured the ability to track a user's behavior in real time across many blogs would give LiveJournal an edge in quickly identifying and removing spam accounts, but apparently that's either not the case or lj is not doing as well as it could. Spammer behavior seems very obvious to me -- a new user quickly making large numbers of comments on different blogs in completely disparate social networks with links to low reputation sites in each one seems like it wouldn't be that hard to detect.