I am wondering what would it take to remove the spam / bot accounts out of devRant. Just recently seen quite a lot of them. If we collectively report their profile, would @dfox remove them ?

E.g. @chaosesqueteam

DevRant itself would need to change. @chaosesqueteam uses at least 14 bot accounts that push eachother up with votes. The problem is that there seems to be absolutely no mechanic to deal with that.

Upvotes are limited, but you can do a few hundred before the limit kicks in and then it takes a few hours or so until you can exhaust that limit again.

The limit on downvotes seems to be much smaller and the cooldown is at least days instead of hours. So it would need more than just the usual spam reporters to organically get rid of this botter on devRant.

The @chaosesqueteam problem sadly needs an admin to take action. But this platform hasn't been made of love but as and advertising project for some cloud service. There are no admins on devRant. The creator doesn't care about the inevitable problems that literally every online community has to deal with somehow.

Wasn't someone building an alternative front end on mobile?

This could be solved with client side blocking, and even distributed/subscription block lists.

@lungdart yes I've seen that the android app from @joewilliams007 have some form of blocking users

Removing would achieve nothing unless there were also a manual review for new registrations - which is not going to happen.

It would be pretty ironic if a platform for software Devs couldn't take care or a couple of bots

@Nanos 14 is probably a conservative number. Esqueteam joined 9 days ago, has done nothing but trolling and insulting people, and he’s already got +3000 upvotes.

@Fast-Nop Or we simply could have mods which help regulate this.

@chaosesqueteam your posts are spam. Simple as. The way you write them is intended to stirr up controversy, and they make the platform a worse place.

@chaosesqueteam you say you are totally on-topic and posting about programming, but what I see is you don't miss any opportunity to, in the middle of those posts, talking about "trans ideology", insulting other devrant users, and posting anime images. That has nothing to do with programming.

@Nanos good boy. You’ll have a few hundred extra bot upvotes by tomorrow (I’ve gotten a dozen from them myself)

No but seriously, nobody would have minded if the guy had posted JUST once or twice asking for help, then getting upset and insulting people for not wanting to help or for contesting his views about how Apple has perverted how C should run on a computer. It’s the repetition that gets tiring. I’ve seen it with aok who kept coming back with shit again and again. I’ll give EsqueTeam the credit for focusing a bit more on programming rather than his internal struggle with whatever messed up shit he’s got in his head

—-

"I didn’t notice any myself, can you point to some examples " — pal don’t be lazy, scroll up just a bit

@Nanos in facebook I see is common to add an image to support your text, even if it's not needed, to catch viewer's attention. Here on devRant is much less common, even I remember hearing somebody saying that devRant's "Algo" feed slightly favours posts without images.

I don't mind seeing sometimes an off-topic image on a post, but if you do it for all your posts, wtf?

@chaosesqueteam I understand what you are trying to say but the problem is you are marginally spamming us with the same copy paste content.

Also, for me and a few others like me, devRant is the place we go to because we are frustrated of work, a place where we can let out frustation of our work, not to lookout for more work. What you are doing is like posting hiring ads on a beach, that is why people want you out of their sight.

@chaosesqueteam your not a programmer or anything else - you are just a fucking loser.

@lungdart yeah I think adding the blocking accounts feature is the only way this can be solved at the moment…

I know there has been potentially other clients besides sky rant. Is there a custom client for iOS out there?

@Nanos that’s true, maybe people would contribute to that though? haha

@Nanos I don’t care about upvotes. Don’t care about my reputation here either.
I do enjoy reading good content here. Rants. Venting our frustrations about work as devs.
When half the thread is occupied by posts about a 3D file format and some crap screenshot of an anime girl with a terminal in the background, then I start feeling like the platform is a dumpster fire and I don’t want to come back anymore. It’s these type of situations that are slowly but surely killing a place we’ve all enjoyed coming to.

@chaosesqueteam

What? That you just forked Xonotic and *gasp*, added some models? Changed some random number in the code? Bitch please.

@chaosesqueteam your game looks like one of those graphics of memory storage on a drive… in other words, it looks boring and unplayable…

@Nanos No one gets this many upvotes in a couple of weeks with spamming. There's a clear dissonance between how the community reacts to him and how his account is growing. Not the mention as soon as he posts a comment he has 6 upvotes immediately. Very likely bot accounts or he just have them opened in incognito windows and does it manually to seem more legit.

I don't necessarily want chaos off the platform or to block him as it's not pure spam, he does also engage normally (in a 4chan way, but that's fine with me) I'd just like if we had the tools to enforce correct usage of our forum. We'd really need a mod that could merge his posts into one post, and correct the tags if they are wrong. :/

@Nanos Let me put it this way. If he had such a high influx of contributors as he has upvoters that are supposedly all supporting him as you say, he wouldn't have to post a daily posts.

It's spam because it's the same content posted over and over again. If I was sending the same message every day you'd definitely label me a spammer after a while, it's just a matter of time when he reaches your personal limit.

one of his rants has 94 upvotes. Do we really have 94 active users currently though? 🤔

So far I believe he hasn’t denied the bot or alt account theory. Maybe we can ask him directly.
@chaosesqueteam are your +3000 upvote legit? Meaning you don’t use alt accounts/bots to get them.

@chaosesqueteam You may also have written the code for the spaceship that took man to the moon, but you know what it is today ? Space Trash !!!

I am not questioning your credentials or your willingness to actually make something good, all i am asking is act like you have worked 20 yrs, use that wisdom for good and please stop spamming us.

@chaosesqueteam

Yeah yeah, you basement dweller.

I'm trembling in fear right now.

Come kill me, you brave cunt, at least, the slap I'll give you will knock some sense into your hollow skull.

@chaosesqueteam I don't understand half the terms you just said but i got a friend who would absolutely love to help you out, his name's ChatGPT. He's got a sibling Github Copilot who a bit smarter on most days, why don't you ask them for help ? And let us live peacefully

Ah, and don't delete the post where you make death threats later, you sorry cunt.

@chaosesqueteam

Sure, you bloody cunt. I'll be waiting. If your killing skill is as good as your programming skill then I can rest easy.

@chaosesqueteam @chaosesqueteam May you get the help you need, probably from a good doctor

@chaosesqueteam I can tell exactly where's the problem with your code. It's just behind the keyboard, right in your head.
It's one thing being incompetent of not solving a problem even with 20+ years of exp. and it's a different thing when you are hell bent on making it a problem for others, picking pointless fights, spamming and almost begging for help. If i didn't know any better, i would say you are borderline insane. I pity the people who have to live/work with you.

@chaosesqueteam

It just so happens I've worked with both Unity Technologies and Epic Games.

I might just know a tad bit about engines and 3D formats 😘.

Also, glad you've been to Spain. It's cool here. (Maybe you think you scare me or something 😂)

@chaosesqueteam thanks for your response: 50 instant upvotes.

@nanos now you know

@chaosesqueteam

With, and on, but what would I know.

At least my scrip didn't have me begging for contributors due to my inadequacy.

@chaosesqueteam fair enough. No bots. I’ll take your word for it.
As for the alt accounts? No?
For example @chaosesqueteam2? Is he one of your buddies working on your open source project?