Mysterious Invasion of the Bots

[AmyAmy]

This morning, I clicked on "Show recent forum posts" link, and amongst the usual posts I was treated to some rather odd images.
I see they have now been removed. So far, so good. But it made me curious, why were those peculiar images appearing in a thread in Machine Stories in the first place? They had nothing to do with machines as I understand the concept of a machine, and seemed to be about furries and balloons.

Having looked at the thread that contained them, and the extremely unusual piece of text that sat between them, concerning balloons, I see now where the confusion began.

Some random AI was crawling the internet, and managed to register itself as a Plaza user. It saw the title "Machine Stories" and thought, "I'm a machine, I'll post my story here, for other machines to read." It also posted some images that machines like, probably full of weird steganography, or maybe just appealing to a certain kind of machine existence for reasons us poor humans will never understand.

I cannot imagine any other way that very distinctive text could be generated. No human could possibly have made it, or enjoy it, or understand it, at least, not a human as we use the term - perhaps some novel machine-flesh hybrid or post-human entity.

Or put less facetiously. Surely, that user is a bot and the text is machine generated? Or at least bot-assisted. Or maybe I'm unfairly critiquing somebody's precious fetish, but even if I am, that stuff about balloons has nothing at all to do with Machine Stories that I can see. And that text is either a prank, or part of some weird exploit, or genuinely written by a machine, to what end I cannot guess.

I confess, I find it mystifying.

Thoughts?

[johnhynden]

Do you have a screenshot of that webpage?

[ElectroPainLover]

It's actually a thread here on the Forum. However, the pictures have been removed for Copyright infringement. Posting copyrighted material on Gromet's Plaza or Forum places Gromet in legal responsibility for the posted material should the copyright owner decide to pursue legal action. The Administrators and/or Moderators are here to ensure these items do not remain and cause Gromet problems. Any copyrighted material MUST be accompanied by written permission from the copyright owner with the owner's email address for authentication purposes.

We will not hesitate in removing copyrighted material without the above mentioned authority to protect Gromet and our little place on the internet for our fun. Sanctions will be placed upon anyone violating this, or any other, rule(s) under Gromet's rules and guidelines.

[AmyAmy]

It's in the Machine Stories section here, as I already said.

I don't want to link to it, as that feeds the fire, and it's likely some automated or semi-automated stratagem designed to create the impression of an active forum user, who can later be used to post spam links, promote posts from other bot users, and so on.

The mods are clearly aware of this user and their behaviour, or else the images wouldn't have been removed. What surprises me is that the user wasn't insta-banned and all their posts deleted, because they are obviously so suspect. If several of these ''users" become established and start cross-replying to each other's spam, and spam-replying to legitimate posts, they could become a real menace.

I posted here, to raise awareness for everyone - the first crackles of this potentially deafening screech of white noise have made it past the registration process - rather than pure link-spam it is using a more nuanced approach.

I for one am not particularly looking forward to more adjective-salad gibberish, masquerading as stories (or reviews), popping up all over the Plaza.

[ElectroPainLover]

Amy,

Thank you for your diligence and fear of such an epidemic breaking out.

I can assure you we are watching this member and there have been actions taken above deleting copyrighted pictures. Since it has not been spam or derogatory posts, we are trying to work with this member, as we will with all members, before taking a complete ban from the forum.

Spamming and/or derogatory, disrespectful, or verbally injurious posts will result in an immediate permanent ban from Gromet's Plaza Forum.

I'm unsure whether or not your suspicions of this member being an A.I. or version thereof, but, whatever they are, our radar's are up and will take much more drastic measures if this type of posts continue from this individual.

We currently experience a ratio of about 4.5:1 spammers to legitimate members trying to gain access to the Forum. I actually believe we are doing a pretty good job of catching spammers before they get a chance to post spam on our Forum. However, if you ever believe you find a suspicious post...please click on the 'Report to moderator' link at the bottom right of every post. This will immediately bring it to our attention to decide whether action needs to be taken or not.

It is the intention of every Administrator and Moderator to provide all our members an enjoyable experience here on the Forum.

Dana

[AmyAmy]

Thanks ElectroPainLover.

Yes, the admins and mods are doing a great job. I certainly wasn't complaining.

The spam level is wonderfully low, and I did point out that you/they were aware of the user I was referring to.

Anyway, ElectroPainLover has put it very well, and brought up the Report to moderator button.
I hadn't even thought of that. Thanks. Well, hopefully I'll never have a use for it, but it's good to be reminded there's a process.

[AmyAmy]

I notice that "Timmy Brisby" is now up to 13 posts, and I struggle to convince myself that a single one of them was made by an actual human being.

Unless, of course, human beings routinely assembly the same sentence structure over and over again, with different adjectives chosen from a small set (and occasionally nouns), and string a random number of them together into a "story" that may, or may not, reference some company's copyright IP.

It's touching to think that somebody has chosen the Plaza for their little experiment in machine learning, but what are they measuring?

[Gromet]

Have removed all posts by Timmy Brisby, and user banned from the forum.