A language learners’ forum

STT44 wrote:Question: how do bots get past the anti-spam challenges?

Generally you've got human "handlers" who managed the bots, who are paid basically to set up accounts, monitor captchas etc.

The goal is minimal human intervention, because zero is impossible.

I’m concerned that Covid and isolation has rendered many of our members operating with paranoid filters.

Are people detached from reality now buying into a pascalian simulacrum?

Add to that the general cynicism and it’s a bit off putting.

Occam’s Razor.

The bots are probably more active on Reddit or FB groups than a forum that requires “human handlers” vs people who post, see that they aren’t getting an answer and don’t really come back because a) it’s hard to log in b) the place isn’t exactly central station of feedback, c ) the email system doesn’t send out notifications.

And some of you want to make it even harder to post here!?
Great, that’s going to kill this place off.

I am slightly sad about where is the internet headed. I know, perhaps I should feel stupid first, about responding to a probable bot, but I don't. I am just a bit sad and worried that bots and similar techniques for marketing and opinion making are so ubiquitous and we should learn to recognize them. Really, antiutopias and similar scifi were meant as a warning, not a how-to manual.

Back in the 80s a slightly futuristic TV series named Max Headroom was briefly popular. A friend lent me DVDs of the series. After watching a few episodes, I had to give up. The show's predictions about the future were so realistic as well as so grim that they have come to fruition. Every liar and huckster in the whole world now has an outlet on the Internet. For me only music on Youtube provides a sane refuge.

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Back in the 80s a slightly futuristic TV series named Max Headroom was briefly popular.

I loved that show. Max has been in so many sci-fi shows since then. Did you watch orphan black?

leosmith wrote:

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Back in the 80s a slightly futuristic TV series named Max Headroom was briefly popular.

I loved that show. Max has been in so many sci-fi shows since then. Did you watch orphan black?

No, I'm afraid I missed that. Maybe I can catch it later.

zenmonkey wrote:I’m concerned that Covid and isolation has rendered many of our members operating with paranoid filters.

It's not paranoia, it's a detectable pattern.

Are people detached from reality now buying into a pascalian simulacrum?

Not sure what that means

The bots are probably more active on Reddit or FB groups than a forum that requires “human handlers”

The activity of bots is why we've been getting forced to log back in and answer captchas for years here.
We've had a rash of clone-post bots here in the past.
We're on phpBB, which is possibly the most common forum software online, so easy to design reusable bots for.

Quora doesn't seem to be quite as bad for this as it used to be, so it may be that their algorithm has picked up the pattern from the downvotes and learned to stop promoting this type of question, and the bot operators have moved on.

vs people who post, see that they aren’t getting an answer and don’t really come back because a) it’s hard to log in b) the place isn’t exactly central station of feedback, c ) the email system doesn’t send out notifications.

It's not a matter of one or the other though -- we've got both. This is why I propose just asking questions. For the human who's going to come back, it's actively encouraging them to participate; for the human who never comes back, it's irrelevant; for the bot, it means not getting the answers they're attempting to harvest, and perhaps even knowing it (because if I was programming a bot like that, I'd probably not use responses including question marks.