[onion2k]

This suggests spammers care about the quality of the links their bots post rather than the quantity. I suspect that isn't the case. Spam is always worthwhile to post because forum might change to remove the nofollow in future, a forum user might follow a link, and it's not worth the effort bothering to check if a forum is providing 'value' to the network. In other words, it's easier to to spam everyone and hope some of it proves useful.

[girvo]

I think they meant specifically in the context of avoiding being penalised by Google; my admittedly lay understanding is that "nofollow" would've helped here -- the spammers would still spam of course, but the penalty would not be as severe? Or apply at all, perhaps? Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding though