[ncruces]

My guess? Akismet is metered, and he submits only the first few posts to lower costs. Once you have some reputation, you can post anything.

So spammers noticed being blocked on account 1, created account 2 with legitimate content, and then started spamming.

New process is detecting spammers on first post but instead of immediately sending them away (or throwing their content into the void), go to some length to pretend the website irreparably broken in subtle ways.

The point is to waste their time before they realise they've been flagged, and have them give up.