[mapmeld]

I'm seeing a much less sophisticated campaign for this on my city's subreddits recently... Someone will ask a weird or generic question, and either poster or the top comment is a throwaway account with a spiel about checking $site_name.

It's exhausting, especially since people will write out real advice and corrections about how to deal with rats, bedbugs, neighborhoods, etc. and it all goes into the ether in hopes someone will get scammed. Or maybe it's an SEO thing because the site name is so generic it's un-googleable. I hope it doesn't work.

[ehnto]

Youtube has been spammed with these multi-account back and fourth discussion advertisements for a while. They're frequently for small local attorneys or financial advisors, and I have to wonder if those individuals realise how they're being marketed in bad faith.

I used to co-work next to a SEO specialist back in my freelance days and he would offer rankings, but the client would not be told that they were getting said rankings by blackhat SEO tactics (that mostly no longer work).

It's all so obvious and standardised that I have to imagine it is part of a toolkit or framework marketers are using without much thought.

[rchaud]

This is the same kind of spam that overwhelmed blog comment sections and sent everyone scurrying to Reddit and Facebook 15 years ago. The spam was always had a generic comment praising the post and a line below shilling dick pills and Prada bags, but spelled like v_1_@_g_r_@ and the URL was simiarly obfuscated so they didn't trip a spam filter.