Entire sub to spam one blog & spam bot upvotes to try to get into users' feeds

Interesting how they're posting real news sites in between spamming their blog. For some reason this sub appeared on my homepage as "you've visited this subreddit before," when I'm pretty sure I haven't - I could be wrong I suppose but in any case it's spam and it's very annoying that reporting an entire subreddit to admins isn't an option: https://www.reddit.com/r/TopTrendingNewsUSA/

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u/Boysenberry — 14 days ago
▲ 21 r/BotPosting+1 crossposts

Will anything stop advice subs from falling for payment app spam?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmIOverreacting/comments/1u0vbl5/aio_for_not_wanting_to_pay_3_weeks_after_the_date/

Latest example of a type of post that's been happening for at least a year in r/AmIOverreacting and similar subreddits: AI-written ragebait about everyone's favorite topic to scream about, who should pay for dates. And wouldn't you know it, the payment app the jerk suggested she use is mentioned in the text message screenshot!

Couldn't be more obvious. Thousands of upvotes, not removed by mods. Every fucking time.

Can anything be done about ragebait app spam?

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u/Boysenberry — 26 days ago

Car appraisal for charitable donation? (form 8283)

I am already terrified of how many spambots this title will summon, but it can't be helped...

Any actual humans who can make a recommendation about how to get a Form 8283 appraisal for a vehicle being donated to a 501(c)3? (Donating privately, not through a car donation vendor.)

There are some online appraisal sites with prices starting at ~$250 for this service, but that seems kind of steep for my situation (KBB is 8-12K and appraisal is required to deduct an in-kind contribution worth more than 5K). Hoping maybe there's a local hack someone who has been through this before can share! (IE maybe a local mechanic who also does this on the side?)

(Please be kind, I'm helping someone in a bind who had to leave the country on short notice, this isn't my area of expertise.)

reddit.com
u/Boysenberry — 1 month ago

AI optimization account hive answering own questions

User that posts obvious SEO/AIO questions whose answers will then populate Google's AI overviews: https://www.reddit.com/user/Plus_Control_1824/

Some of the accounts that have provided spam answers:

https://www.reddit.com/user/cosmicbored45/

https://www.reddit.com/user/comfort_chiffchafxx/

https://www.reddit.com/user/Lazy-Perspective1163/

Accounts I suspect are also involved bc the above posted spam answers to their questions too, but I didn't have time to check these out on Arctic Shift:

reddit.com/user/tanaman88/

https://www.reddit.com/user/BeneficialThought429/

https://www.reddit.com/user/kingofghost13/

https://www.reddit.com/user/hn50/

Noticed that the technique here is to wait a few days for another account to post a spam answer, so people are no longer paying attention to the post to report it to mods.

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u/Boysenberry — 1 month ago

Karma farming by stealing other people's years-old comments

Can't take credit for catching this one, a reply caught them, but adding it here for discussion.

Multi-awarded comment from six-figure karma account with hidden comment history today:
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ti6j05/comment/omsnvgw/

Seven-year-old comment they copied:

https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubehaiku/comments/b0szs3/comment/eihq7zf/?share_id=FAEKLMbAHOjHGgwCZHaV9&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

Bot, or just someone who has a lot of time on their hands to karma/award-farm?

reddit.com
u/Boysenberry — 2 months ago
▲ 3 r/Birdfy

Birdfy Holiday Specials Warning - chronic failure to ship/fulfill holiday-related orders

I ordered a Birdfy feeder for my mother for Mother's Day. They were offering a Mother's Day special with delivery by the holiday. It is now the Tuesday after Mother's Day, they haven't even shipped the order, and customer service offered a pathetic 10% refund as compensation, with no indication of when they might actually ship the order.

After searching this subreddit I learned they also advertised Christmas delivery last year and failed to deliver on that promise.

Do not order directly from Birdfy for holiday gifts! I regret not ordering on Amazon, as much as I hate Bezos—at least if I'd used Amazon I wouldn't be in the doghouse with my mother.

I'll be doing a chargeback if they haven't responded within 24 hours to my suggestion that they refund me & offer a coupon code so I can reorder from Amazon at the Mother's Day sale price, but I'm leaving this here because I want it to become searchable for the next person who googles "Birdfy mother's day shipping" next year when they again offer holiday shipping and don't deliver.

reddit.com
u/Boysenberry — 2 months ago

This smells off to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/SantaMonica/comments/1t0bwj0/singles_release_party_in_santa_monica/

Post for an app-sponsored event in a local subreddit. OP & the positive comments are all from accounts with no history in r/SantaMonica and no comments that indicate they live in Santa Monica. All are little-used accounts a few months old, exactly the kind of accounts I'd expect to see people use/make to earn money with one of the pay-for-Reddit-comments platforms.

What think you, people who know more about current spam trends than I do?

reddit.com
u/Boysenberry — 2 months ago

Vet is very involved and as stumped as I am.

Reaching out to the internet to see if anyone else has ever dealt with a horse who repeatedly gets abscessed lymph nodes under the jaw with negative cultures. As in, there are no bacteria in the exudate. Not just negative for the bacteria that cause strangles, negative for any pathogen the lab tests for (which is all the significant ones, including actinomyces and the bacterium that causes pigeon fever).

This isn't really an emergency, it's only happened twice in ~3 years, but it's weird. Different nodes, not even adjacent to each other, so I don't think it's damage to a particular lymph node causing sensitivity. No foreign body found in the abscess either time, though that doesn't necessarily mean one couldn't have been there and disintegrated to the point of being undetectable by the time the abscesses drained. No fever either time.

My main concern here is just that continued recurrences, if any, could damage the sub-mandibular lymph nodes over time, and also the remote possibility that this is a symptom of some larger, systemic low-grade infection.

At this point the vet does not advise treating with antibiotics, because we have no data to tell us what drug to use or how long to treat for, so there is a risk of creating resistance if there are bacteria we haven't detected.

I have found information on this condition impossible to search for because every case report I can find is about something that was cultured from an abscess, not abscesses where nothing could be cultured.

Data points that may or may not be relevant:

- The horse has exceptionally fast-growing hair, chestnuts, and ergots, as well as very high hair density. He's one of those horses that people touch in the summer and exclaim about how soft he is, because he has a lot of fine hairs all clustered together, like rabbit fur. I have wondered if this genetic quirk is maybe linked to a tendency to also produce extra sebum, and abscesses just form more easily?

- The horse's pasture contains trees, and he does chew them (no matter how much enrichment he has, he prefers the alternative enrichment method of "causing problems on purpose") so I have considered splinters as a possible cause. However, no splinters were found in the abscesses.

- The horse has a habit of picking up any dead animal he finds in the pasture, so he does put bacteria directly into his mouth on a regular basis. I have considered the possibility that this is some strange squirrel or reptile bacterium that the lab wouldn't report as a "positive result" in a large mammal.

- Only major medical history is a rattlesnake bite, but that happened in between the two abscess incidents so tissue damage from the bite could not have been a cause of the first one.

- He has not recently traveled or been exposed to strange horses.

- No recent introductions to his herd.

- No nasal discharge or other symptoms with either abscess.

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u/Boysenberry — 2 months ago