So what's with the Dreamwidth 'bot accounts?

[jducoeur]

Over the past month or two, I have gotten several subscribes from the most preposterous bots. I mean, the bio of the one I just got says:

Practiced in the art of working with real estate staging Companies Orange County. Spent 2002-2010 exporting glucose in Deltona, FL. Spent 2001-2004 promoting salsa in Hanford, CA. Spent 2001-2008 buying and selling deodorant in Bethesda, MD. Earned praised for my work deploying squirt guns in Orlando, FL. Prior to my current job I was merchandising dust in Bethesda, MD.

They're all like that, with clearly computer-generated resumes in the profile.

I can't for the life of me figure out the scam. I'm used to this nonsense on FB, but those tend to make at least an nod to sleaze appeal -- the feeds usually are full of bikini-clad models, trying to lure you into friending them -- but here, there are no actual posts, just deeply weird obviously-fake profiles.

Anyone have any guesses what they are up to? I don't generally think of DW as having FB's common ethos of automatically accepting all friend requests, although I suppose some people might do so...

Comments

[wispfox]

Merchandising dust!

Maybe it's a euphemism?

[watersword]

IDK, but you can report to the antispam team and they'll vanish pretty fast.

[jducoeur]

I didn't realize there was an antispam team -- do you have a pointer?

[watersword]

You just do it like a regular support request at https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/submit and use "Antispam" as the category. Include the username/DW URL and a human staffer will look at the account.

[jducoeur]

Cool; thanks...

[danabren]

Merchandise that dust, baby. Aw yeah.

[metahacker]

The trick to infiltrating a social media platform is numbers and connections. Every time you don't remove such fake accounts, they lend strength to the real onslaught. Which, given who lost visibility into a lot of lives when LJ was abandoned, makes me a bit worried...

Or maybe it's just spamming. Possible.

[jducoeur]

The trick to infiltrating a social media platform is numbers and connections.

Oh, I get that. But it seems like that only works if people *accept* the fake connections, and this particular case doesn't seem to be making any effort to make that happen. That's why I'm puzzled. If they were *good* fake-account 'bots, this would all make much more sense.

I suppose I might be underestimating the number of people here who fully accept (and give access to) anybody who sends them a subscription request, but it doesn't match what I know of the general ethos of DW.

Or, I suppose, these might just be first-draft Alpha 'Bots, and we have yet to see the serious efforts...

[metahacker]

True. The actor behind the bots might either be following the spam philosophy ("it's cheap so I only need a 1:10000 conversion rate") or be building up self-connections until critical mass is achieved....or both.

[elusiveat]

I just got one.

"Have some experience importing UFOs in Libya. A real dynamo when it comes to managing indian spell caster​. Set new standards for training carp in Cuba. Spent several months managing muffins for farmers. Spent childhood marketing Mr. Potato Heads for no pay. Once had a dream of building corncob pipes in Bethesda, MD."

The website link is "indian spell caster"

The whole thing is weird enough to almost be charming. But I'll report them anyway.

[jducoeur]

Please do -- charmingly amusing as these profiles are, the people behind them probably do *not* have DW's best interests at heart...