Mixx being taken over by spammers?

[honest ape]

I love Mixx. Those of you who know me here are clearly aware of my dedication to the site and how much I promote it. Which makes me all the sadder to see the not-so-slow decline of the site's quality.

Spammers are taking over. And this makes me furious. Reporting spammers doesn't seem to work as well as it should, and emailing Mixx doesn't seem to get the results I want. Maybe what Mixx and I consider spam is different. Maybe they have different criteria. If so, I'd like to know it.

I just clicked on 20 Mixx links in my RSS feed, and more than half were spam.

I guess this post will make the most sense if I detail what I consider spam.

The handful of folks who submit nothing (or almost nothing) but links to Pollsbb.com. The site is clearly not worthy of one submission, let alone hundreds. And the fact that there are a small group of these people doing it, makes me think it's spam. They all vote up each others stories. They all submit 99% links to pollsbb.com. And I've reported them all. More than once.

Folks who submit a few sites, all run by the same person, and all plastered with ads.

Folks who only submit their own site, regardless of that site's quality.

Then, the obvious spammers who submit links to auto-loan places, etc..

The Mixx staff does ban spammers, don't get me wrong. But there are people I report that never leave. All of whom fall into one of the categories above. And I, for one, would like to know why. If I report someone and they decide not to ban that person, I'd like to know why. Maybe I shouldn't report people who are certain kinds of spammers that mixx doesn't want to ban. I'm okay with that. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm misreading the T.O.S. It's entirely possible.

Additionally, I think people who consistently vote up spammers (or everyone, regardless of content) should get warnings, and enough warnings would lead to account deletion. Each spammer I looked at today had between one and two friends. And they were the same people. These people befriend and vote up everybody. Even the most obvious of spam. That also works against the system. It make the spam more popular. And it makes it easier for me to accidentally hit that spam and waste my time. And it's killing me.

Unless the situation gets under control, I think I'm going to only start visiting links from my friends. This is a shame, as it will stop me in my tracks as far as finding new friends who submit quality content. They'll get lost in the mess of spam.

Is this mixx's fault? No. It's the spammers who are ruining mixx. They're the ones responsible. But, unless I know what is and isn't spam, and whether or not they'll be allowed to keep posting their crap, I'll have to stick with trusted sources. Unless I feel that mixx can handle these people, I'll have to avoid the Rss feeds.

I'm writing this here, in the Mixxingbowl forum, because I want to know if I'm on target or just being an over-reactive schmuck. And who better to tell me than my friends in the bowl? The people who care more about Mixx than anyone else. The ones who love the site enough to join this forum and try to improve Mixx. That's who I want to hear from.

If you're a spammer, or fall into one of the categories above and don't consider yourself a spammer, please use this as an opportunity to state your side of things. As I said, I may be wrong. I may just be a trouble-maker.


It makes me angry that there are people who ruin it for the rest of us, but it's a sad fact. I just want the site to be as great as it can be. And, in that, I think we can all agree.

[calinazaret]

Very well said! 

You're absolutely right about the number of less-than-quality submissions. In my mixxing I tend to monitor the recent page, and I've noticed that half of it is not worth reading.

It's unfortunate that this is happening to mixx, and I wish it weren't so, but I feel that it's an inevitability. Mark Carras once pointed out that as much as we hate the spammers, kicking them all off the site would ruin the site's profitability to investors. Spammers who can use the site to make money will go a long way in promoting it in their blogs because they have a vested interest in it succeeding. Sometimes I wish I had created mixx so I could make all the rules, but I didn't. I have to step back and realize that it isn't my playground, as much as I would want it to be. The fact is that other people, the investors, have spent who knows how much (at least thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands) and they expect (rightfully) to have a return on their investment. Mixx isn't a charity, and it isn't my company either. However, the quality of the content that spammers submit is never going to be as good as the quality of a user who stays merely for the experience. Therefore sites like mixx need both kinds of users, the ones who use the site for recreation and the ones who use it for profit. The mixx crew have done their bit to appease the true users, people like us, by creating features for us and listening to what we want, but I don't think they'll ban users unless they do something that blatantly violates the TOS, because it might affect profitability.

I feel they've acted very admirably. After all, I never invested a dime in the site (couldn't even if I wanted to, I'm broke as Job), who cares what I think? Well, apparently they do. Even though they do their best to keep our best interests in mind, we should never lose sight of the fact that at least part of the reason they're in it is to make money, and there's nothing wrong with that. You have to make money somehow.

[Chris McGill]

Ok... I am going to try to not take this personally and give my soap box speech- then I promise to get down off of it- really I promise... and we'll continue to listen REALLY hard.

1) We care - we care a lot
2) The system is set up so that you can tailor it to what your interest are- it is not one size fits all.  It is very very likely that if you use your mixx well you will see very high qulaity submissions aorund the topics you are interested in
3) Wetake a an approach of not just banning people- that gets people who are very high qulaity submitters banned- we talk to them and ask them to become part of the community- more people than you know- including people right here in the bowl have at one time been accused of being spammers and then have become great contributors
4)  The definition of spam is subjective- and while there are certainly blatant cases but your definition may be somewht different than another person's and we do our very best to strike a balance
5) we do ban people- believe it or not
6) we constantly review our policies and do change them- we are in fact working on it so lok for some changes in 3 or 4 weeks
7) to date- mixx has made exactly $0- you have never seen an ad on this site.  Don't get me wrong at some point we have to try to pay for the electricity and we need to eat.
  Wel will never get it right- we will never please everyone- we try to strike a balance so that the pros are maximized and the cons are minimized in whatever we do- but there will be flaws- and we must keep moving forward- we cannot stay still and survive
9) I am very glad you aired your opinions right here in the bowl-= it is what the bowl is about and we read it.  We apreciate everything- we value this feedback...  yes even the criticism.

Sincerely,

The Mixx Team

[StandardsDT]

Thank You for your response Chris it's greatly appreciated. I too feel like Ape does when it comes to reporting the same users over and over and over and over again. But this has put me at ease for now and look forward to seeing a certain user well a few users being banned. Simply because they aren't contributing in any way  and keep posting the same thing in various forms over and over again.

[honest ape]

Thanks, Chris. I hope you realize I wasn't trying to cut on the Mixx staff in any way. I know you work your asses off on making mixx better. Far more so than any of your competitors, in fact.

I appreciate you clearing it up. It makes me happy to know that you do talk to people who violate certain rules or behave in a questionable way. I'm certainly not asking people to get banned just on the basis of a couple people reporting them.

I realize I will consider some folks spammers that aren't considered such by everyone, but at the end of the day, I only want Mixx to be everything it can be.

I'm more angry that this is enough of a problem to make it hard to control. I just wish people could play nice and follow the rules. But that's not how the internet works. I dig that.

You're a stand-up guy, Chris, and we all appreciate the time you take to post updates and answer questions here on the forum.

Thanks again for your comment.

[gbarberi]

Just my opinion, but:

Submitting content is not the only form of participation/contribution to a site -- I'm sure you all know that.  I've seen a few sites that have rules in place about submitting content with differing levels of strictness.  Some forbid posting your own content, require commenting/voting on other submissions before you can post, have a waiting period, or -- my favorite -- limit the number of posts you can submit in one day. 

I'm not advocating any of these and I'm sure each comes with its drawbacks.  I'm just trying to show that regulating submissions is at practice in the Social Media world.

[robdiana]

Spam is a really tough line to draw. Some people that only submit their own stuff do contribute to the community. If the content is good, AND they vote on other things and contribute to discussion, then only self-submitting might be OK. There are others who barely even vote on content that they did not submit. They are just using mixx as a promotion, and pray that someone clicks through. it is not spam, but they are one of the worst parts of social media. The blatant spam or "outside of TOS" people will always appear. There were one or two credit card personal loan submissions that I voted down, but the third was actually good content submitted by someone but the title was almost identical to spam.

So, the only thing we can do as a community is report people, or continuously downvote people. The Mixx team is trying to get people to play nice before they ban them (a good idea methinks), but it just takes longer than the devout (myself included) would really like. We want to keep the place nice and clean, and the Mixx team wants to grow the site without major issues. There will be growing pains, and so far the Mixx team has done a fantastic job.

[MarkCarras]

Spam is a really tough line to draw. Some people that only submit their own stuff do contribute to the community. If the content is good, AND they vote on other things and contribute to discussion, then only self-submitting might be OK. There are others who barely even vote on content that they did not submit. They are just using mixx as a promotion, and pray that someone clicks through. it is not spam, but they are one of the worst parts of social media. The blatant spam or "outside of TOS" people will always appear. There were one or two credit card personal loan submissions that I voted down, but the third was actually good content submitted by someone but the title was almost identical to spam.

So, the only thing we can do as a community is report people, or continuously downvote people. The Mixx team is trying to get people to play nice before they ban them (a good idea methinks), but it just takes longer than the devout (myself included) would really like. We want to keep the place nice and clean, and the Mixx team wants to grow the site without major issues. There will be growing pains, and so far the Mixx team has done a fantastic job.

Totally!  I would not like to be in Chris' shoes.  He has way more patience than I would.  I'm lucky that my social is for a specific type of content, so i can ban, block, and kill spam left and right.  It's way more obvious in that situation.  With Mixx Chris wants to let in everything that could be considered news as well as be fair to everyone under the sun.  He always shocks me at how well he pulls it off. 

So does he have a stress doll/dummy that he beats on when we all get too annoying? :D

[honest ape]

@MarkCarras
I wouldn't want to be in his shoes either. He has to deal with whiny fucks like me always causing trouble. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

[calinazaret]

I wouldn't want to be in his shoes either. He has to deal with whiny fucks like me always causing trouble. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Don't be too hard on yourself; you're awesome.

[honest ape]

I wouldn't want to be in his shoes either. He has to deal with whiny fucks like me always causing trouble. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Don't be too hard on yourself; you're awesome.

Right back at ya, kiddo.

[naturalwoman]

I would have to agree with your observations and your definitions of spam. It makes me kinda sick to see categories I care about flooded with blog spam especially on the weekends. Unfortunately it's not just one piece of content. Last weekend, the parents and kids category was flooded with over a dozen webpage posts and half a dozen videos all from the same blog. It's not a high volume category so this stuff goes popular in the category and will run the category for pages. The submitters often have maybe one or two friends and have never submitted, commented, or voted for anything other than their own stuff.

I've reported it ... I've voted it down ... I've sent polite emails to the submitters asking them to play nice. This weekend, I got a little zealous with the down vote. I was hoping a down vote would get rid of it quicker. I discovered that while that might work during the week when there are more submissions ... it didn't move it last weekend. I guess I down voted so much of the crap that I set a record. I now have the curmudgeon badge on my profile. Geeezzzz what a dubious honor!

[gbarberi]

I would have to agree with your observations and your definitions of spam. It makes me kinda sick to see categories I care about flooded with blog spam especially on the weekends. Unfortunately it's not just one piece of content. Last weekend, the parents and kids category was flooded with over a dozen webpage posts and half a dozen videos all from the same blog. It's not a high volume category so this stuff goes popular in the category and will run the category for pages. The submitters often have maybe one or two friends and have never submitted, commented, or voted for anything other than their own stuff.

I've reported it ... I've voted it down ... I've sent polite emails to the submitters asking them to play nice. This weekend, I got a little zealous with the down vote. I was hoping a down vote would get rid of it quicker. I discovered that while that might work during the week when there are more submissions ... it didn't move it last weekend. I guess I down voted so much of the crap that I set a record. I now have the curmudgeon badge on my profile. Geeezzzz what a dubious honor!

I have recently done the same to a new user here.  I downmodded all 72 submissions and when arriving at the final one.  I left the user a comment explaining why I did so, and how Mixx can be used properly - how to be a member of the community.  The user did message me back, apologized, and promised to limit their submissions to five per day. 

Hopefully, this won't upset anyone.  If this is a problem for you, I suggest you do the same - especially leave the comment and start some form of dialogue with them.  If you want, message me and I will downmod the submissions along with you.  Please remember that it is not the content that bothers me, but the amount of their submissions.  I don't particularly care what a user submits provided they do not flood the queue with it.  (Anyone know if this will upset the Mixx team?  If so, then I'll just not do it.)

It would be nice if Mixx would consider placing some limits on submissions before we end up with a sizeable amount of stories and a community too small to review them all (properly).  Too may people flood the system with submissions thinking at least one will go popular.  It's the Digg mentality - submit a lot and hedge your bets.  It's counter-productive.  It floods the queue, making new users's submits harder to see.  It requires more work from the community, more votes from them.  It will only end in voting rings and whatever it takes to get submissions more noticed.  Digg is falling apart (IMO) because it is not scaling properly.  Millions of registered accounts, 150 stories on the FP every day, 10,000+ submissions a day... and, how many users do you think are actually casting votes on upcoming stories?  The vast majority vote on stories already popular.  Only a small fraction of the community is actually reviewing the 10,000 submits.  Hardly seems efficient. 

Oh, in the end, Mixx, do whatever you think is best.  I'm not going anywhere either way.

[MarkCarras]

I have a feeling that one major tool of the spammers is to register several names and down vote those who do not support them or get in their way at all.

For example:

http://www.mixx.com/users/jessy.bernal

http://www.mixx.com/users/blandine.salio

Notice how both users have almost no karma points,  Both have user names that are two names with a period in the middle, both users have never submitted anything, both users have almost no Mixx friends.  Both gave me a down vote within minutes of each other on a few of my stories. This was the one that I noticed it on first http://www.mixx.com/stories/121743/itunes-now-the-no-2-music-retailer-in-the-us

Have any of you noticed something like this?

[gbarberi]

I have a feeling that one major tool of the spammers is to register several names and down vote those who do not support them or get in their way at all.

For example:

http://www.mixx.com/users/jessy.bernal

http://www.mixx.com/users/blandine.salio

Notice how both users have almost no karma points,  Both have user names that are two names with a period in the middle, both users have never submitted anything, both users have almost no Mixx friends.  Both gave me a down vote within minutes of each other on a few of my stories. This was the one that I noticed it on first http://www.mixx.com/stories/121743/itunes-now-the-no-2-music-retailer-in-the-us

Have any of you noticed something like this?

Report that to Mixx (which is what I am about to do).  Both those accounts have one positive vote - same post.  All other activity is negative.  The submitter of the article that received their positive vote - also the same way.  All negative votes.  Methinks someone is going to submit content and then use other accounts to upmod their submissions and downmod others.