It won't be a perfect solution, but we could use the level system to make it harder for shills to operate. For instance, no submissions until you hit level 2 (a quick barrier to spamming by creating multiple accounts), no upvoting or downvoting until level 4 (I put this higher than submissions because farming is usually the first thing these accounts do when point-based restrictions are in place).
This only works though if getting enough downvotes will drop your level. And I'm assuming the level thresholds and rules for each level can be tweaked.
If a shill wants to spam, they'd have to play nice in the comments until they hit level 2's threshold. But then when they start shit posting, downvoted back to level 1. They could upvote farm in order to get a few accounts to level 2, but they would have to play nice for a lot longer than many shills a) would like to or b) are able to without arousing suspicion.
Unfortunately there are some downsides. There's a risk of becoming an echo chamber because as our userbase grows, opinions that go against the grain would be downvoted, which might make the barrier to entry too high to anyone who doesn't think 'like us' -- regardless of whether they're a shill or not. Also, this basically kills , since by the time you're able to post there you've already kind of rung that bell.
I think there are some ideas here that probably need some refinement. I’m not sure restrictions like that are the best idea. At the moment the solution will be identifying spammers and banning them manually. I’m not even sure an automated way to stop spammers and shills can exist but if it can I’m sure we will find it.
I'm sure there's no automated way to stop spammers and shills, but even an automated way to limit them would be preferable to manual. The problem with manual removal is it requires a judgement call. Determining what spam is would be easier, determining what a shill is would be slightly harder. We're all prone to bias. Even if janitor power isn't maliciously abused, the likelihood someone will eventually interpret shilling differently than you would seems high to me.
A good example is of Voat. It seemed like such obvious shilling to me I used AVE to flair that user so I could catch him at it again. From time to time I did see him, and he seems like a pretty normal user with pretty normal activity. I doubt he's a shill, but at the time he made that post I was pretty sure he was (and I guess a lot of others were too).
You have valid points. But a tool for us is a tool for them. If something can be automatically removed or even censored that method can be exploited, and it is on voat, I would say that’s how it became an echo chamber. So I’m cautious about any automation until I’ve seen what it can do in a test case, which is one of the things on my list to do here is setup a preview site like voat had to test ideas like this.
That’s true, it happened to me too.
But most of these new users who joined voat did it to promote their blogs or YT channels. Once warned about the spam rules , they realized they would get their accounts and domain banned. So they started to post other stuff from different domains.
It has a positive effect on the community because they end up providing contents.
There’s a spam rule we can apply here.
Can I submit links to sites I operate?
Submitting only links to sites you operate (or are associated with), without submitting other, unrelated links, is considered spamming... If majority of the links you submit are to sites you are associated with, your domains may be globally banned from Voat. To be on the safe side, if you submit 10 links to various subverses on Voat, at most 5 of the 10 submitted links may be to the sites you are associated with.
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