Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Lenne]

Why can't SE, at the very least, automatically hide the repeating, offending urls in the /tells, /says, /shouts, etc., and completely block the ability to use those words when creating character names? They're making it too easy for RMT to get away with blatantly advertising their websites for long periods before being banned.

I understand they can work around it using symbols, but then new text blocking filters can be implemented when those are reported. Why make it so easy for them to get their advertising out? At least make them look stupid for spamming chat that advertises nothing. Or better yet, completely block chat containing those words from ever being sent.

[KisaiTenshi]

Why can't SE, at the very least, automatically hide the repeating, offending urls ...

It's harder than you think

I explained it here

It requires too much "lag" time to filter for everything, because the bots just change their tactics faster than a human can. Make it too aggressive and then it gets too many false positives, making people demand that it be turned off. To prevent "repeating", requires a keeping track of everything the bot says. But since they keep making more bots, it has to be tracked server-wide (if not data-center-wide.) So stuff stops looking like it's repeating when they shuffle the positions in the text, and rotate out cyrillic and greek characters.

And it's been stated before, but the Japanese servers, and the Legacy servers don't get nearly so much spam, so the problem is inversely proportional to the popularity of the server.

[Arkann]

It's been a while since I last posted a pic of how things are on Moogle.

Arkann I would have censored the sites too on that chatlog...

Welp. Maybe not a bad idea.

[Lenne]

It's harder than you think

I explained it here

Thanks for your link. I'd like to say I fully understand, but I'm not sure I do. xD

For me, the problem is they aren't using those symbols to pad their urls. I'm saying they are straight out writing their urls cleanly and plainly for all to see and understand, because they are allowed. I guess my lack of knowledge hurts me, but I assumed with how swear words could get filtered out in XI with asterisks, even with spaces and stuff between the letters, the same could be done for reported urls. :/ I know my request was nothing new, but it is extremely frustrating to see these bots get away with blatantly advertising with no setbacks whatsoever.

Edit:

Because they go from www.example.com to example.com to e x a m p l e . c o m to "$.com Google $=example" , so straight up blocking one doesn't block the other 3 examples, to say nothing of the cyrillic and greek substitutions. So you also have to consider шшш.example.℃0㎡ as well as "еxample.cоm" (the e and the o are cyrillic, but on your screen they look the same as latin)

Thanks for the further explanation. It just sucks that it's too hard to combat. Like I said, I wasn't trying to claim it was an original idea, stupid me just thought it was possible to implement. ._.

[KisaiTenshi]

Thanks for your link. I'd like to say I fully understand, but I'm not sure I do. xD

For me, the problem is they aren't using those symbols to pad their urls. I'm saying they are straight out writing their urls cleanly and plainly for all to see and understand, because they are allowed. I guess my lack of knowledge hurts me, but I assumed with how swear words could get filtered out in XI with asterisks, even with spaces and stuff between the letters, the same could be done for reported urls. :/ I know my request was nothing new, but it is extremely frustrating to see these bots get away with blatantly advertising with no setbacks whatsoever.

Because they go from www.example.com to example.com to e x a m p l e . c o m to "$.com Google $=example" , so straight up blocking one doesn't block the other 3 examples, to say nothing of the cyrillic and greek substitutions. So you also have to consider шшш.example.℃0㎡ as well as "еxample.cоm" (the e and the o are cyrillic, but on your screen they look the same as latin)