How is Github dealing with spam? | Hacker News Reader

How is Github dealing with spam?

github.com

42 pointsdz0ny23 comments

Wow, they've definitely gone on a spam-killing spree recently. Following that scandal a few weeks back where someone had, uh, "inappropriate" downloads in their checked-in public .bash_history, I did a few searches and found insane amounts of spam in github pages.

It's all gone now, as far as I can tell. You can view the lingering google results with a porn-themed search like "site:github.com pthc"†.

Typical cached result: hxxp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zLf3TgpkocQJ:byronboxx.github.com/82.html

† that is a child porn-associated acronym. Use common sense deciding how or if you are going to get yourself on the record searching for that.

edit: made the link unclickable due to reasonable concerns expressed below.

This time I regret clicking a link before reading the surrounding text. Maybe you want to replace "http:// with "hxxp://"?

^ sorry to post a "+1" comment but, yeah. This.

Edit: As a matter of fact, assuming something on that post could link off to something substantial regarding it's subject, should that link even be allowed to stay here?

> assuming something on that post could link off to something substantial regarding it's subject

I don't think that is the case; it's only using the keyword so it can be indexed against it. The links themselves are either self referential or your generic spam links.

Definitely wouldn't have linked it otherwise!

Agree :(

Even I regret clicking it before reading your disclaimer :(

I'm looking into why those are showing up in the issues list. Likely a bug. The user has been marked as spammy for over a month, though, which means notifications (email or web) are not delivered.

We should have this cleaned up shortly.

I see bunch of commit messages in #grunt@freenode irc channel, so clearly hooks are still being triggered.

Ouch. Sorry about that. Opening an issue now.

They very recently added a feature to Gist to help deal with spam.

https://github.com/blog/1426-spam-spam-spam-spam

I wonder if the system to report abuse can be abused.

Can someone report someone's non-spammy gist as abuse and get it removed? Will that person get some sort of notification or warning so that he get a chance to backup the (legitimate, non-spam) gist?

Because if there's a chance that one's valuable gists get deleted without warning, that's a concern.

Anybody know what we're supposed to be seeing here? It looks like the "issues" page for a random project, with one open issue.

What does this have to do with Spam? Or even Github for that matter (apart from being a url at github.com?)

Look at some replies below. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5298273 There used to be spam in the issues list, but now it's gone.

Whatever it was, it's not there anymore.

What happened?

http://screencloud.net/v/aDCU

Looks more like a script run wild than true (SEO) spam.

I have also seen automated accounts being operated by bots similar to those twitter bots who follow you and unfollow you if you don't start following them within specified amount of time.

Example: https://github.com/gitlisted?tab=activity

Looks like most of it is handled, since most of them lead to a 404 if you click on the issues. Cache hasn't been invalidated I would guess

Yea but still can't they block user? Also emails, hooks are still sent...

As far as I'm concerned, there's only one way to deal with SPAM™: Eggs. Contrast this with spam, where the appropriate response is eggs-termination.

I would be modestly interested in seeing Github and Hormel square off in some epic conflict. :P

No seriously, isn't the spammy spam supposed to be lowercased? </pedantry>

Actually, 'spam' in the electronic sense is apparently linked to a Monthy Python sketch involving a restraunt where everything contains Spam. From Wikipedia: In the 1980s the term was adopted to describe certain abusive users who frequented BBSs and MUDs, who would repeat "Spam" a huge number of times to scroll other users' text off the screen. In early chat rooms ..., they actually flooded the screen with quotes from the Monty Python Spam sketch.

One could therefore argue that uppercase is the correct presentation.

I always thought it stood for Self Propelled Advertising Mechanism or something like that.

Github isn't dealing with SPAM.

Go to gists, click explore.

I've seen some ugly stuff like these: https://gist.github.com/imwinner/5056251 https://gist.github.com/onhkys/5056233 https://gist.github.com/onhkys/5056224

since the beginning of the gist.github.com re-launch

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