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Recently, as a regular user focused mainly on Q&A, I've noticed a surge in spam content related to the "HERO RUPEE LOAN CUSTOMER CARE HELPLINE NUMBER". These posts consist of spam questions, followed by spam answers and comments. It would be beneficial to discuss the implementation of a potential feature that allows posts containing specific keywords to undergo community or moderator approval through a special queue or an AI algorithm that can be fine-tuned.

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When conducting a Google search for "hero rupee loan," I noticed that out of the top 10 search results, 8 of them are links to various SE communities where spam posts have been removed. The continued appearance of these spam posts in search results suggests that the individuals responsible for posting them are gaining some advantage or benefit from their actions.

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To address this issue more effectively, it may be worth considering the implementation of a system that blocks specific key phrases using advanced methods like regex. Instead of allowing these unsolicited posts to be immediately visible, they could be redirected to a separate queue for further review, preventing the spam from reaching the audience and reducing the need for constant downvoting and flagging as spam.

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    This isn't an increase. This specific spammer has been posting these on Stack Exchange sites for the last few/several years. They've posted many thousands of spam posts on Stack Exchange in that time. Charcoal, using SmokeDetector and metasmoke, have been efficiently detecting these, and other spam/rude/abusive posts, and both placing automatic spam flags on them and bringing them to the attention of humans who actively evaluate and raise more flags, deleting them quickly. You're seeing them more because Charcoal is on strike, so the spam isn't getting deleted.
    – Makyen
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 4:55
  • Most of the spam seems to occur at 9-10 PM MST.
    – CPlus
    Commented Aug 1, 2023 at 4:31

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That's what smoke detector essentially does. It is not running because of the ongoing moderator strike.

See also

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    Should we stop manual flagging of spam in the review to strengthen the moderators' strike? Where to get news about strike results?
    – help-info.de
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 5:42
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    updates here . and I like triplee's answer to if you should here
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 6:05
  • @help-info.de honestly that's up to you and how you feel about the situation. Users stopping handling flags is a double edged sword. On one hand it is a show of solidarity which is definitely appreciated, but on the other hand it means that content that should be flagged and eventually deleted may not be. Personally I like the flags to keep coming in because it shows SE that there are problems that still need dealing with, and also when the strike ends it gives us an easy to action list of things to deal with. What you do comes down to you and how you want to show support.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 9:45
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    I am flagging spam, so SE employees must handle the spam, and forcing them to see how truly awful their tool’s actually are. That’s all I am doing.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 12:27
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    I was flagging spam, it's so super annoying and in auto-pilot mode. But getting fed up with it rapidly, it's a constant torrent of spam. Reading all this, I feel rather stupid for doing something than can be easily automated.
    – user705502
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 15:36
  • @VomitIT-ChunkyMessStyle - User moderation tools are absolutely horrible, often the option you should select, isn’t actually offered. Migration options have been limited unnecessarily for over a decade. User moderator tools at higher reputations, in my opinion, should offer limited ways to link users to other spam once a threshold’s been reached (more than 2 contributions marked as verified spam). Allowing questions that have been resubmitted by a user to be marked as duplicate of a question that’s been deleted. But what’s being worked on it is a worthless AI title generation feature
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 16:20
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    We won’t get into the actual limitations of the actual moderator tools.. Tools that are apparently not self explanatory that SE staff can’t use them without making mistakes
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 16:24
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    @VomitIT-ChunkyMessStyle if you want to know how Charcoal works then you can read up at charcoal-se.org
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented Jul 17, 2023 at 18:59

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