@quanin I don’t have a question like that. We explain the purpose of the community and ask why you want to join. There is no question that chat gpt can’t reliably answer but a human reliably can. Captcha has the same issue.
@fastfinge Captcha requires a couple of tries, usually, but I get you. Most of it's a judgement call. Maybe take the explanation of what the community is? That's also on your about page, right?
@quanin In the past six months AI has fooled me twice and I let a spammer in. The biggest clue is answer length. Most humans can’t even be bothered to answer with a full sentence. AI will give an entire paragraph with no spelling or grammar mistakes. So now I’m in the weird place where the guy who answers “Im blind aprov my act plz” is Less suspicious.
@fastfinge If you're taking a paragraph to answer a question that can be answered in at most six words, you're probably putting way too much effort to it. Or you're an AI. If it were me, auto-reject.
@quanin In that case I check the email address these days. Does it have a LinkedIn or iMessage or something? What lives at the domain? Does googling the username bring up other profiles? That kind of thing.
@fastfinge Yup. Valid. Most of the folks over here I've had some kind of interaction with so I already flipped the spammer flag off. But John Rando? Yeah he gets a close look. Fortunately my instance doesn't get enough traffic to warrant a John Rando and I'm okay with that.
@fastfinge Yup, mine's not invite only but it's double opt-in. If the spammer's smart enough to click the email verification link, they deserve the closer look.
@quanin Most spammers are. Most of the obvious spam I reject had verified the gibberish email address. I think they just click every link in every email they get with a script. I should try adding a link in the footer that bans every ip that clicks it.
@fastfinge See, I'm an ass, and so I'd probably reject those and make them provide an actual email address. But I'm also used to being on the other side of that conversation doing account verification shit for a guy who disconnected his disposable iCloud address 6 months ago.
@quanin Right, but I have four other mods in different time zones. So I’m okay with letting a couple through because they usually only last two minutes. Whereas you Need to be a bit more careful. My goals mean I’d rather a spammer sneak through every few months than reject a real user. Whereas you’re the opposite.
@fastfinge Like I said, I get it. If I got more traffic than I do I might see things differently. As it is right now, no one signs up to my instance who hasn't already asked me so I haven't been given an excuse to rethink yet.
