Comment spammers use AI in another assault on bloggers

Showing all posts about trends

Comment spammers use AI in another assault on bloggers

2 October 2025

When I turned comments back on here a few months ago, after an absence of many years, I was amazed at how quickly spam comments began appearing. Good news travels fast it seems. A new outlet has appeared for us to post our drivel — quick — get over there. But because every comment made here is held back for approval, none of them ever see the light of day.

Of course I wasn’t really surprised at the speed at which the spam arrived. Nor the lack of genuine comments, though there have been a few. I re-enabled comments as a way to centralise my web presence back onto this website. I’m not the biggest fan of social media, centralised or decentralised, but not because I dislike it (well, not too much), rather social media is just too time consuming.

What did dumbfound me though was the empty-headed nature of the spam comments being left. Some were barely coherent, while others were literally single words made up of random letters. What blogger, in their right mind, is going to approve those sorts of comments? A time-poor blogger, or one not paying attention, I think might be the answer.

These senseless utterances aren’t offensive, so maybe they’ll, you know, just get approved. And with some websites allowing follow-up comments from the same person to be posted without moderation, the floodgates would be open. But I suspect few spam-commenters saw much of what they wrote ever approved. But now they have changed tactics, and are using AI to craft their foul fare.

A lot of the recent comment spam I’m seeing looks as if the writer has read the post they’re responding to, through the way a comment is worded. When I posted about Tim Berners-Lee a few days ago, a lot of comments similar to this began appearing:

Oh Timothy, your call to have AI development moved under the auspices of a global not-for-profit is just a little simplistic, don’t you think? Yes, you invented the internet and gave it to us for free, and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But placing AI development in the hands of a non-commercial entity is asking an awful lot.redacted spammy link

At first pass, the comment seems genuine. I too thought Berners-Lee was being optimistic in the extreme by suggesting a global not-for-profit organisation oversee future development of AI, but I’d never call Berners-Lee naive. He knows what he’s saying, and the idea makes sense, though I can’t see it ever happening. But that’s another story.

A commenter though is entitled to their opinion. And it almost seemed like an actual point-of-view, but for the ridiculous inclusion of an embedded spam link. Without, notably, a space after the previous sentence. The writer seems switched-on, but their oddly deficient syntax betrays them. And then the question: why on earth embed a spam link within the comment?

Did they not see the field on the comment form that allows a URL to be included? It’s possible I might have missed the spam-link if they did that. Usually though, I look closely at the URL of a commenter’s website. But then going on to post numerous, slightly differently worded, variations of the same comment, from the same IP no less, somewhat gives the show away.

Even writing this article is helping train the AI spam-commenters though. What bloggers, who allow comments, are facing though are somewhat more sophisticated spammers, who are using AI to compose comment spam that look like the real deal.

And yes, I look forward to seeing the thoughts of the AI spam-commenters in response to this post.

Answer engines: a new challenge for content writers, bloggers

25 September 2025

Press Gazette:

The biggest year-on-year declines were at Forbes (down 53% to 85.5 million visits — the steepest decline year on year for the second month in a row), Huffington Post (down 45% to 41.3 million), Business Insider (down 44% to 66.6 million), and News 18 (down 42% to 146.3 million). The Independent, CBC and Washington Post also closely followed with drops of 41% in year on year site visits.

Nearly all of the world’s top fifty English language websites have experienced declines in traffic, to greater or lesser degrees, in the last twelve months. Only one has bucked the trend, Substack, but I’m not sure that’s good news. But the reason for the sometimes sharp falls in visitors? AI overviews generated by many of the search engines, that’s what.

People searching for information online are increasingly satisfied with the AI generated summaries, that appear, as the first “result”, in response to a question they have. These overviews are created by drawing on webpages carrying relevant information, and spare search engines users from the need to visit said webpages.

It’s great for those looking for a quick answer to a query, provided of course the overview is accurate. It’s not so good for the people who wrote articles, or blog posts, that feed the AI generated overviews, as they no longer see a visit to their website. But this is the future of online search. Instead of search engines though, we will be using answer engines to source information.

In short, answer engines results will be similar to the AI overviews we see at present. Everything a searcher needs to know will be displayed in the result. There will be no need to visit individual webpages again.

From a content writer’s perspective, it can only be hoped answer engines will cite the sources used to concoct their response to a query. This for however many people who might still wish to verify the information provided by the answer engine, that is.

But not everyone writes content to be indexed by a search engine, and many actively prevent their websites from being looked at by the search engines. I get the feeling this may not be the case for answer engines though. Writers and bloggers are all too aware of AI scraper bots marauding their content, whether they like it or not, to train AI agents.

But going forward, this might be something content writers have to expect, accept even, it they want their work to be recognised. We can all see where this is going. The end of SEO, and the advent of — I don’t know — AEO, being Answer Engine Optimisation. Those wanting their content to be found by the answer engines are going to need to figure out how to optimise it thusly.

No doubt help will at be hand though. AEO experts and gurus will surely be among us soon, if they are not already. But that’s enough good news from me for one day.

Online freelance marketplace Fiverr aspires to be an ‘AI-first’ company

20 September 2025

Fiverr plans to layoff one third of its workforce in a bid to become an AI-first enterprise, says CEO Micha Kaufman. By swapping out people for AI technologies, the company will become leaner and faster, according to Kaufman. Time will tell.

As of late last year, Fiverr employed some seven-hundred-and-sixty people, meaning about two-hundred-and-fifty jobs are on the line. Kaufman flagged the move earlier this year, when he warned AI was coming for everyone’s jobs, including his.

The last days of social media, or wishful thinking?

19 September 2025

James O’Sullivan, writing for Noema:

While content proliferates, engagement is evaporating. Average interaction rates across major platforms are declining fast: Facebook and X posts now scrape an average 0.15% engagement, while Instagram has dropped 24% year-on-year. Even TikTok has begun to plateau. People aren’t connecting or conversing on social media like they used to; they’re just wading through slop, that is, low-effort, low-quality content produced at scale, often with AI, for engagement.

When social media is used to be social, it is useful. When deployed (in an attempt) to garner influence, especially through re-posting slop, not so much.

Despite the low quality content, and apparent lack of engagement, I don’t see social media, as we presently know it, going anywhere. Maybe the argument could be made that social media is dead, and presently exists in a zombie like state instead, dead but undead.

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social media, social networks, trends

Death by a thousand cuts: the AI scraper indexing one blog post at a time

16 September 2025

Like many online-publishers/bloggers, I’ve experienced significant surges of traffic caused by AI bots indexing — or whatever they do — thousands of pages at a time on my website.

I’m in two minds as to whether or not to block this activity, but it seems pointless as many crawlers disregard disallow requests. Besides, I can’t stop other entities, human or otherwise, accessing the content here, and doing what they will with it.

Once, way back in 2000, someone in New Zealand copied the entirely of the then disassociated website, republished it under the name disenfranchised or something, and called it their own work. I didn’t discover the reproduction by chance though. The responsible party emailed to tell me about it.

I wrote back (effectively) saying they should design their own website. disenfranchised, or whatever it was, vanished a few weeks later. I think they hoped I would write ceaselessly about the “rip-off” of my work, but I when I said no more, they found something else to do.

I know there are ways to make copying the contents of a website difficult, but anyone sufficiently motivated will figure out how to bypass those mechanisms.

At least someone liked what I did enough to want to copy it. I highly doubt though any crawlers gathering data for AI agents care whether what I do here is likeable or not. But what annoys me is the way the activities of this scraper are distorting my web analytics (not Google) data.

Yes, you can help yourself to the content here, just don’t mess with my web stats.

Of course, I know web analytics are by no means an exacting science, but they do highlight trends. Somehow my morning online routine would not be the same if I decided to ditch analytics. Besides my stats app holds near on twenty-years worth of data, so there is also the history aspect.

To complicate matters, the scraper uses a different IP address on every single visit, meaning I can’t simply add an ignore tag to one IP, or a range, to keep visits off the analytics app data.

Subsequently, their visits appear to originate from a different town/city, but in the same country (a populous nation in east Asia). There is also no rhyme or reason to the maybe twenty to thirty pages they visit daily. One minute it is a years old post, the next something far more recent.

As the crawler did not snatch up several thousand post in one fell swoop, it will doubtless be active for sometime to come. In the meantime I’ll make the most of thinking my website is ever so slightly more popular than usual, since there’s not much else to do.

Smartphone ban sees NYC students talk, play cards, use Polaroid cameras, daydream

15 September 2025

New York City recently introduced a smartphone ban in public schools. While students are not barred from owning phones, they must store their devices away during school hours.

While it’s early days, students appear to be adjusting well to life without smartphones, even if it’s only for a few hours a day. School-goers have taken to playing cards, engaging in face-to-face conversation, using Polaroid cameras, and even daydreaming, a favourite activity of mine both during and outside classes, back in my school days.

Needless to say though, some students have figured out ways to circumvent the ban, with some using burner phones they have obtained. The school hours ban seems like a good idea, and being without a smartphone for a relatively short time daily is hardly the end of the world. Some enforced non-smartphone time, a small digital detox sort of thing, for everyone, doesn’t seem a half bad idea.

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smartphones, technology, trends

We must not let AI agents scare us off using em dashes in our writing

11 September 2025

Michael Bassili:

I really miss using em dashes in my writing. Ever since content creators started using ChatGPT to help (or supplement) their writing, em dashes have become indicators of AI use.

Something is really wrong — seriously — when people feel they have to stop using certain punctuation marks for fear of their work being considered to be generated by an AI agent.

I’m a prolific user of em dashes — as I’ve said before — and have no intention of doing away with them just because AI agents have the good sense to include em dashes in their output.

Bloggers might have been syndicating content with ICE not RSS

11 September 2025

Ryan Farley, writing at Buttondown:

Not many people talk about how or why RSS won the content syndication war because few people are aware that a war ever took place. Everyone was so fixated on the drama over RSS’s competing standards (Atom vs RSS 2.0) that they barely registered the rise and fall of the Information and Content Exchange (ICE) specification, which had been created, funded, and eventually abandoned by Microsoft, Adobe, CNET, and other household names.

Here’s a slice of web history I was unaware of until now: an alternative blog content syndication specification that was — for a short time — in competition with RSS.

That Microsoft, as one of the backers of Information and Content Exchange (ICE) syndication, quietly began using RSS, says a lot. A lot about RSS, and Microsoft.

Techtember, a time to scale down your tech stack… if applicable

9 September 2025

September is the month tech companies launch new products, and encourage consumers to buy up, giving rise to the portmanteau Techtember. You learn something new everyday. But instead of increasing our tech stack of stuff, Andreas at 82mhz suggests we shed excess paraphernalia.

I like the idea, and I would if I could, but my tech stack pretty much consists of a laptop, a smartphone, and some headphones. That’s it. No router (we tether), no printer, nor smartwatch even… who needs one when you can check the time on your phone or lappy?

I sit here churning out copy daily, and all I have to my name is a laptop. Go on, laugh, I don’t mind.

Happy Techtember then to all who celebrate it…

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technology, trends

A train station comes to Woollahra NSW: there goes the neighbourhood

3 September 2025

Woollahra, a suburb in Sydney’s east, is soon to have a train station. At first pass that doesn’t seem like a big deal. But the story is as long as the rail line is winding. Proposals to build a station in the affluent suburb are over a century old.

Then, in the 1970’s, as the Eastern Suburbs train line, AKA the T4, was being constructed, foundations for a station were laid. But work came to an abrupt halt when residents, unhappy at the prospect of a train station in their backyard, succeeded in stopping construction.

The partly built station sits between the stations at Edgecliff, and Bondi Junction, where the T4 line presently* terminates, a kilometre or two from the beach at Bondi. But with the housing situation in Sydney reaching dire proportions, the NSW State Government has revived plans to build the station, and then construct much needed high-density residences in the vicinity.

News of the station, and apartment blocks, has no doubt come as a double blow to locals.

Woollahra is far from apartment building free — an array of beautiful art deco style medium-density residences span Edgecliff Road — and the prospect of high density blocks will be causing alarm to some. But the reality is Sydney needs more residences, and it is unreasonable to expect all of these be built “somewhere” in the west of the city.

Or “the western side of ANZAC Parade”, a quip sometimes uttered by those residing on the eastern side of ANZAC Parade. ANZAC Parade being a major roadway running from inner Sydney through to La Perouse, at the southern end of the eastern suburbs.

Some Woollahra residents will argue the presence of high-rise dwellings will be at odds with the “character” of the suburb. Woollahra is possessed of houses built in the nineteenth century, quiet tree-lined streets (one or two rather steep), boutique shops, and a village-like ambience. It is a place many people would like to call home. The building proposals will bring significant changes.

Bondi Junction street scene at dusk featuring modern buildings, traffic lights, and trees. Cars are seen on the road alongside pedestrians, with a pharmacy sign illuminated. The sky displays shades of blue as the sun sets.

Spring Street, Bondi Junction, NSW, at dusk. Photo taken June 2021. Note the construction crane in the top right hand corner.

But such is life in the big city. Change is constant. Bondi Junction — where we stay when not on the NSW Central Coast — situated right next to Woollahra, has undergone a tremendous transformation in the last decade, particularly along parts of Oxford Street. While always a mixed commercial/retail and residential precinct, numerous high-density apartment blocks now line Oxford street.

Of course Bondi Junction, being a retail centre, and public transport hub, with the aforementioned T4 train line, and numerous bus services, seems an ideal place to build residences. That’s not to say everyone in Bondi Junction is happy with the prospect. Many feel the suburb has been over-developed. But again, housing shortages in the region have compelled governments to act.

Yet the “residential-isation” of Oxford Street, and surrounds, has not always been a bad thing. Bondi Junction is at once a quiet residential suburb, after the shops close, in the midst of a bustling commercial centre. People walk their dogs along Oxford Street in the evenings, a sight that would not have been seen ten years ago.

Despite this metamorphosis, perceptions of Bondi Junction have not changed.

Either within the eastern suburbs, or elsewhere in Sydney. As far as other residents of the eastern suburbs are concerned, the junction is “ugly”. Meanwhile people outside the eastern suburbs think Bondi Junction is full of rich snobs. But nahsayers of the junction are looking at the wrong suburb when identifying ugly, or seeking to point out “rich snobs”.

But I digress. I’m not saying high-density residential blocks in Woollahra, full of dog owners, will bring about any sort of catharsis to existing residents who are going to be subject to possibly decades of disruptive construction work. They had all of that in Bondi Junction, and will probably continue to, but the world did not end.

Whether we like it or not, high-density accommodation is one of the solutions to the shortage of housing, and is something everyone in Sydney needs to get used to.

* there were proposals to extend the train line to Bondi Beach, but residents rallied to oppose the idea.

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