Reply To: Spam wave hitting my forum again

Personally, yeah, same here. It’s gotten stupid this week. I’m seeing the same pattern too — random username, blank-ish profile, one junk link, then some garbage post that looks copy/pasted from a bot farm. The annoying part is they’re not even trying hard, which makes it worse because you still have to deal with it. I’ve had better luck with a couple small friction points than with just letting moderation catch it after the fact. If the signup is too easy, they’ll just keep walking through the door. First-post approval helps a bit, but like you said, once it turns into a flood it’s just more work for whoever’s cleaning up. What’s been weird for me is the bots seem to come in bursts. Quiet for a day or two, then suddenly 20 accounts with the same dumb pattern. Feels automated as hell. Not sure there’s a magic fix anymore. The old “just add a captcha” stuff barely seems to slow them down now.