Post by Studio Ginkgo in Automatic moderation for comments with links

Viewing post in Automatic moderation for comments with links

Hello, and I wish you all a Happy New Year.

This spam issue seems to have persisted for a very long time, yet itch.io doesn't appear to have any intention of taking active measures to address it.

I honestly cannot understand how spammers are managing to bypass the pending queue and post comments containing scam links.
Ever since I realized that actual users are falling victim to these scams, I've been under considerable stress.

I couldn't just sit and wait for itch.io to act anymore, so I developed a simple Python-based bot to manage comments myself.
It includes a whitelist feature, so safe URLs (like YouTube links) won't be deleted.

I hope this tool helps other developers facing the same frustration.

https://gist.github.com/StudioGinkgo/3c1b350a00121dde54817aef2f2b71d1

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Studio Ginkgo27 days ago(+1)

2026-01-02 16:47:52 [INFO] [16:47:52] No spam found. Scanned 65 comments.
2026-01-02 16:52:53 [WARNING] 🚨 SPAM DETECTED! (Author: ecuauhtemoc)
2026-01-02 16:52:53 [WARNING] - Blocked Links: ['https://ecuauhtemoc.itch.io/']
2026-01-02 16:52:53 [WARNING] - Content: [NEW VERSION!] Updated Version...
2026-01-02 16:52:54 [INFO] -> [Action] Deleted Successfully 🗑️
2026-01-02 16:57:56 [INFO] [16:57:56] No spam found. Scanned 65 comments.

Just confirmed that ICBM flawlessly deleted a real scam link — incredibly satisfying 😄
I’ve also added headless mode to ICBM, so feel free to check it out!

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redonihunter22 days ago(+3)

The last spam I saw, linked to an Itch profile and had a link to Github. It was posted on a hacked account. I also saw images being used in spam comments.

And last time I checked, 2fa would not protect an account from being hacked and subsequently used for posting malware and comments. I hope they did improve or will improve that.

And to shame Itch's system, the account is still posting. I think it is like 500 comments in the last hours. While we do not see what the system blocks, the things we do see are often embarassing. While from the other side, users get blocked for things they do not understand.

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