itch.io Community » itch.io » Ideas & Feedback

Automatic moderation for comments with links

npckc · 2025-07-06T13:05:23Z

There seem to have been more spam accounts leaving comments saying things like "Updated version here" with links to suspicious sites. While I delete and report these whenever I receive them, it feels like there should be a way to not have these very obvious spam comments be displayed on game pages. (It is a slight improvement over the porn gif comments that were being spammed previously, at least.) Would it be possible to implement a feature where comments that link outside of itch are not displayed until the creator of the page approve them? This could be an opt-in feature so creators who want to have their comments be a free-for-all like they are now can still have that, but it could be a nice in-between option for people who don't want to close off comments entirely but also don't want to keep deleting suspicious-looking spam comments, and it would make itch comments safer because people wouldn't be led off itch to suspicious external websites.

A topic by npckc created Jul 06, 2025 Views: 3,037 Replies: 44

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Sjava78 days ago (1 edit) (+3)

Hi. The same problem. I'm reporting, cleaning and banning about 10+ such spam comments a day... every day... 365 days a year. And having just terrible headache on patch releases because of it feels like a bot total attack.

My suggestion to the itch development team: please make it possible to automatically redirect posts with links to the pending section. I really need this!

Benefits : it could wait for moderation there. And when it is checked I'll be able to deside what to do with it. And as a dev I won't miss smth important if community sends me link to video or Bug-report.

Just give me the possibility to automatically send posts containing links to pending section

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Frisk74 days ago(+4)

It's surprising to me that a platform such as itch.io has done seemingly nothing until now to address the issue of spam in the comments. This issue has been going on for months now and legitimately makes players less safe. Those bad actors often post the same links over and over, something for someone who has been dealing in moderation for years now seems to be trivial to address by at least sending all of the comments that match certain string with obviously malicious link to /dev/null.

Of course, that shouldn't be the only solution to address it, commenters mentioned in this thread how this could be helped with and there are multiple ways this could be done. I see a game that daily receives at least 3 of such comments, today they started to use images with links that lead to malicious files.

This is urgent issue that affects many games, many creators and one that could use at the very least some kind of interim solution (while better and more long-term solution is being worked on) to help creators fight back against the spammers.

Really disappointing to see lack of visible addressal of this issue.

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Shady Characters74 days ago(+2)

Just three comment like that a day? I consider myself lucky when I only have to remove three of those in a day. Usually it is closer to ten. I am almost became desensitized to them at them point. Whenever I see a comment notification, I automatically assume that it is spam

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Sjava73 days ago

Recently, spam has decreased by about two times. But pictures have appeared - something new. Well, the good news is that they could not put links in the picture. And this means that no one will manually retype the address from a dubious comment. Well, or natural selection should do the trick.

On the other hand, it is still annoying. Still, it would be easier to give developers the opportunity to check and confirm comments on their pages while they invent new methods of combating spam. If it were possible to configure it even more in detail, such as sending all links and/or pictures to waiting/checking, it would be great.

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Synstoria70 days ago (1 edit) (+3)

I was about to post about this issue, I wanted to suggest (like WitchPotion) to ban links in comment entirely, but some answers made me think it could indeed cause problem to legitimate people. This is becoming very troublesome, I think NPCKC solution is very elegant and would work perfectly well, I really want to support it.

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Papel68 days ago(+1)

itch.io really needs to come up with ANYTHING for us to deal with this spam. Since we have plenty of power on our own stuff's pages, I feel like having a checkbox that says "Allow HTML in comments?" would be a good start - that'd deal with links and images. Deimus' idea of having comments in a moderation line, where they won't appear to anyone else is also a good option, I think it would fit perfectly with the HTML checkbox - if a comment has any <tags>, it goes to the moderation line and awaits for approval.

What is catching my attention now is that some of the spam is linking to itch "games", which I bet are just a bunch of malicious javascript code.

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Sjava49 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

OK, I've got update.. and it is sad ☹️.

I don't know what is happening, but now about 95% of comments from normal ppl just stuck in pending + they appear there only in 5-6 hours after ppl post them. So even checking every hour I'm able to see it in pending posts much later. And it causes troubles, because ppl try to post again or think they are not wanted here.

On the other hand spam with links goes straight to the game's main post comments. And nothing stops them.

Just want to ask wtf is going on?

Can we just have the button to send on pending for moderation all comments on our game page?

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redonihunter49 days ago(+1)

Well. It is not exactly the time of the year for working, unless you are a criminal.

And of course, Itch's system is not all that good in catching the spammers. This is unfair, of course. We only see the spammers the system did not catch. But the spammers just try again and again and again and again and again and and agian and again and again and again and again, till they manage it.

There was a typo in there. Did you all catch it first time...

I sure hope they come up with some genius low cost idea to fix the situation. They once managed to break a certain type of scam. That particular scam was never seen again, but those criminals did not stop working, they just used other methods to try and scam and hack people. Short of sending some police to take away their toys, nothing is gonna help there, I fear. I guess it is one of those "call centers" in certain places of the world. I have seen them in documentations. They professionally scam people all over the world and probably hack Itch as a side gig.

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Studio Ginkgo41 days ago(+3)

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 Ginkgo40 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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redonihunter35 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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Hempuli36 days ago(+1)

Yup, been having this issue a bunch lately; lots of "Updated version here: >suspicious link>"

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npckc36 days ago(+1)

funnily enough i actually got flagged for posting a regular comment on a game, and i really don't know why my account was flagged when spam comments are getting through fine.

i already had 2fa activated on my account... i have contacted itch support via email about this issue, but as of this comment, i have not received any response & don't seem to have a way to check if this warning on my account has been removed or not.

so clearly itch is trying to do something, but what it's doing is flagging real human accounts & not spam bots.

anyway, not a great solution but what i've been doing is adding custom css to hide the comment box entirely.

pros: it leaves up the old comments at least.

cons: real people can't leave new comments and that's sad...

the code:

/* hiding comment box */
.community_post_form_widget {display:none;} 
.community_post_list_widget::before {content:'[Comments closed due to site-wide spam]\00000a \00000a \00000a'; white-space: pre-wrap;}

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Studio Ginkgo2 days ago(+4)

I have to say, it’s been pretty quiet lately. I haven’t seen any spam comments recently—great job by the itch.io team!

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