Are you talking about comments or are you talking about fake projects?
comments.
Is there a new wave of spam comments?
this discussion is not concerned with details of that nature.
I am not sure what you are talking about.
it’s okay, we don’t all have to understand each other, all the time. usually, when that happens to me, i try re-reading the piece.
anyway, i do appreciate your reply, but having read it a couple of times, i can’t say i understand what you are trying to add the discussion. i get that there are other issues affecting itch.io — i hope i did not invite a discussion about those.
i’m aware folks can report repositories on github, and that it is more effective as it renders the comments useless — i have built some tooling around this — but github is overwhelmed with other issues.
i don’t agree that devs have the responsibility to monitor and deal with a behavior that affects multiple games. i see it as a platform issue, and i fail to see any interest from itch.io to answer it.
this is a big issue to the health of the itch.io community
opinions
itch.io should be monitoring and handling malware spam
there should be better tools for devs to manage the comments on their games
it should not be up to users to build external tooling to monitor and alert the community against malware
it should not take multiple days for a spamming account to be suspended for distributing malware
some suggestions
devs
close your comment sections for the time being
down vote and report malware/spam comments
reply with warnings so other users know to stay away
don’t burn yourself out, please.
itch.io
default to hide comments with too many downvotes (< -3)
internal dashboard listing of top accounts comment count over the last 12/24/48h
internal dashboard listing of accounts which comments match certain selectors. ex: *.github.io/* and update
ability to suspend commenting rights without nuking the account — some of these accounts had their credentials stolen, it’s unfair to deprive users from accessing their digital collections.
what i am doing:
monitor games for new comments
comments matching certain selectors get flagged
investigate flagged comments and download the malware
when malware is confirmed report to itch.io and github
untenable
the situation is not sustainable it costs me time and money to run the operation, i risk getting my account banned for making too many requests, and there is no clear interest from itch.io to fix this issue.
