Hello everyone,
Just wanted to point out that some bots are writing fake posts and I noticed that now they’re pretending to be actual forum members.
The first picture is a post from one of our lovely forum members and the second is from who I strongly suspect is a bot. A lot of these fake replies seem to end with a phrase of “if you want to follow my crafty journey or get any tips go to my website” which isn’t a knitting website at all. Just for awareness so you don’t click on the links!
I’m often tempted to strike up a conversation with some of them.
I wonder what happens when 2 bots start talking to each other and just perpetuate the falsehoods they tell one another.
Haha! I’m glad I’m not the only one! I worry that interacting with them encourages them so I haven’t so far.
My sister and I had those teddy ruxpin toys when we were kids that would play back your voice to you and we used to make them copy each other until it was a hilariously discordant mess. That’s what I imagine would happen if they just started speaking to each other. Grade A gibberish!
That’s fantastic!
Maybe the forum elves could just shift all the bot posts to one thread and we leave 'em to it. It could be hilarious, esp as they all think they can knit.
Wow real sue here that’s really freaky! Why do they do it?
Hi real Sue! I think it’s to get people to click on their links to their dodgy websites. They’re getting good but I’d been following your knitting so I knew they were stealing from your posts.
Thanks Naypo.
Hey real sue
Sometimes there’s no dodgy link in the first post or 3 but they do that to test the waters and later start including the links, or go back and insert a link in a previous post.
I’m sure there are AIs practising their knitting skills here too. People worry AI will take away all jobs from humans but these are just making more work for the forum elves to clean up. AI can’t knit and can’t understand a pattern even though they confidently ‘design’ a pattern and present it as real, but they are very keen to get in on any forum convo.
Don’t let it put you off the forum.
