# Spam bots tricking Discourse filter by editing

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/spam-bots-tricking-discourse-filter-by-editing/101684
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [November 9, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spam-bots-tricking-discourse-filter-by-editing/101684 "2018-11-09T18:12:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 19

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### Author: ![mbauman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mbauman/32/139835_2.png) [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [August 30, 2019, 5:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spam-bots-tricking-discourse-filter-by-editing/101684/19 "2019-08-30T17:21:48Z")

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> [@j127](#):
>
> Edit: I’m looking at one spammer’s post, and it looks completely legitimate and on-topic. There is no clue that it’s a spammer, except for the injected links.

You may find the sibling topic [Human-driven copy-paste spam](https://meta.discourse.org/t/human-driven-copy-paste-spam/97205) informative if you’re not following it yet.

This form of spam **only works because it’s invisible to moderators and the active community.** That’s the only reason it’s happening. Perhaps all edits could bump the thread in the latest activity view — if the topic has already been read, then it’d be a direct link to that edited post. That would completely solve both issues (the spam and the worthless initial copy-paste content) in one fell swoop.

Even simpler (although not quite as effective), I know my fellow moderators and I would happily keep tabs on a special view that simply displayed posts that have been edited, sorted by their edit time (and perhaps optionally restricted by trust level).

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/spam-bots-tricking-discourse-filter-by-editing/101684)._