Disclaimer: I'm not sure how this could be financially and technically feasible, but reducing spam traffic at the very early stage of posting can certainly help reduce resources, thus voat's running costs.
Current voat's way to deal with spam is with the help of devoted voaters and janitors (@cynabuns, @dubbelnougat, @DerKatalog, @Owlchemy, me included) who report directly in /v/reportspammers. Reports are then reviewed by @cynabuns, and they are submitted for review by Puttitout.
This process can take several days, depending on Putt's availability.
Blocking obvious commercial spam (accounts and domains) minutes after being posted would definitely turn down most spammers to create new accounts and domains, knowing they are gonna waste their time.
My idea is that voat could add a new category of moderators (anti-spam) that would have the ability to site-wide ban, "only" newly created spam accounts (less than a month or to be decided) and their posts & comments.
This chosen group of truthful voaters could together help @Puttitout dealing with spam reports.
The less time spent by Putt on dealing with spam reports, the more time he'll have on improving voat.
Of course, for neutrality and to prevent abuse, bans from these "anti-spam" mod team will all be logged and publicly accessible in /v/reportspammers' sidebar, where the current ban lists are.
Now, in case a new account is mistakenly banned, any "anti-spam" mod will be able to un-ban with mutual agreement.
Imagine the /all/new queue with close to no spam that would last, at best, less than a couple minutes.
I think It would not be worth the time for most of these spammers to create fake accounts, submit random contents in relevant subs, for a determined amount of time, commenting relevant things in topics, before starting posting real spam links.
What do you guys think?
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[–] Owlchemy 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
I'd be okay, assuming that someone else would also still review the work of the anti-spam killers, giving it a second look and deciding either to leave the ban in place or unblock it. Some spam can be in the eye of the beholder.
I guess my main question/thought, though is would this be to ban domains and/or new users? If new users, this brings up the thought that once banned, they'd have no way of fighting the ban, but to add a new account to complain. Also, maybe there could be a 'lock' account kind of thing where a user or domain is locked out by the anti-spam team until it gets more than a single anti-spammer to concur with the decision. That way no one could run roughshod over the system and go rogue.
[–] AOU [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Good idea!
[–] Owlchemy 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I have another thought I'll post separately in a moment ... I think it'll be appropriate.