How big actually is this forum?

[HaggisShuu]

I was looking at my profile and saw it has approx 18 thousand views. Which to me feels a bit surreal. I feel like I post absolute trash nonsense 70% of the time and more people have seen it than I've ever met in my life - yet I probably only recognise about a dozen active users. That must mean either the same 3 people find me extremely interesting, or there is huge amount of lurkers. 

Edited Monday at 04:18 PM by HaggisShuu

[zil2]

Those are probably just the UK Thought Police bots logging your activities.

[HaggisShuu]

7 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Those are probably just the UK Thought Police bots logging your activities.

It's true, kier Starmer fears me. 

[NeuroTypical]

37 minutes ago, HaggisShuu said:

I was looking at my profile and saw it has approx 18 thousand views.

I think most of those are just me, hitting refresh endlessly to see what glorious new avatar you'll choose next.  

 

Honestly though, I believe the high count is an aspect of the billions of bots out there.  Nearly half of all internet traffic is generated by bots, with bad bots accounting for about one-third of that traffic. This trend has been increasing, with bad bot traffic rising significantly in recent years.  In 10 years if we don't find a way to halt the nefarious bots, probably most of the online folks out interacting with each other will be bots.

We absolutely see bot traffic here.   It started with accounts signing up, changing their avatar, then trying to start a post full of russian text, or links to free viagra, or what have you.  The mods catch all those.   But now I'm guessing half or more of our new people showing up and posting on existing threads, sometimes years old threads, with relevant things to say, are bots.  The technology is certainly there, and it's not like thirdhour has two factor cell phone authentication.  All you need is a fake Google/Facebook/X account or valid email address, and the ability to find the "I agree to the terms" button.

So yeah, don't buy viagra from anyone who contacts you via the thirdhour PM function.   

[LDSGator]

2 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Honestly though, I believe the high count is an aspect of the billions of bots out there. 

Exactly. All of us, myself included, should remember how irrelevant we are. We love the forums and it’s our social media, but we represent .00000000000000001% of the LDS population. Maybe even less. 

[HaggisShuu]

21 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I think most of those are just me, hitting refresh endlessly to see what glorious new avatar you'll choose next.  

 

Honestly though, I believe the high count is an aspect of the billions of bots out there.  Nearly half of all internet traffic is generated by bots, with bad bots accounting for about one-third of that traffic. This trend has been increasing, with bad bot traffic rising significantly in recent years.  In 10 years if we don't find a way to halt the nefarious bots, probably most of the online folks out interacting with each other will be bots.

We absolutely see bot traffic here.   It started with accounts signing up, changing their avatar, then trying to start a post full of russian text, or links to free viagra, or what have you.  The mods catch all those.   But now I'm guessing half or more of our new people showing up and posting on existing threads, sometimes years old threads, with relevant things to say, are bots.  The technology is certainly there, and it's not like thirdhour has two factor cell phone authentication.  All you need is a fake Google/Facebook/X account or valid email address, and the ability to find the "I agree to the terms" button.

So yeah, don't buy viagra from anyone who contacts you via the thirdhour PM function.   

I did get a PM from an individual which feels suspiciously bot like to be honest. Something about connecting because we share the same super cool religion. 

Because of this I might just change the avatar again at some point. 

[LDSGator]

8 minutes ago, HaggisShuu said:

I did get a PM from an individual which feels suspiciously bot like to be honest

Sadly, I’m a real person. Just very boring 

 

😉 

[Ironhold]

4 hours ago, HaggisShuu said:

I did get a PM from an individual which feels suspiciously bot like to be honest. Something about connecting because we share the same super cool religion. 

Because of this I might just change the avatar again at some point. 

Same here actually. 

Right now, Twitter's shot through with scammers and bots, the result of the scammers having figured out they can abuse the group chat feature to spam multiple people at once. The Twitter staff is trying to keep track of it and handle matters, but it's mostly on the users to keep reporting so the staff can keep banning.

[NeuroTypical]

I use X daily, absolutely an active presence there, but I've never been spammed there.  Not even sure what that would look like.   Does this spamming show up in notifications?  I always seem to have something there, but I never pay attention to it.

 

 

 

[mordorbund]

On 6/30/2025 at 1:03 PM, NeuroTypical said:

So yeah, don't buy viagra from anyone who contacts you via the thirdhour PM function. 

Is that why @LDSGator is so cranky about MLMers?

[LDSGator]

15 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

Is that why @LDSGator is so cranky about MLMers?

LOL!!!! Guilty! 

[Ironhold]

7 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

I use X daily, absolutely an active presence there, but I've never been spammed there.  Not even sure what that would look like.   Does this spamming show up in notifications?  I always seem to have something there, but I never pay attention to it.

 

 

 

It would be in your messages folder. 

Twitter security is generally enough to stick suspicious messages and invites behind a screen you have to manually lift to get at, but if you've got your account set up so that Twitter can e-mail you with activity notifications your spam filter (et al) will be filling up soon enough. 

[NeuroTypical]

40 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

It would be in your messages folder. 

Interesting.  I don't think I've ever received a message on X or Twitter before that.  My folder is empty and I've never checked it.   I wonder if I have a "don't let people send you messages" box checked somewhere.  If I do, that's fine with me.

[Ironhold]

1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

Interesting.  I don't think I've ever received a message on X or Twitter before that.  My folder is empty and I've never checked it.   I wonder if I have a "don't let people send you messages" box checked somewhere.  If I do, that's fine with me.

Probably. 

If memory serves, that's the default option, you not being able to get private messages. 

I chose to turn them on so that I could communicate with various people in private, and it's been a bit of a cursed gift since.