34

I noticed that all questions under the tag and almost all answers are probably fake:

  • Almost all are extremely vague and short, except for a couple that seem to contain just a bit of script, but still make no sense
  • All were posted in May 2022, in fact most were posted in May 27-30.
  • Almost all of the answers are low-quality generic answers linking to the vendor's documentation landing page.
  • The linked pages are in Chinese and don't even seem to be relevant to the questions.
  • Others are feature lists
  • All asker and answerer accounts were created on the same day the questions were asked.

And the funniest thing, one of the "accounts" goes from asking about Paxos usage one day to not knowing what partitioning is for 6 days later.

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  • 5
    Tag's gone now. (Mostly) wasn't me, so I can't take the credit. In the future, custom flags are probably better than a meta post, as you really need moderators to solve this. There's not a lot the Meta community can do here.
    – Ryan M Mod
    Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 8:59
  • I've tagged or reported all 40 oceanbase questions and answers already. Started from a fishy answer but quickly realized there was a pattern Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 9:07
  • 1
    The flags were good and definitely the right approach (I didn't acknowledge them in my original comment to maintain confidentiality of your flags unless you chose to mention them).
    – Ryan M Mod
    Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 9:10
  • 4
    Is OceanBase itself legitimate? From CGTN's website: "Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Chinese giant Alibaba, has outstripped veteran player Oracle's rival product with its self-developed database called OceanBase to become the world's No.1 in terms of performance". CGTN's web site: "China Global Television Network (CGTN) is the international division of..." - Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 9:26
  • cont' - "state media outlet China Central Television (CCTV)". The reference is from a non-English Wikipedia page. Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 9:27
  • Should I add a fraud-detection tag to the question? In fact, identifying such accounts and transactions is probably one of the easi(er) fraud detection algorithms. It's weird talking about fraud in a Q&A site though Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 9:30
  • 11
    "It's weird talking about fraud in a Q&A site though" Oh how I wish fraud were rare here...whether it's spam, plagiarism, or voting fraud, there's no shortage of it. But we remove it whenever we catch it, and we catch it pretty often, so we'll take it as a compliment that it largely goes unnoticed :-)
    – Ryan M Mod
    Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 9:34
  • 1
    Oh, I do notice, eg around exam time or end of semester. I've also noticed upvoting rings in the past (but not recently). And I suspect I've seen high-rep accounts with naïve questions in their area of "expertise" that make me suspect the account was sold. Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 9:41
  • 2
    I never really understand what people think they gain from buying a Stack Overflow account; to try impress a potential employer? Surely a good employer would notice the person can't do the things their account says they can when they interview them, or (worse) when they employ them and can't complete the work they've been assigned which their Stack Overflow account implies they knew how to do easily.
    – Thom A
    Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 11:07
  • 1
    @Larnu not all employers are good. And sometimes, especially for outsourcing agencies, the aim is to find enough bodies for the actual employer. Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 13:02
  • That's why I added emphasis to good, @PanagiotisKanavos .
    – Thom A
    Commented Jun 7, 2022 at 13:04
  • 3
    @RyanM-Regenerateresponse You'll need to remove your pretty status-completed tag now.
    – tchrist
    Commented Jul 1, 2023 at 5:52
  • 3
    It does look suspicious. The last six questions with an average span of about 7 minutes (by six different users). And of the 89 visible questions, 53 questions were asked in the last 20 hours. Commented Jul 1, 2023 at 16:24
  • 1
    I found one remaining question with the tag, that pre-dated this Meta post. I removed it, since the fact that OP was apparently attempting to build from the Oceanbase repository, appears completely unrelated to the actual task or expertise needed to answer. Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 0:48

1 Answer 1

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I'm afraid this is no longer : they’re baaaack, with something like 89 (and endlessly rising) new spam questions as of this writing.

The community can and should spam-flag these into oblivion because it's all part of a deceptively undisclosed astroturfing campaign, which is forbidden on the SE network. It's part of a stealth marketing campaign by a hidden sponsor to hype their product by pretending to be legit users of the sponsor's product. These are not real users nor real questions. This is a Code of Conduct violation against Inauthentic Usage which applies to every site on the SE network.

The previous incarnation of these spammers 15 months ago was entirely extirpated by moderators; here's one such example. They've recently noticed that Stack Overflow has lost its aegis of protection so they've returned to their wicked ways. If you check the timings of this new volley from them, they all fall within a narrow time-of-day window as well: it looks like it's an automated attack.

Notice what a Google search turns up here on MSO and also on SO main.

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    Sorry, we are on strike ;)
    – Dalija Prasnikar Mod
    Commented Jul 1, 2023 at 8:08
  • So we should spam flag all the questions? Something like this is spam too?
    – Ghost
    Commented Jul 1, 2023 at 16:00
  • 16
    @LightningMcQueen Yes, because it's astroturfing, which is forbidden on the SE network It's part of a stealth campaign by a hidden sponsor to hype their product. These are not real users nor real questions. The previous incarnation of these spammers 15 months ago was entirely extirpated by moderators. They've recently noticed that SO has lost its aegis of protection so they've returned to their wicked ways.
    – tchrist
    Commented Jul 1, 2023 at 16:49
  • 8
    @LightningMcQueen Look at the whole tag. Whatever is going on, it is definitely not legitimate, natural question asking-activity. Somebody is spewing in questions artificially, on the last couple days on the month.
    – nobody
    Commented Jul 1, 2023 at 16:55
  • 3
    For what it's worth, they didn't just start this after the moderation strike went info effect. From the questions that still show up on the tag page, they've been ramping it up since the end of March 2023.
    – nobody
    Commented Jul 1, 2023 at 18:11
  • 9
    Awesome. So let SE staff handle their own product. (as if they'll do it.) Commented Jul 2, 2023 at 13:35
  • 2
    Is there good reason to point out to them that it's happening, and how we're currently not going to do anything about it? Commented Jul 2, 2023 at 14:44
  • ... except it looks like someone (not me) did do something about it.
    – pppery
    Commented Jul 3, 2023 at 1:00
  • 2
    Seems the new bogus questions were deleted. Commented Jul 3, 2023 at 11:27
  • Why should it bother us? What's the problem it's against Code of Conduct? It's not our Code of Conduct. Commented Jul 6, 2023 at 7:22

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