@Hound

most (probably all) of the b'day user names are legit, IDK for instance if you remember T4R1K from back in the day? often these are people who only ever made a few posts

the Marina & Bogdan names are examples of bot groups signing up automatically in large batches. they get put in a temporary group (this is true for all new members, the legit ones too) and then they get vetted by admin. only the ones who don't seem to be bots get the pass and can actually post

it's when new users have names that look legit (we had an Elon Musk earlier this week) we assumed was either a real new user or a new secondary account (because of the ET Musk buys Twitter thread in Gen Chat) that we get it wrong and accidentally wave a bot through

it would seem like the most advanced bots make user names now based on actual forum content (wu like user names, the Musk account). this was not the case before

in extremely rare cases we get a bot who is still awaiting vetting - the bot is in the temp group where it can't post - and somehow it still bypasses our system and starts posting without admin having approved the account. we have no idea how this is possible

sorry for the long winded and boring explanation lol


@Sha

I think it's an automated bot process where the rationale is the larger the group that is created, the better the odds are that at least one gets through/gets approved. good for us because this makes it easier to spot the fake accounts since tgey basically have the same name