What Does "Trending Content" Mean?

[Rich54]

On the PSG home page, there's a section called Trending Content. I never noticed it before, but looking now, I see a bunch of 16-year-old items of little interest and with almost no activity in them. Opening one of them reveals a deleted post.

In what sense are these items "trending" and merit being front-page news on the PSG website? Am I missing something?

Just curious.

 

[IamSam]

A great question and even better observation!!! Note: I had always wondered if I was the only one who noticed this!

Trending content is the forum content that's being most viewed by forum members and guests (traffic).

In what sense are these items "trending" and merit being front-page news on the PSG website? Am I missing something?

Unfortunately you are not missing anything. The trending content is accurate.

Obviously you've noticed the common dates of the "trending content", which has been mostly 2009 and some 2008. These results are generated from the AI bots, posing as "guests", that are scanning members profiles and forum content containing emails. The emails are just another manner for the AI bots to access the users profile. For some reason, these trending threads are scanned on constant repeat by the AI bots and therefore they show up as trending content.

All of the '09 threads (some '08) threads contain email addresses added by the forum user. As new threads get added to the list, I remove the email addresses from them and replace it with *********************. I do this so at a quick glance, I know that I have already edited the thread.

Most of the later forum content is free from email addresses. At some point, the staff adopted the policy of removing email addresses from public posts and signature lines.

This "trending thread" from today still has the emails listed. I will remove them later after you have had a chance to view it.

https://www.photoshopgurus.com/forum/threads/review-select-finish.21876/

Just another indicator and reminder that our forum is under constant attack from the AI assisted spammers.

 

[Rich54]

Very interesting, and very sad that the internet is such a hostile war zone.

 

[IamSam]

Note the high number of forum "guests" online right now. I would venture to guess that only about 20 guests or less are real humans.



Edit note: California based AI bot

 

[IamSam]

Update.

Hey Rich, I have an update on this odd issue! The offending country is primarily Brazil. There's a faction that is spoofing actual Brazilian based IP addresses that only scan the 2009 requests in the Paid Edit forum. There are literally hundreds of IP's that are being used so there's no way possible for me to block them. I wouldn't even if I had the time to do it!

I have taken the painstaking time to go through the 2009 paid edits and removed all email addresses. I thought this would put an end to the overwhelming of the trending content statistics. Didn't work. The requests that did contain email addresses are still popping up. I've started deleting them now because those old requests did not contain any content that contributes to the forum. My hope is that I will eventually delete all the requests they seem to be interested in, and maybe it will stop or they will move on to a different year and we start all over again.

I'm not certain that this is a Brazilian faction. I have found other countries IP's that are being used but Brazilian IP's are by far the most common. This could be anyone anywhere doing this. I suspect they are targeting posts/paid requests because of the email addresses that were allowed to be posted back then.

I really don't know what advantage it might be having such old email information. The only thing I can think of is that they are teaming the emails with password breakers trying to take over old accounts.

I've basically shut down the "profile scanners"!!

 

[Rich54]

Between fighting off the entire nation of Brazil and defending the honor of "furry" puffins, you're having quite the weekend! Maybe for some soothing downtime you can join a bomb-disposal unit.

Good sleuthing, though, to have figured out the Brazillian angle.

 

[Korupt]

Lately I've been posting every day here. I see around 5 threads made in 24 hours. And most of the members who are actually active have a huge post count difference. Like at least 1,000 posts more. 250 some members online. I'm thinking they don't ever sign off and remain online for months? As for the 250 guests how many of them are bots for search engines and such. How many are real users who have no wish to post but just watch and read.



IAMSAM: Do members hotlink pictures they submit on the forums here to other websites/social networks etc.

 

[IamSam]

I'm thinking they don't ever sign off and remain online for months?

Well, that requires explanation. The forum automatically signs everyone off after a certain amount of time of inactivity. But, if the user does not manually sign off the forum, the next time they refresh or open a PSG page, they are still signed in. Only if you manually sign off/out of the forum, would you be required to manually sign back in/on.

As for the 250 guests how many of them are bots for search engines and such.

In the Members Online stats, there are no search engines. They show up in a different category that only I can see. Looks like ByteDance, Bing, and Petal Search are the most active right now. There are 13 20 count pages of search engines indexing the forum at this moment.

How many are real users who have no wish to post but just watch and read.

In the Members Online stats, it's impossible to guess how many are bots, bot networks, or actual people just viewing the forum. They can't post unless they are members. But from my experience, I would say the ratio is about 60:30 in favor of the "bots".

Do members hotlink pictures they submit on the forums here to other websites/social networks etc.

No.