Spam Censorship

Over the past five days, Deckchairs.net has been hit with a massive amount of comment spam, which is mechanically implemented spam placed in the comments sections of a blog. It's awful and there's only one good tool to get rid of most of it, Jay Allens' excellent MT-Blacklist plug-in. I generally use this little program to get rid of spam that has already been identified by others which means that the spammers are on the blacklist.

Somehow, though, this time I am part of the avant-garde and was hit by approximately 1500 spam comments. In order to destroy the unwarranted spam, here's the regex [sp. correct] or series of words I had to use: rape|sex|incest|videos|collection|rpe|illic it|porn|pics|eager. Alas, if someone now actually wants to post a comment about rape, sex, incest, videos, porn, or they are perhaps "eager," Deckchairs will knock that comment out. Censorship? Yes. Preservation of sitehood? Yes. Another sign of spam pushing us all to the wall? Yes.

Posted by Andrew at May 16, 2004 5:33 PM