I’m conducting a small experiment to test how effective reporting spam accounts on Manifold is. I will report 10 unbanned spam accounts as I come across them. Once I’ve reported all 10, I’ll wait a week from the time of the 10th report, then check how many of those accounts have been banned.
This market resolves based on the number of those 10 accounts that have been banned by that time.
Throughout the course of the market, I may share updates on how many accounts I’ve reported so far and how many have already been banned. I will not share the names of the accounts I've reported.
Update 04/07/2025, 04:32 PM (PT): I have reported 10 spam accounts, of which 1 has been banned. This market will resolve based on the number of these 10 accounts that have been banned by April 14th, a week from this update.
Update 04/14/2025, 03:19 PM (PT): This market closes in an hour and only one of the 10 accounts is banned. No accounts have been banned since the last update.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ179 | |
| 2 | Ṁ67 | |
| 3 | Ṁ32 | |
| 4 | Ṁ30 | |
| 5 | Ṁ23 |
People are also trading
@bagelfan Usually I both report and tag mods for maximum efficacy, but would doing so now accidentally make more work for the mods via redundancy?
@traders Remaining options resolve NO. I guess I said I can't share the names of the accounts I reported, but here is the list I used to keep track of everything (with the names redacted):
@evan Would you mind sending me (or another mod) the list on Discord (or a direct message here), so they can be banned (since the reports are just entirely gone)?
I banned a couple hundred spam users in the last three days, but I guess none of them were the users that you were watching. 😅
@bagelfan Yeah, makes sense. I created this market because I was wondering why the accounts I reported weren't getting banned.
@traders I reported the 10th spam account a few minutes ago. This market will resolve a week from now!
@GleamingRhino what about using the mods tag while making a joke at the spammer's expense in the comments?
@TheAllMemeingEye using the mods tag in market comments has always been an option that works promptly. However this unnecessarily reveals you as the reporter publicly so I am not a huge fan of it and wish I didn’t have to. This also does not work for spammers who have not made markets or comments yet (like the numerous junk 88 accounts that I have yet to see banned).
also does not work for spammers who have not made markets or comments yet (like the numerous junk 88 accounts that I have yet to see banned)
Wait, how can an account be doing spam if they aren't making markets or comments? Also what is junk 88?
@TheAllMemeingEye if you do a search for “88”, in the users section there are a lot of accounts doing SEO like this. Some have been banned but not all.
@GleamingRhino btw is there a significant downside to publicly revealing oneself as reporting spam? I've done it a few times and haven't had reprisals done against me so far haha
@TheAllMemeingEye in the case of spam, not really. I did have one spam account reply to me and get defensive. But if reporting an actual user (for things like say market manipulation) having yourself known as the accuser will cause strife.
@TheAllMemeingEye another thing I remembered re:spam, if you make it obvious how they’re being detected it’s easier for them to circumvent
@TheAllMemeingEye Usually, it's because they make comments like this:
Another hallmark of a spam account is when the account does not bet and only creates markets with no resolution criteria and that have a bunch of external links in the description, like this one.
@evan thanks, was just trying to make sure you're not sending loads of false positives by e.g. reporting users you disagree with, but it seems you're using regular sane criteria of reporting obvious advertising bots