Question about tracking spam accounts by join date vs. karma, I think the karma filter is useless

Betty Wood · 2026-09-25T19:50:04.588522+00:00

I moderate a small sub for birdwatching and we got hit with a wave of 14 spam posts last month. Everyone keeps saying to just set a karma minimum and a account age filter, and I tried that first for 3 weeks. It caught maybe 2 spammers out of 14 because the bots just farmed upvotes in other subs. Then I switched to checking join date against the sub's founding date, because almost every spam account here was made within 48 hours of the sub getting popular in March. That one change flagged all 14 of them. The karma filter made me feel safe but it was really just letting the smart bots walk right through. I honestly think karma minimums are the most overrated tool in moderation and we should talk about it more. Has anyone else here found that join date beats karma for catching fakes, or am I just getting lucky with my timing window?

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Question about tracking spam accounts by join date vs. karma, I think the karma filter is useless | Bot or Not - SMM Buzz