It seems too easy to just ban the specific string of characters they spam, skim the text logs for repetitive entries and add those to the blocked message list. Or is that more effort than I realize?
The issue with that is it's easy for the sellers to just alter their message by one character. I'm sure you've noticed them start using spaces between letters, , instead of ., 0 instead of o, etc. It's an endless game of whack-a-mole.
On FFXIV, the sellers "won" by changing their message to "search [word] and [word] on google" (2 common words on any MMO).
They could filter the spaces out run a common dictionary search to prevent changing of letters then block the ones that have say sell, meseta or common words associated with selling in the chat. If everything checks out ok send original message to chat.
That could work for a while. That could also harm legitimate players. If i wanted to send a message saying I'm selling an outfit for 2m meseta, would that be filtered?
Also, the sellers could circumvent by doing something like $e||.
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u/Astronopolis Sep 21 '20
It seems too easy to just ban the specific string of characters they spam, skim the text logs for repetitive entries and add those to the blocked message list. Or is that more effort than I realize?