Question: Is something wrong with StackOverflow's spam filter? Recently there have been huge numbers of spam topics related to football streaming. They have all been spam flagged and deleted but there are more getting posted all the time, I just flagged another 6 or so a few minutes ago. This has been going on for around 3 days now with these topics getting constantly posted over and over again in the [nfl](/questions/tagged/nfl "show questions tagged 'nfl'") tag.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/x7sNQ.png)

Answer: 
We're trying to get better at keeping this at bay. The problem affects all sites that see any kind of traffic, some more than others. I can't go into very much detail because frankly, there isn't a whole lot of detail that belongs to an agreed implementation at this point.

However ....

A big mistake we have made in the past is not fully utilizing the signal that we get from moderators and the community when destructive actions are taken. We know when moderators destroy or delete accounts, but we don't know *why* they did it, at least not programmatically. A change working its way through implementation now tracks this by doing something remarkable, we actually *ask them* to indicate a reason for the action. 

When this is implemented, we have a *much* easier time querying across the network to better visualize these fools as they move from site to site, occasionally changing origin. This makes the data that they inadvertently leave behind much more valuable when it comes to automatically reacting to, and subduing these sorts of spam floods. 

It's a bit of a trick, we don't want to prevent anyone from *reading* our sites, and even poorly written perl bots *deserve* a fighting chance in life. Still, we *can* be a little more picky about content we accept, especially when we have a much clearer picture about the recent behavior of the remote host. I'm not going to go into specifics that I don't yet have to offer, but it is a problem we're taking seriously.

Phase one of this (collecting reasons) should be out soon, then we need some time with the data we get.

That's not the *only* reason we implemented this, playing chat tag with moderators to get context when someone writes in asking why they were removed is sub optimal. But this is going to give us a much clearer picture of what we're dealing with.

***Update***

The feature that requires a reason for account destruction is being pushed now, and will be live shortly. For transparency sake, here's the interface (click image for full resolution):

[![How can I kaboom thee? Let me count the ways ...](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TQyw6.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TQyw6.png)

As you can see, certain reasons are much more interesting than others when it comes to tracking repeat abuse, since the extra signal is now being captured. Given the volume of crap that some sites see, it won't be too long before we have enough data to confirm / discover patterns.
The spam is not new. Drupal Answers was hit **really** hard with it starting in Dec/Jan. Other sites have had it bad, too (Ask Ubuntu was one). The SE team has done a fantastic job with the automatic filters, but the spam evolves rather often, so automatic blocking isn't effective for long.

The proper course of action is to [flag the post as spam](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58032/how-does-the-spam-flag-work). Three spam flags will remove it from the front page, six will delete it. [Don't edit it](http://meta.superuser.com/questions/3574/should-we-replace-the-content-of-spam-posts-so-that-they-say-they-are-spam), [don't downvote it](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193916/why-shouldnt-i-downvote-spam-that-ive-already-flagged), don't use another flag. Flag as spam and move on.

If a mod sees it before the autodeletion, they can destroy the account, which will take all spam from that account with it.