To think there are way too many engagement farming threads on MN nowadays? s?

[MrMurphysComeuppance]

Do you know what an engagement farming thread is, and what the classic signs are to spot one? If not then you are probably being taken in on a daily basis on this forum by 'posters' who are not genuine about problems and dilemmas that are not real.

The site is absolutely awash with them. It's been a big issue for the last year or so and it really is getting ridiculous now. These 'posters' often start threads that can run for days and days with pages of responses, but after the initial OP and maybe one or two quick follow up posts, the 'OP' is nowhere to be seen. And they are always (or almost always) a first time poster/brand new user name. Even if they have posted on one or two other threads that day (very rare and only done occasionally to make the account look more genuine) they never have a proper posting history. There is a very good reason for this, which I can explain if anyone is interested.

Now I've been here a really long time and I name change often these days, for privacy reasons, but there is NO WAY I name change for every single thread I start and NO WAY I use a new name each and every time for my one thread only, without ever engaging on anyone else's threads using that same user name. Who on earth has time for that? That's just not normal forum behaviour. And yet that is what is happening on here, multiple times a day, across several accounts that only exist to generate fake threads and therefore traffic.

I can spot them a mile off now, they are so formulaic and predictable, but it really irritates me that so many posters are so gullible and get caught up in these long debates, giving their time and advice where is no genuine OP at the heart of it. You are being taken for suckers.

I can give you a detailed breakdown of what to look for in a probable engagement farming thread (or rage bait as they are often called, although they are often not always designed to get people in a rage, often just to spark long conversations and polarise opinion on a subject.)

MN is full of actual, intelligent human beings who are more than capable of starting interesting conversations by themselves. Or at least it used to be. Do we really need people/bots creating accounts then name changing several times a day to churn out fake thread after fake thread just to keep the clicks coming? It has massively dumbed down the site and no-one seems to care. Certainly the people who run the site don't seem to care, and why would they, when key strokes and clicks mean ££££?

but it really irritates me that so many posters are so gullible and get caught up in these long debates, giving their time and advice where is no genuine OP at the heart of it. You are being taken for suckers.

Whilst it's obvious there are some very gullible posters on MN, how do you know a lot of them aren't just bored and don't care about engagement farming?

For example, a lot of the threads you describe turn into conversations and discussions amongst other posters taking part 🤷‍♂️

Yeah pretty much.

I started a thread recently on AIBU about a dilemma I was facing and was looking for the general consensus and was going to base my decision on that. In the sense had 90% voted YABU then it would have absolutely thought I’d misjudged it and would have gone with the majority. It was 60:40 YANBU and I took peace form that the decision I was making was ok.

Well…. Dear me, some of the replies were quite nasty. I was shocked as it wasn’t something divisive. I was getting accused of wasting time, waste of a thread, pointless…. I wonder if some people thought my thread was what you’re describing but it was absolutely genuine.

It would have been too long winded for one post. I am breaking it down into bullet points.

Clue 2: The user name. It's always a brand new name used for that thread and that thread only.

The reason for this is that as engagement farmers are not trolls in the traditional sense, they are not interested in spinning a long-running story where they have to keep returning to the thread to add more drama and intrigue while posters hang on for more updates. They don't care about the attention on a personal level like a troll or a lying fantasist does.

They use a different name for each thread because they are probably running several threads at once on any given day and are playing different characters with completely unrelated problems in each of them. They don't have time to engage in each thread fully and they don't want to trip themselves up by forgetting what they've said on which thread. These are being churned out wholesale, remember?

They also don't have the time or the inclination to post on other people's threads. They aren't here for company or entertainment like the rest of us. They are just doing a job, helped along by AI for inspiration.

Their MO is to start a thread that lots of people will be motivated to respond to. They'll often return to it once or twice just to make themselves appear engaged with the responses and to help get the thread up and running. But this is almost always within the first hour or two of the opening post.

Once the thread has taken on legs, the OP doesn't come back. Their job is done and they've moved on to a different thread under a different name. Meanwhile dozens of people are all arguing away, or offering the OP advice and have completely failed to notice that they didn't come back and that was three days and 15 pages ago.

Who writes a long, involved thread asking for advice then buggers off almost immediately afterwards? Unless they are getting an almighty flaming that simple does not happen.

Because they will have multiple accounts and name change daily, or even several times a day, they would be very easy for the mods to spot should they care to investigate, but it would appear they don't especially care to investigate.

The attitude seems to be 'so long as people are finding the discussion useful and the OP hasn't broken any talk guidelines, there is no harm done. We can't possibly be expected to verify the authenticity of every thread made by every poster. As always, if you see something suspicious please don't troll hunt, but report it to us.'

Christ, you seem quite overly bothered about something that's been going on since internet forums were invented.

I don't see why it matters as long as people are happy to post.

As long as they're not giving away personal details, they normally end up chatting to other posters whether the OP returns or not.

It's the way it's always been.

I didn't when I read the thread title but I think OP explains pretty well what it is.
And I agree with OP there seems to be more and more of these threads and they are extremely annoying and extremely hard to challenge.
The thread thead the @Piglet89 has linked is a very good example. Really makes a mockery of the pp engaging with it.

I think you’re but can you explain what their incentive is please?

It can be many things, but it's essentially content creation to drive traffic to a site, or to increase the traffic on a site. So in this case, the sort of engagement farming we see all the time on here is where people are starting numerous fake threads, day in day out, about fake problems or dilemmas and posing as someone they are not, simply to keep the forum busy with people constantly opening new threads and responding to them.

There are several ways in which this can be financially lucrative for either advertisers or the forum itself, or people wanting to expose posters to a new business or product by stealth.

Did that one not get deleted? I can’t find it anymore.

I stopped reading after the OP’s breathless description of “her” active sex life and svelte figure “despite” having had two children.

Yes, I remember suspicions were raised about a dramatic long running thread a while ago. One poster commented that she didn't care if it was fake, it was a good story and she wanted to know how it ended 🤷🏻‍♀️😆

The problem is that if you don't want to participate unless you are sure it's real, you have to wait for at least a day to see whether or not the OP comes back.

I'm bothered because it didn't used to happen on this forum, at least not in the patronising, cynical and blindingly obvious way it happens now. It's changed the whole feel of the forum and not for the better. It's the sheer scale of it that bothers me most.

Mills and Boon and Fifty Shades of Grey were invented for people like that. 😂

Besides which, she never would have found out how it ended because the bloody OP never comes back. That's my whole point!!!

This site is riddled with this type of thread now.
I think many posters know this and only come for the fantastic poster responses.

There's one about a rooster going on right now and a cat/dog one from yesterday that's running and running.

It was 153 posts and counting when I looked at it this morning but you are right, it seems to have been deleted now.
Threads like that leave me feeling as though someone has made a fool of me.

If I’m on a thread where the OP goes AWOL I usually ask where they went and then they come back and shout at me that they are exceedingly busy and how dare I question them.

I think I started a thread a while ago (or at least commented on someone else's) about Fake Threads. When I explained the nature of the sort of fake threads that bothered me, I got told by other posters and told that the correct term for this practice was Engagement Farming. So here we are.

This is exactly what Justine Roberts said her and her friend used to do when Mumsnet was new.

They'd start threads and then post replies in other NNs 🤷‍♂️

@JaneJeffer I do the same and, even if they've not posted for hours you get an immediate "I do have a life you know and it's a pity you don't" response. It's as reliable as clockwork as though some kind of program kicks in.

😂 indeed

So MN benefits ?
I wouldn't dream of suggesting the obvious.

What’s the benefit to the poster though? It’s just rage bait rather than engagement farming, unless you’re saying MN creates them. Which I’m sure they don’t.

I don't doubt it happens, but I also don't see why it matters. The truth is we don't know that any 'stranger' online is telling the truth about anything. MN is entertainment for most of us, possibly a source of advice from time to time. If I want to reply to a thread, it doesn't cost me more to do so if it's engagement farming, trolling, etc than if it's an actual person with a real problem. Someone else reading may benefit from something they read on these threads. Perhaps they learn something new or see a different perspective. It may help someone look at a situation in their own life and understand it better.

I must be missing something, because I'm not sure I do care.
It makes no difference to my interest in a thread whether the OP and problem are genuine or not. If the subject interests me, I'm happy to join in a conversation about it. I'm not engaging just with 'the OP', but with the other people contributing.
The issue, even if fake, often acts as a gateway to discuss issues that are real and resonate with people. In your examples, the themes of family obligations, bereavement, sibling rivalry, tension between MILs and DiL are all there, any or all of which are food for discussion.
As far as I'm aware, the fake threads don't block the real ones, so no person is sitting in a queue behind multiple fake OPs unable to get a platform for their real issue.(Or are they?)
There are exceptions. I dislike the far fetched stories and dilemmas that serve political agendas (should I report my sister who's claiming £5k a month in benefits pretending to be disabled and completes the three peak challenge every week, and similar) because they feed harmful narratives.

Threads like that leave me feeling as though someone has made a fool of me.

Exactly. Which is why I want people to know how to spot them before they get too invested. I'll admit I am not always right, but more often than not I am.

When my spidey senses are set a-tingling I do an advanced search before anything else. I am always really surprised if it turns out to be a longstanding poster with loads of posts across several threads under their belt. Mainly because that is hardly ever the case. I'd say less than 1 in 20 of the searches I do show any prior posting history at all, and that poster doesn't go on to post on on anyone else's thread using the same user name, not even for the rest of that day. I just don't believe that's a coincidence, even allowing for people name changing for privacy reasons on sensitive threads.