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Why not build a troll-nest trawler?

Mtgvault is ripe with odd "coincidences"

When you use the mtgvault database search and use it to search for very specific things
(Example cardname: bear)

You will find that trolls tend to build nests by using the same searches over and over.

This is being used in a huge number of keywords tags, and even number of views.

Here's an experiment for you to start with, your first "troll trawler" if you like.

Build a small piece of program that look through all decks, make it register the views and build up a library of the different number of views, have it spit out the most common numbers and you will be able to see that trolls are creating a lot of view based "lairs"

I suspect that the function of this is to have a personal archive of accounts they are using.

I've started up a personal attack on the lair 666. A large group of decks with exactly 666 views.

Since you've fixed it so that viewing your own decks doesn't add a view, the troll just need to search for their own personal view number
Like (666)

Any new accounts they make they simply use another fake account to view one deck there the exact number of times. Some of them seem to have automated parts of the system, if you take a look at the 1k+ views you can see they can spam several k views within short time of creating a deck.

The purpose of their trolling seems to be most centered on sabotaging decks to muddle up their own meta.
I have no doubt that they use sites like yours to create fake tournaments on the "wizard event reporter"

But, first, I suggest you build a view trawler to get a picture of exactly which view counts are troll liars.

Once you've seen the scale of operation you might want to take that chat with me one day.
I'm most busy these days with my decktag: halfdeck
Just start talking on the newest of those decks and I can start telling you all about the other types of nests that have been used.


Posted 17 August 2022 at 11:27

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4 replies

Suspicious views was also recently brought up by User: muktol

The trolls also seem to have a shared archive.
Any troll wanting to bring up a topic with the others give it a 1000 views. From there things are viewed by them all and depending on how high a priority the group leaders think it has, they can add several thousand more views.

The more views a post have, the more focus the trolls have been giving it.
They are also frequently used as spam just for a laugh.


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Posted 17 August 2022 at 11:36

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They've probably read this and are "tormenting" me by bringing more decks up to 666 views.
Not a clever ploy as you will be able to see that move as well :)
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Posted 17 August 2022 at 15:57

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On second thought, they are probably "burning evidence" by seeding as many decks as they can with their most favoured view numbers to take everyone else as hostage. If you act against any "number" you will likely harm innocents as well.

Anyways my point is rather to show their existence, and they are much obliged in doing that.

I still think muktol's suggestion is the best, drop views.

An alternative could be to store everything by date of first becoming a public deck.
That would also make cleaning up shit a lot easier as people can note down days on which they saw a troll-dump.

By keeping it chronological people also get the option to observe decks of the past.

I'd also recommend that we get rid of likes and upvotes/downvotes.

If anyone flags something it shouldn't be censored by default, but rather remain uncensored until the flag has been inspected, censorship by default helps the trolls to cockblock everyone else.

I think the greatest problem is actually the copy/paste concept because anyone can copy a hundred decks at high speed and spam them to cockblock everyone else.

The easier trolling becomes, the more people will resort to trolling.
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Posted 17 August 2022 at 22:20

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Anyways, the trolls are fairly easy to spot when you look at their overall system, there are either 9, 6 or 3 of them as they use identifiers through numbers throughout the system.

The 60 card decks that lack a few number of cards mark out the user by the number missing. If a deck has 56 cards, it's pretty likely that it was posted by troll number 4.

Recently I've started to "hack" their personal "library" while they cockblock everyone else, they collect the best material on mtgvault to keep it for themselves in secrecy. They've created a sub vault within mtgvault.

They take pride in who collected the decks though, which is why they base their whole system on being 9.

A deck with 111 views belong to troll 1, while a deck with 666 views belong to troll 6.

They got some backup systems which I haven't figured out yet, but it should be fairly simple.


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Posted 07 September 2022 at 15:12

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