Source: The Frustration Loop | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman’s blog
The premise is simple. When spam is detected, instead of blocking the blog, fake system error or failure in the most frustrating way possible. Waste their time and make them give up.
I got the idea from The Password Game which I highly recommend checking out. Here’s how it works:
- When spam is detected, clear the form (so all the info needs to re-typed) and throw an error, eg: “Our servers are bearly managing. Try again later.”
- Disable pasting in all text areas. We can’t make it too easy.
- Every 5 to 10 seconds the element focus switches to a different input so while they’re typing in one area, they may accidentally start typing in another in a mildly annoying way.
- And finally to top it off, if/when they finally manage to submit the form again, throw a different error, eg: “Ensure content contains necessary parameters.”
- Repeat.
And so they get stuck in my never ending web of frustration and after a while deem the software to be malfunctioning and give up.
Via Upcoming changes to the discovery feed | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman’s blog