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    I have been traveling most of the day so haven't been paying attention to spam today, but unfortunately up votes to spam aren't entirely uncommon. They usually just get removed fast enough via flags that it doesn't matter. Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 23:17
  • @Andy: That, unfortunately, isn't surprising. It is hard to determine whether voters are confused, malicious or just random. (I don't have first-hand knowledge either.) Commented Jun 5, 2023 at 23:53
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    I would tend to imagine that the spammers who care are also operating voting rings, or will soon be doing so, because now they know that 90% of the network's anti-spam tech (SmokeDetector etc.) is offline. Who's going to stop them? Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 1:25
  • Please let's not overload "spam" to deviate from the strict definition we use on the site itself; unsolicited promotion (of products, services, religious beliefs, mathematical "proofs", conspiracy theories, etc etc) Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 4:59
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    @tripleee: What word should be used instead (not a rhetorical question)? Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 14:11
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    @This_is_NOT_a_forum I guess Jon means "AI-generated content" in this instance. More generally, content which is disruptive can be trolling, rude, abusive, off-topic, or just annoying for other reasons. Perhaps I would suggest "disruptive content" as a collective term for all of these phenomena, but it's also possible that Jon means something else here. Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 14:21
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    @tripleee: I'm talking about literal spam that CMs needed to delete. It's a natural consequence of the strike that spam will sit around longer than normal, but it's not helping anyone to encourage it in any way. Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 15:22
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    Thanks for clarifying. It was not obvious to me how upvotes on spam were pertinent to this particular question but I think I see now. Commented Jun 6, 2023 at 15:27
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    Upvoting spam in protest is definitely a misuse of the voting system, but addressing misuse of the site's features is a moderation task (e.g. warning or suspending users). So I would encourage mods who are on strike from performing moderation tasks to not act on this until the strike is over. (I would also encourage these voters ─ if they are indeed doing it as a protest ─ to cease doing so, because it doesn't really harm SE, Inc. in any way for spam posts to receive upvotes, what harms them is for spam posts themselves to go unmoderated.) Commented Jun 7, 2023 at 13:44