Yeah, something is definitely wrong, or at least significantly changed from what it used to be. Did they set it so that such blocks never expire, or expire after a long time (days/weeks/months)? It may be that it's now something they have to manually reset per IP and nobody was around to do it over the weekend. I wouldn't have expected that, but it's possible. Alternately, they messed-up when changing the configuration that now catches these issues at a lower threshold.
I ended up setting up my EC2 as a proxy and used that. I didn't want to change IP addresses at this time, because that might cause someone else to be blocked, and didn't want to run all traffic through the EC2, as I have some other uses that are a significant amount of bandwidth. Thus, I didn't set it up as a VPN, or use a VPN service. Testing has indicated my normal IP address is still blocked, which is a poor solution from SE's POV, as it would block someone else if I switched IP addresses.
I seem to recall being blocked previously (while testing scripts) and having it resolve within 24 hours. However, I may be conflating that with various times of running out of quota or being rate-limited by SE main, not the SE API.
I know that it will start erroring-out requests if you continue to make requests while the backoff is active (or at least it does for those past the first N that are in flight). However, I don't recall those errors being the same as this. I don't recall seeing crazy backoff numbers, but I've seen responses saying that you can't make requests for nearly 24 hours (in seconds, so 86,400 max) when you run out of quota.
@NisseEngström That pattern looks like it's already caught by Potentially bad keyword in body and Potentially bad keyword in answer; append -force if you really want to do that.
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, blacklisted username, blacklisted website in answer, link at end of answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer (331): How do spambots work? by Victoria Tegg on webmasters.SE
@tripleee Not that I'm aware of. I'm intending to have FIRE do that, but it's not complete. What is done on it so far has resulted in my IP being blocked by the SE API too.
@SmokeDetector What caused you to report this now? It was edited 2 hours ago and reported then (& 6 hours ago when posted). What activity caused it to be re-scanned?
@angussidney We've had quite a few lately. This most recent one follows a pattern we've seen > 10 times recently: cat-on-keyboard message being edited into spam. I've added watches to give the initial post 3 detections, to enable autoflagging, but that didn't help much recently. :-)
The spam version has significantly more than enough to trigger autoflagging, but won't due to not being the original report.
Looks like there are ~19 in the last 8 days that are probably this same spammer. I can't confirm that all of them were edited into spam, but it looks likely.
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, bad keyword in username, blacklisted website in body, +6 more (977): drozdietblog.com/tevida/ by Tevida on graphicdesign.SE
@AJ The time-to-deletion graphs on the MS homepage and graphs page indicate that it's jumped from somewhere in the 300s (or so, just guestimating) to ~850s. The Time to deletion (TTD) average, past year query indicates that we've been in the ~450 range for the last several months and jumped to over 800.
@Zoe There was a portion of code that wasn't obeying backoff. The SE API appears to have recently changed it's sensitivity to that and put MS (and me) in a blocked state.
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url-only title, bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, body starts with title and ends in url, +3 more (593): pilpedia.com/ultra-labs-keto/ by prlusna12 on askubuntu.com
@Zoe Yes, the MS code was fixed shortly after Undo took a look at the errors. The code that probably did it for me has not yet been fixed, but was disabled.
@Makyen Has there ever been a campaign for SE to be more lenient with their API limits for open-source projects that contribute to SE, such as this and SOBotics?
We believe something changed in SE's detection and handling of these cases. What MS did, it's probably been doing every night for a couple of years. What the code did on my machine wasn't all that much compared to other times that I've used the same code in similar, or even more a aggressive, way.
> Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, bad keyword in username, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad ns for domain in title, potentially bad keyword in body, potentially bad keyword in title, potentially bad keyword in username ---------- Bad keyword in body - Position 0-11: pcerror-fix Bad keyword in title - Position 0-11: pcerror-fix Bad keyword in username - Position 0-11: pcerror-fix Potentially bad keyword in body - Position 0-15: pcerror-fix.com Potentially bad keyword in title - Position 0-15: pcerror-fix.com
@Makyen Is there any way I can give feedback through FIRE? I login into MS via my SE account. Can I still login while this functionality isn't working?
@AJ Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for you. I've intended to add the ability for FIRE to send feedback through chat, but I haven't written that yet. Having that can be useful when MS is down. However, its use during such times is predicated on some other changes (implemented), but was given a low priority when I found out I would not be permitted to add flagging through SE to FIRE (which makes FIRE much less useful during such times, even when the display of the post works w/o MS).
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, body starts with title and ends in url, link at end of body, pattern-matching product name in body, +4 more (690): You will discover it tough to raise by user1018517 on superuser.com
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url-only title, body starts with title and ends in url, link at end of body, pattern-matching website in body, pattern-matching website in title, +4 more (596): www.fitnesscarezone.com/ketogenix/ by Ketogenix on askubuntu.com
@tripleee That pattern looks like it's already caught by Pattern-matching website in body and Pattern-matching website in answer; append -force if you really want to do that.
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, body starts with title and ends in url, pattern-matching product name in body, +6 more (693): www.nutritionfit.org/shape-x2-keto/ by Reme mlac on ham.SE
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url-only title, bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, body starts with title and ends in url, +3 more (593): pilpedia.com/ultra-labs-keto/ by kurrmaway4 on askubuntu.com
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url-only title, bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, body starts with title and ends in url, +4 more (693): pilpedia.com/ultra-labs-keto/ by fintet201 on askubuntu.com
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, body starts with title and ends in url, pattern-matching website in body, +2 more (490): Keto Viante Norway by simleery on graphicdesign.SE
@Makyen 'vandafilmaleboost' is not caught by a blacklist or watchlist item.
> Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, bad keyword in username ---------- Bad keyword in body - Positions 47-56, 123-132: maleboost Bad keyword in title - Positions 47-56, 123-132: maleboost Bad keyword in username - Positions 47-56, 123-132: maleboost Url in title - Positions 9-33, 85-109: https://sites.google.com
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in body, body starts with title and ends in url, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad keyword in body (199): A considerable number individuals by jkhvng on puzzling.SE (@Mithrandir)
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, body starts with title and ends in url, link at end of body, pattern-matching product name in body, +4 more (690): Yeah Keto Fundamentally, by Michelleebber on askubuntu.com
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url-only title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, body starts with title and ends in url, link at end of body, +2 more (497): pilpedia.com/opti-farms-keto/ by qimnja12 on askubuntu.com
