📖 Content moderation glossary
What is comment spam?
In short
Spam is unsolicited content posted in bulk or repeatedly, usually to advertise, drive traffic or deceive, such as promotional links, copied messages and bot-generated comments.
Comment spam ranges from the harmless to the dangerous: repeated self-promotion, links to dubious shops, fake reviews, and bots posting the same message under hundreds of posts. It drowns real conversation and makes a page look abandoned.
Example: under every video on a YouTube channel, accounts with attractive profile pictures post 'check my profile' or a link to an adult site. Within a week, the comment section is unreadable for regular viewers.
Spam is one of the easiest categories to automate because it is repetitive and recognisable, but spammers adapt quickly, with misspellings, emojis and new link formats. OpenModeration hides clear spam automatically on websites, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and WordPress, so community managers can focus on real people.