Where do the ToS draw the line regarding what a spam account is?

The general policy on spam accounts with advertisements stored in their user profile (and no account activity) was already discussed here.

I´m looking at an account whose current advertisement method within our network is literally their distinct account name only.

To gain search engine attention, this account would also sometimes post a low quality [also plagiarized, but please let's pretend, for the sake of this policy question, that this is not always the case] answer, sometimes without even checking whether the victim question did not already have their own previous answer, thus demonstrating their disregard for the nominal content of their own answer posts.

In the past, they also tended to put a hyperlink from a random word in their answer post pointing to their eponymous company website, but they desisted from that since, after a formal warning.

There is also a comment thread touching on some aspects of this interaction. If that comment thread does not lead to any meaningful conversation regarding the authorship, goals and value of their contribution, I will tend to think that this account's sole purpose is building brand awareness, unrelated to the purpose of our site, and possibly handle it as a spam account.

I believe that "creating an account just to post spam" is grounds for account termination.

Out of curiousity, is there any specific ToS rule that "creating an account just to post spam" would be violating?

For the purpose of this question, please assume that all content ever posted by the account (except for the former hyperlinks) can be construed as at least tangentially related to the scope of our site, and that for any plagiarized content the poster holds a license from the copyright holder to post and sublicense it as theirs. So there is (hypothetically) no external "legal" problem to address and it all boils down to our own policy.

posted 7 days ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Jirka Hanika‭

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