Not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it certainly sounds like bad actors. Where did the existing toolset fall short? Were there mods? Did they remove these posts/comments? Minimum account ages?

Once we identify the tools needed to fight the spam, they get deployed. If effective, the spammers move on to the next arms to push their wares. I know I saw a LOT of comments shortly before the end of Reddit that the parent was a karma-farming bot.

We will always be behind the curve, since it’s the nature of being reactive, but hopefully we can keep the return low enough to make it not worth the effort for most.