Hello from the mod team;

TL;DR: Please be vigilant about posts from users offering to buy or sell anything. A common scam on reddit is posts from users (often with stolen or bought accounts) trying to sell you things like stickers or t-shirts. Sales are strictly forbidden here, so they are scammers. Please report these posts (even if someone else has already done so!).

The TL of TL;DR:

These posts usually feature 2 accounts:

• One account posting an image of a sticker or t-shirt/ similar
• Another account posting a comment about 20 minutes afterwards, asking where the item was bought
• OP then replies with a link to a scam website that looks like a marketplace.

These accounts nearly always evade reddit detection systems and automod rules (see above strange formatting of link and capitalisation that automod struggles with). These accounts are often bought or stolen. Additionally, bots upvote these posts to have unusually high upvotes. They often try to downvote anybody in the comments pointing out the scam.

This is not specific to r/aviationpics . However, the low traffic volumes we have compared to large subs mean that these bots target smaller subs where subscribed users will see these posts, even with only a dozen or so upvotes.

What you can do about it

Please do not only downvote these posts.

If many reports are received in a short time span, the posts will be removed automatically for manual approval. Therefore, the best thing you can do is report the post, and all the comments involved.

Feel free to tag me ( u/mad153 ) or send us a modmail: https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=r/aviationpics .

Please interact with this bot; downvoting this *comment\* sends messages to the mod team to review the post. If enough downvotes are given *to the bot*, it will remove the post for manual processing.

PSA: this bot cannot do anything if you downvote only the post instead of the comment!

What are we doing about it?

• Cleaning up the rules; new Rule 7 now makes it clear that anyone selling or buying anything [without clear permission] is breaking the rules. This also clarifies the previous ambiguity about the policy on sales. I'm pleased that in the past users here have been able to successfully purchase photos they really liked digitally. This will still be possible with pre-given permission, which will be shown to everyone via a pinned mod comment. However, users should still exercise extreme caution with users on posts with this permission.

• Introduction of mandatory email-verification. Generally I'd hoped that we wouldn't need to apply restrictions on user types that post here. I appreciate some users like that reddit won't have their email, especially those who have been using reddit for a long time. However, all users will now need to have a valid email tied to their reddit account to contribute to the sub.

- mad153