A few days ago, I’ve noticed a serious issue with could affect aspiring developers,
While looking for a studio plug in, I came across that the model page which defaults to “Relevance” which I’m going to assume uses an algorithm of the amount of takes over the course of a week, seems to be littered with botted models.
When I decided to investigate the matter further, I chose one of these random looking models at random - for example, “Gwibard The Meatball”. I hovered over the model and saw it had over 170,000 takes.
Shocked that a model revolving a… meatball… would be popular so quickly, and only having 5 favorites… sure sets up a red flag to me.
It seems odd that an account which happened to be just created, would be able to create a model that rose to popularity so quickly, furthermore proving my assumption that the Develop page is being botted and people are taking advantage of the algorithm to push spammy and possibly malicious models to the front page.
Why is this an issue? Many of these models on the Develop page are being touted as an anti exploit, or a server guard. While many new developers are naive to the damage require(insertnumbershere) can do.
If a newer developer ends up selecting these models because they found them front the front page of Develop, then they at a risk of entering a server side into their game, this exploitation of the Develop page poses a major threat to developers who don’t know any better.
Botting is an unavoidable problem, although taking steps to change the recommended algorithm, or adding a manual approval or “hand picked” recommended models on the front of the Develop page sounds like a great solution, without requiring too much.
Thanks for taking time to read and bring awareness to this issue.