Spam accounts

[+ DynamicUno]

There is a pattern of new posters that join up and respond to old threads with some generic sounding response.  These responses will often end up with an embedded link to some shady site tangentially related to the topic (for example a thread on crypto might get a link to some third rate exchange, or recently a thread on social media earned a link to a site selling reddit and twitter accounts).  The poster will sometimes post something generic once or twice before finally dropping their link, but 

This spam approach is weird to me because I don't see an obvious means of getting paid for posting these links (no apparent means of tracking when the links are clicked), and these posts appear to be human generated (not obvoiusly written by an AI).  I don't get the how these spammers get enough traffic to make the effort worthwhile.

Seeing as there is this pattern, is there any way of curtailing or blocking this behavoir?  Maybe something that requires admin approval for new accounts making posts with hyperlinks?

[RadioRob]

This is something I’m playing with. We stop over 500 per DAY. I’m trying to get better tools but it is an arms race.  We also have to balance this with not blocking or curtailing legitimate new members.

Those specific attempts are using ChatGPT to try and make posts semi relevant the reply with links as a way to get around some standard tools that moderate the first post made. (We don’t do that but it’s a common site tactic.)