This morning, I’ve been exploring various groups, and it’s almost impossible to find people interacting within a group. Instead, all the groups I checked had wall-to-wall ads.

Years ago, I read that a fox will get rid of fleas by holding a stick in its mouth, then walking slowly into a stream. The fleas, wanting to stay dry, will climb higher and higher on the fox while it gets deeper in the water. Finally, all the fleas crawl onto the fox’s head and then out onto the stick. At that point, the fox submerges completely while releasing the stick. And all the fleas float downstream on their stick.

I doubt that’s a true story, but I found at least one group that’s done something similar. Because the original group had so many ads and related spam, everyone just moved into a second generation of the group, leaving the first generation to the spammers.

Does anyone have some good strategies for getting actual value from spammy groups? Off the top of my head, they only seem to be useful in searches, when we use group membership to find people with specific interests.