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Fighting Spam at Scale: How We Use Gemini to Protect the DEV Community

Ben Halpern on January 22, 2026

Eliminating spam has been a massive priority for us at DEV (and the wider Forem ecosystem). If you’ve been with us for a while, you recall that thi...
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𝚂𝚊𝚞𝚛𝚊𝚋𝚑 𝚁𝚊𝚒 •

This is amazing! And something that'll improve the quality of posts on this website.

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Ben Halpern The DEV Team •

Already has :)

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Abhijeet Bhale •

Very much eager to see this new change😊

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Pascal CESCATO •

I’ve definitely noticed that — compared to some other platforms whose names I’ll politely avoid — dev.to isn’t plagued by endemic spam. There’s nothing more frustrating than publishing an article only to see the very first comment be an ad for online casinos — whether they’re in Las Vegas or Pakistan doesn’t make much difference.

On a side note, has anyone noticed the broken image link when trying to embed a GitHub repo? That’s why I always stick to plain links, even though I’d love to use the built-in embed feature!

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Asrar Khan • • Edited

Love the hybrid approach here of using upstream algorithms + Gemini for scaling moderation without losing accuracy!

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Willie Harris •

Great example of how AI like Gemini can effectively support moderation and keep developer communities high-quality.

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Behram •

Spam comments are also really annoying

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Anna Villarreal •

Agree!!!

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Cesar Aguirre •

What about marking as spam the same article from different accounts in a time span? I've seen that behavior before.

What about spam in languages other than English?

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ANIRUDDHA ADAK •

Awesome!

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Paras 🧙‍♂️ •

Awesome !!!

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Jennifer Davis •

Great job on implementing this to support building community!

This is fascinating; I'm really curious if GitHub has something like this as Repo Maintainer burnout has been building for years.

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Mauricio Vidal •

Buenísimo !

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Andrew Thompson •

Are completely off topic posts considered spam? I keep seeing obvious SEO posts.

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Abhijeet Bhale •

I really like these newer way on the improvements for the Spam's on DEV 👍🏻👍🏻

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Vladislav Guzey •

Thanks for sharing! :)

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coda •

would never say there's gemini behind it, awsome!