Blogging infrastructure company Six Apart is launching a new free open source product this morning into beta called TypePad AntiSpam. While the product is new, the technology behind it has been used by Six Apart since May 2007 on millions of hosted TypePad blogs. Now they are offering it as a web service for other blogging platforms, too.
TypePad AntiSpam is clearly aimed at Akismet, a similar spam fighting tool offered by arch-rival Automattic. Like Akismet, TypePad AntiSpam takes a multi-headed heuristic approach to detecting and blocking comment spam on blogs. But TypePad’s product is free – Akismet charges $5/month for commercial blogs making more than $500/month in revenue, and has performance limitations on the free version.
TypePad AntiSpam is also open source, and anyone can download the source code and create their own spam tool based on it. Akismet isn’t open source, although they have an API that allows developers to, among other things, develop additional integration tools for blogging platforms.
We are long time users of Akismet on the TechCrunch blogs, and I’ve included it in my last two yearly lists of products I can’t live without (2007, 2008) along with Wordpress, Automattic’s blogging software. Akismet blocks over 15,000 spam comments per day on TechCrunch.
But last week we switched to TypePad AntiSpam as a test, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. After a week I’m pleased to say that as good as Akismet is, the TypePad product has performed as good or better for us.
The product classifies comments as “ham” (good), “spam” (bad) or unknown (moderation). So far I’ve seen no good comments hit the spam folder (false positives), something that happens regularly with Akismet. Only a handful of spam comments made it to the site (false negatives). It seems like the rate of false negatives is lower than Akismet, but the team reviews the site for these regularly and so it’s impossible to compare them statistically, I’m just making a guestimate.
Twice now a large group of spam comments hit the moderation queue, but Six Apart says it was their system thinking we were under a denial of service attack from the sheer flow of spam attempts and triggering everything to moderation. They’ve now adjusted for that, and we haven’t seen it again.
TypePad AntiSpam is available now via plugins for Wordpress and Movable Type. Akismet has a much longer list of supported platforms – Six Apart says they will add more over time and, like Akismet, will rely on the developer community to pitch in as well.
If you are a blogger and don’t use a service to manage spam, you’ll want to use Akismet or TypePad AntiSpam. I recommend either. For now, we’ll stick with TypePad, and continue to report on how its doing.
Hey Mike, thanks for the review — you should try out our enlargement pills! Seriously, we’re glad to help introduce another tool into the fight against spam, and even happier that you’ve seen such good results so far. This is just a beta, so I’m sure there’s going to be some learning for the system to do as more people join the millions of users already plugged into TypePad AntiSpam, but here’s hoping it makes things even tougher for spammers.
We’re already hearing from developers wanting to update their current Akismet plugins for other platforms to add TypePad AntiSpam support (it’s easy, since it’s the exact same API), and that just seems like good news from the whole blogosphere.
This seems like a great project. I’ve never had problems with Akismet but there is no such thing as being too secure.
Great product…anything to fight spam is okay by us!
Awesome. Just another example of how Typepad and Six Apart are looking out for the entire blogosphere. Thanks!
There is another interesting one. Emurus.
Emurus is not only interesting, it’s the best ever!
Hey just a quick note in terms of installation: super easy. All I had to do was change three lines in akismet.php and, because the APIs are the same, it worked. There’s also a custom wordpress plugin for those who feel uncomfortable modifying the source.
Sounds good, but I have no reason to switch from Askimet. I highly doubt there would even be a TypePad AntiSpam if it weren’t for Askimet, so I’ll remain with the latter for now.
Also I have a sneaking suspicion Six Apart will charge for this someday after everybody has integrated it into their sites.
Awesome! I just put it on my MT weblog and it works really good!
No mention of Defensio. It is not open-source, although it provides a multi-platform service.
Scott K — we won’t do that.
I’ll have to try that spam protector, doesn’t hurt having akismet and typepad anti spam working with each other.
There’s a Digg campaign for this already:
http://digg.com...itor_to_Akismet
Hi Mike, You review is very good. Whether this tool work better than Akismet?
Another winner from 6A. Super easy to install and seems to be working 100% on my MT blog as well. YAY!
I have a lot of visually impaired readers, so I tend to shy away from CAPTCHAs as much as possible. Even the screen-reader friendly ones (Comment Challenge) are a pain in my opinion.
So this couldn’t have come at a better time. Awesome.
Why not just use CAPTCHA? Is CAPTCHA dead? I am always leary of these heuristics especially since they require so much admin time to sort through the ‘maybes.’
Has anyone here seen Defensio? ( http://defensio.com )
It’s getting some love from a slightly “geekier” community (lighthouseapp.com is using it, for instance).
I see three good moves here:
1. using the Akismet API (which means adapting plugins should be as easy as changing a URL).
2. Open Sourcing the engine
3. Not revealing their rules (which would cripple their implementation)
@Kevin (#15), CAPTCHA only works for comments (not TrackBacks/Pingbacks) and traditional CAPTCHAs present problems for the disabled. And on top of all that, they’re not foolproof (whether by crunching the images or farming them out Mechanical Turk style).
@Kevin (#15) — Mark (#17) makes some great points about the limitations of CAPTCHAs. He’s absolutely right, while at the same time we do see a role for them — on the TypePad blogging service, you’ll see them when a comment is suspiciously spammy, or when a blogger has configured TypePad to present CAPTCHAs for their blogs. But in general it’s a good idea to minimize their use, to make it easy to leave good (ham) comments.
On the other question you raise, you’re absolutely right that pure heuristic-based filters require extensive manual maintenance when faced with changing spam attacks. TypePad AntiSpam does incorporate some heuristic rules, but at its core is a combination of adaptive learning engines. These adaptive filters learn from user reports, so TypePad AntiSpam can quickly adapt to new spam attacks without requiring the slow and error-prone manual tuning that is characteristic of a purely heuristic approach.
Since you’ve cloned the Akismet API, will there be a way for Typepad users to switch the hostname to use Akismet? We get a ton of requests for Typepad (and Blogger) support. Consumers can only win from more choices.
It’s good to see other folks (Defensio, Mollom, Typepad Anti-spam) joining the web anti-spam market. Akismet has been doing this for several years (6 billion spams) now, and it was getting lonely.
@Matt: TypePad is hard-coded to use the TypePad AntiSpam service for the same reason (I’m guessing) that WordPress.com only allows its users to use Akismet–because one of the reasons people choose a hosted blogging solution is because they don’t want to make what appears to them to be an unnecessary decision, they want something that “just works.”
btw, if I’m wrong, and wp.com users can change the antispam service they are using, please let me know. I reviewed my wp.com and found no evidence of such a setting, but my knowledge is by no means exhaustive.
But will it stop Chris from BeerCo?
Mark (#17) sees three good moves in TPAS: Akismet API; open source engine; hiding rules. I’m missing something about the relationship between the second and third of these.
How can the rules be hidden if the source code is open?
Answer to my own question (#22) is that it’s the classic AI split between inference engine and knowledge base. The engine is open source, the knowledge base, which is where the rules live, is closed.
Now, at the risk of asking another silly question: aren’t the rules the tricky and important part of a spam-fighting system?
cool. is it available for livejournal?
I think I will have to try it on my blogs and see how it goes. Its good to see that its an open source product.
Thats it! Please give me the url you test it!
@Chris #10 — you say that 6A won’t start charging for this in the future, but your history has you doing exactly that — converting a formerly free for personal use product to payment required product.
What’s to guarantee you would behave differently this time?
#1 your review is good,I agree
It might be intresting to give Mollom (http://mollom.com/features) a try.
Instead of moving messages to a moderation queue, Mollom shows a captcha when being unsure. This way it immediately learns which messages are posted by humans or robots and no moderation queue is needed.
Another intresting idea of Mollom is the integration of Open ID, and building a reputation on it.
@tim #26 – what’s your point? any free service can turn pay anytime. there’s no lock in here, if six apart changes its model, switch to someone else. this service is free and better, according to arrington. that’s enough for me.
@Andrew — You’ve got it right; we have open-sourced both the framework and a core content-based learning engine. There are two kinds of “rules” that are not explicitly provided: (1) what you’re calling inferences, which anyone can create by training the adaptive filter (a one-size-fits-all ruleset would not be helpful, as training naturally varies with your corpus and over time), and (2) heuristics, which there is a place to add into the TypePad AntiSpam framework. We hope that people will come up with a lot of good heuristic rules beyond the ones we have deployed in our particular instance of the service, and either use them in a service they run themselves, or contribute them back to make the service better.
@Tim — Without quibbling over details of ancient history, I think releasing the TypePad AntiSpam software under GPL for anyone to use is a good indication of our intentions, as is all the other open-source software that Six Apart has released (see code.sixapart.com) — including Movable Type.
@Jo — I would encourage anyone to try out Mollom or any other service out there; anything that works is a good thing. Six Apart really doesn’t see itself as entering a “market,” rather we just believe that a spam-free blogosphere is a better blogosphere, and we’d like to do whatever we can to facilitate that. BTW, TypePad AntiSpam (as well as other spam rating services) can easily be used by a client that presents a CAPTCHA for suspected spam — it’s up to the client to decide what action to take once it’s got a rating. In fact, the TypePad blogging service does exactly that, built on top of TypePad AntiSpam. It will be exciting to see what other functionality the open-source community builds on top of anti-spam services.
@Aaron, thanks very much for confirming my thoughts. Your answer to Jo’s question is also interesting: I didn’t realize that the client could decide how to treat a suspect. I just updated my post comparing TPAS with Akismet, Defensio, and Mollom to reflect that, and to make some further improvements:
http://changing...d-and-the-trio/
@Tim, well, the first guarantee is that I’m the CEO of the company and I said we won’t do it. Second, if you want to go by history, then consider our whole history, rather than a mistake we made 4 years ago for which we apologized, learned from, and haven’t repeated since. But let’s be clear, MT has always had a free version, and is now open source — something that happened under my watch. So use history as your guide when judging what we will do in the future, but please consider the entire history, not just one incident that happened years ago when the company was just establishing itself and the whole industry was new. We’ve all come a long way since then.
Well smack my ass and call me Nancy I had no idea people we’re paying for blog spam protection! We use this little plugin called “comment challenge” and spam never reaches our blogs. That’s in use on personal and commercial sites. It gets dumped into a spam folder. Maybe I’m missing something.
I rarely venture out into a blog fight, but I’m personally tired of Six Apart and MT being the blogosphere’s whipping boy. If we can’t forget the ye olde charging for MT incident, maybe we should list out other grievances. There are lots of them as the industry figured itself out.
I have several blogs on TP and never a comment spam that I can remember.
Now if they can just keep their bigger bloggers from being spanked by Google just for using TP.
@Glenn: I’m curious about what you mean by “Now if they can just keep their bigger bloggers from being spanked by Google just for using TP.” From what I’ve seen, TypePad blogs have always done really well in Google searches. I mean, Google is the ultimate black box, so arguments about who gets favored or punished by Google are kind of futile, but if you can cite some specific instances where you think TypePad blogs are suffering from SEO issues, we’d be very interested in hearing them.
along with Wordpress, Automattic’s blogging software
Wordpress, the blogging software is not Automattics. It is maintained by them but not owned by them per se.
Wordpress.com, the service is owned by Automattic
AJ, it’s controlled by Automattic. When Toni was running for CEO of the year for startups a few months ago, there were banners on the wp.org site. They’re only separate in word only.
I do hope that SixApart allows for feedback on false positives. While Akismet does have it’s “Mark as not spam” setting as well as the form for reporting false positives on their site, both are considered to be a blackhole by many. Also considering that Matt controls who gets Akismet API keys and can turn them off at will like he’s done previously, the service is rather questionable, at least in my opinion.
I find it most interesting that once again we see Matt give one of his “Do as I say, not as I do.” embarrassment moments up there. The removal of Akismet from wp.com blogs is one of the most requested items on the wp.com forums and has always fallen on deaf ears. (Outside of a very few responses from staff saying that there’s no plan on removing it.)
Oh, I forgot to say thanks for making this change. As someone who’s been blackballed by Matt with his Akismet product, I was no longer able to comment here. Now I’m able to.
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Great, there is another interesting one
Now, I’m try using this antispam but said “okey this not spam” for all my comment, spam or not spam.
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Without quibbling over details of ancient history, I think releasing the TypePad AntiSpam software under GPL for anyone to use is a good indication of our intentions, as is all the other open-source software that Six Apart has released (see code.sixapart.com) — including Movable Type.
Ironically enough, judging from some of the comments, SPAM will always be a problem. Hell, even the captchas are being broken. As long as the blogs update and keep up with them, it shouldn’t be as bad.
Akismet is an adaptive spam protection service for your wordpress blog. It has a 0.001% miss rate according to Automattic’s data
This sounds like a great way to combat spam.
I agree spam is always a problem. Anything like akimet would be a welcome addition to my spam arsenal.
Awesome thank you Techcrunch.
I’m very pleased you found Typepad to be better, we’ve been under attack by these bots for a while and akismet doesn’t seem to detect them.