This morning I spent over two hours removing over 60 accounts that were created purely to promote spam. These accounts have become very clever in hiding their garbage. Sometimes they'll use the QUOTE Reply function and sneak URLs into that generally ignored block of text. Sometimes they'll embed URLs around a single empty space. They don't care if you see or ever click on the link; it's all about page rank and gaming SEO. It's insanely stupid.
And, a lot of accounts were created simply to insert their spam URLs into their profile pages.
A lot of these accounts aimed at Poland, Russia - even China. Stupid stuff like gaming apps, banks, dating apps - all kinds of useless trash.
Anyway, after removing all of that (and I'm sure I've missed a few as they went back years) I decided to remove links from user profiles. I realize I'm kind of punishing the good guys, but I really value my time and don't want to be doing more cleanings like I did today. And this should at least minimize future damage.