I was just curious why it's so easy for bots and spammers to create accounts here. Is there really no way to prevent this? Could it be a lack of manpower, or perhaps the site lacks an effective anti-bot system?

The site's owned by a very small company with limited development resources, and there's effectively one forum moderator. They're doing their best but it is what it is.

Thanks for the answer. I wasn't complaining, by the way. Just curious.

There's a human verification captcha on the signup page to try to prevent the bots, but they still get past.

I'm not sure what the bots get out of commenting on the site.

Maybe it's advertising? Like companies pay these people to spam bots everywhere to advertise their services.

But that's not really good advertising, as the posts only exist for a short amount of time and get deleted.

I see. I didn't remember that captcha from when I created my account though. But as you said, it's bad advertising at the end if the posts gets deleted quickly.

Thanks for the answer @YUMmy_Bacon5

building on the prior responses, I hypothesise, although I'm by no means especially knowledgeable here, that a lot of bots insert malicious or advertising links into their profile's website link on here, and it improves that website's online traction or discoverability in some way. Certainly applies to names, a lot of the most annoying bots don't come under this category but bots might just have the same name as the target site or company improving it's digital footprint.