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1⃣ Tell us about your main project, @LolsBot How and when was it created? Was it born out of a necessity? Did other people help you develop it?
The project appeared four years ago out of an urgent need for effective tools to fight spammers. I tried various big group admin bots that existed at the time, but none of them could provide proper anti-spam functionality. They all only had customizable filters, where you had to add new stop words every day or prevent users from sending any links and photos at all.
Since then, other bots have of course continued to improve as well, but fighting spam is still not their main priority. That's why it hasn't been difficult for me to remain a leader in this field despite the complete absence of any paid promotion or advertising.
Other people definitely help too - with advice, testing, and by reporting missed spam cases and false positives. Thanks to this, the bot never stands still and continues to develop constantly.
2⃣ What has been the most complex part of programming @LolsBot?
I can't single out any particular part of the work on the bot as the most difficult. My specialization isn't related to programming or engineering, so all of this was new to me. A huge number of different technologies were used in working on the bot. Some have already been discarded as unsuitable, but it still represents a zoo of technologies that other developers often call incompatible or unsuitable for solving this task. But for me, it's an interesting experiment and a way of self-development. The whole project is just a hobby for me.
3⃣ In 2023, you said you were spending $940 per month on server maintenance. Can you tell us how much you spend today to keep the project running, and what percentage of the costs is covered by the bot’s premium users?
As of today, the bot costs approximately $1,300 per month, and this amount is covered 200% by paid subscribers - and their number continues to grow despite Telegram being blocked in Russia.
4⃣ Was it difficult to convince group owners to use your bot? And how did you manage to make Lols so popular?
Convincing group admins that the bot is safe for them is quite difficult. Many worry even about the bot stealing their group, although that is technically impossible. A more realistic risk is false positives, especially in groups where advertising is allowed. Early on I spent a lot of time communicating with admins, but I stopped doing that because I often get a negative reaction when a stranger reaches out to offer help - sometimes they even accuse me of organizing the spam attack myself.
Nowadays admins add the bot themselves, seeing it work well in other groups or on the advice of fellow admins.
5⃣ In your opinion, what features should a good moderation bot have in order to be effective?
In my view, a good moderator bot is one that works automatically and requires no daily attention from admins. With Lols, some admins forget about spammers and occasionally remove the bot thinking the problem has gone away, only to bring it back a few days later.
6⃣ What could Telegram do today to better limit spam in groups?
Telegram has enormous potential to make anti-spam efforts far more effective, since they have access to a large amount of user activity data. However, many spammers pay for Premium subscriptions - which may give Telegram an incentive to look the other way and offload the problem to bots. That said, Telegram was originally conceived as a base platform whose functionality is extended by third-party bots. The catch is that bots don't have access to all the methods available to regular admins, which complicates spam detection.