Just checked the list of participants and got lots of people have been accepted in semux's list. Here is the
list of participants listed by semux where people with airdropped merits accepted.
Let me
check the first 5:
2884. 11 Merit received by liotmaan (#689832) from 1 unique users in 2 transactions
13918. 1 Merit received by crimealone (#206556) from 1 unique users in 1 transactions
170054 received nothing
181270 received nothing
8206. 3 Merit received by investgarant (#1108727) from 2 unique users in 3 transactions
Now let's check their Merit history in details:
liotmaan (#689832)2 Merit for a link that redirects to a referal link > Reported to moderator.
9 Merit from the same user for saying "Where's the github".
crimealone (#206556)1 Merit for a post in Chinese
investgarant (#1108727)3 times 1 Merit for 3 posts in Russian.
I think it's safe to conclude requiring merit is NOT a solutation against spam, if it's an automated system that accepts anybody.