It's not the ad slots that are the issue. It's paid sig spam, mostly from ICOs who couldn't care less about spam. In fact, more spam is better for them. More posts = more ad impressions. This needs to change and I've suggested numerous ways to combat it, most importantly badly run campaigns should be punished. They would soon clean up their act then.
I agree, those paid signatures & avatars are the main problem. Severe punishments to the spammers (the users who adhere bounty campaigns ) + advertisers (PR managers and those intermediaries who pay) will scare them away. Adopting some system of warnings prior the ban would make the process automated as well as a smoothly transition towards purification / purge. This measure will also harm the underground market of re-selling hacked accounts.
Send me the signed message on my hilariousandco account or post it here and if it checks out I can ban the account. Only admins can restore access to you though so you'll still need to wait for that to happen.
Excellent initiative, I didn't know you were able to ban the hacked accounts. This way we prevent the spammers posting crap with our stolen accounts, much better solution than sitting waiting years. Here is mine hope this will do:
-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
My account AvenG (ID: 67153) has been hacked/stolen on 11th july 2018. Please hilariousetc ban that account so only admins can restore access later. The current date is 18th August 2018.
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE-----
1KmUUTK82zhp2QYULV6CXGbZofepBEpziV
IGpsbcXhum7ulkpCkVF8ptcNsxPtIkK6Oo6WVOL6J011E+B1FSV6eGSzJdj6QTmTx+ED40MtVyCuYrkCFQemY4Q=
-----END BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Here are the unedited posts where I posted that address:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192916.msg2310742#msg2310742
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192916.msg2301934#msg2301934
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4832256.msg43664776#msg43664776