Borderline stuff can last a few hours. I've occasionally seen linkjacked stuff that is several hours old. The story being jacked is interesting, and so it may even have upvotes. Obviously, once a moderator spots it, the link gets changed to the original story...but it'd be hard to spot in a quick peruse of the New page, so I can understand how such links could live so long.
Anyway, it depends on your definition of "survived" and whether there is value for the spammer in their story living on the new page for minutes or hours. Our company forums get an onslaught of spam about once per week, and though the spam never lasts more than a few hours (far less these days, as I've added a couple of moderators), it seems to be the same spammer doing it over and over again, so they must consider it worth a shot. When your employees time is almost free (or the work is done by a bot), pretty much any result is a worthwhile result.
I should be more precise. What I really meant was, has a spam ever made it out of the holding pen of the new page and onto the frontpage? The new page only gets a fraction of the traffic of the frontpage.
I'm pretty sure the fact that spammers do something doesn't automatically mean it's worthwhile. There are some spammers whose stuff has been autokilled for months, but who keep submitting. They can't possibly be measuring the traffic they're getting.
Hmm, maybe we have a business model here. I could easily enough make such spams not appear to users with over some threshold of karma, which the spammers presumably wouldn't have. Can you point me to the page with the offer?
Not prepared to post it here (for obvious reasons)
I will email it though (you will need to register on a forum and make a few posts I think :) been a while since I joined) if you wish. Which email goes direct to you?
Well no response... if you are interested I have a draft email composed. I'll send it to <your username> @ ycombinator.com later today if I dont hear anything...
Though I suspect you were attempting to call a bluff ;) oops...
Anyway, it depends on your definition of "survived" and whether there is value for the spammer in their story living on the new page for minutes or hours. Our company forums get an onslaught of spam about once per week, and though the spam never lasts more than a few hours (far less these days, as I've added a couple of moderators), it seems to be the same spammer doing it over and over again, so they must consider it worth a shot. When your employees time is almost free (or the work is done by a bot), pretty much any result is a worthwhile result.