What can we do about the spam?

Recently I've noticed a lot more spam on IH. The screenshot above is one I took today of a post ranking high on the front page. These spammers are shamelessly throwing their links everywhere and asking for backlinks from other spammers.

I know that there was a call for moderators not long ago, but can we implement some kind of filter?

Prevent new users (maybe accounts created within the last week and who have a default profile picture) from making new posts - or prevent them from posting and commenting links until they hit some kind of point / comment threshold?

Alternatively, posters that fit this profile have their posts as not visible until approved by a moderator?

When I checked this morning the 'new' tab was about 30% spam posts. The popular tab isn't much better.

I know it's not easy to prevent spam entirely, but whenever I click on 'new' I see that flurry of spam. And it's frustrating enough that I've been going there less and less to look for discussions.

There was a similar discussion about a month ago about vote manipulation and spam.

It feels like the IH forum is slowly getting killed 🙁