One of the topics I've debated with other users in chat is the topic of 'Post Spam.' @steemcleaners recognizes full copy & paste texts and plagiarism as post spam. Since @steemcleaners is made up of several individuals with varying opinions on the subject we don't always agree on everything. One area we differ on occasionally is what is and isn't content moderation.
I firmly believe that with a few exceptions groups should avoid content moderation. I even find myself arguing with myself over what constitutes comment spam some days! To solve the debate with myself I finally decided that with the generic comment spam it is the intent, frequency, and interaction with the community that determine whether they are spam. The accounts interactions with the community often reveal the intent of the comments.
What do you think could qualify as 'Post Spam'?
This leads me to 'Post Spam' - are there other types of post spam besides what @steemcleaners recognizes? This is where I want the communities opinion.
I have to go back to intent and interaction with the community. I firmly believe that we should endeavor to be a community. What is social media without the social aspect of it? There accounts on Facebook & Twitter that follow the practice of what I call 'post & forget'. They are solely there to advertise but make no real effort to engage their users.
Here on steemit.com we add direct profit to the equation. Unlike the post & forget accounts on other social media sites that are trying to promote interest in a product or service users are directly rewarded through curation. The potential profit brings users to steemit.com who have no interest in being part of the community and interacting with others.
Account Observations
Case #1 @cryptomonitor
- Posts 150 - 220 memes a day in the last two weeks
- Self votes 93.5% of the time.
- Rarely comments outside of his own posts, when they do their comments often contain links to their own posts. Some are relevant and others are unsolicited self promotional comments.
- I think because of the number of posts (1353) in the last 7 days I couldn't get an accurate read from steem.supply on their potential payout. My SteemSQL query shows $579 SBD
Case #2 @izbing
- Posts 10 - 40 images a day
- Self votes 92.7% of the time.
- Does comment and engage the community on other posts even though they rarely upvote.
- Current post payout for the last 7 days according to steem.supply is $53 USD.
Case #3 @bookingteam.com
- Posts less than once a day on average. Total Posts:
- Self votes 70.6% of the time. Their remaining votes go to @suppoman 17.6%, @thecryptofiend 5.9%, @azfix 5.9%, 46 others 0.0%
- User engagement for the last 30 days is low. 18 comments & 27 posts.
- Current post payout for the last 7 days according to steem.supply is $1263 USD. The majority of the rewards coming from one voter. @hendrikdegrote
Voting information obtained from SteemReports.com
While not spam in the traditional sense. I see the posting of any content for the sole purpose of gaining a reward from the community without interacting with the community as spam. What do you think?
Check out some of my friends posts:
Something from my bar whenever I feel like it episode CDV
Summer is coming!
Another Day Fighting Abuse: @bilalhaider Strikes Again
And the latest from projects I'm involved with and support:
Service Scam Comments
Keeping Steemit Clean: One Year Later
Minnow Support Project Weekly Resteem Winner's Post!
Image by @atopy, Thanks!
Current Projects: @steemcleaners 🙣 @spaminator
I agree.
There are few trending users who have zero or very little engagement with Steemit community. Don't comment on others posts or very little. They almost never use Steemit Chat or discord to talk to anyone. Many don't even follow anyone or only tiny amount of users.
Most of their upvotes are for themselves or on posts from the same few selected users from circle jerk who upvotes them (usually whales or friends they hang out with).
Cheaters are every where. What has become of our civilized culture? Is it steem greed that causes them cheat?
Some don't see gamification as cheating. To a certain degree I will agree. Those learning how to game the system show the flaws in the system.
Some are just here to grab what ever they can get and either don't have a clue or just don't care about the impact on the reputation of the community, the success of the project, or the value of STEEM/SBD.
Sometimes it is a language/cultural barrier and once they understand the problem they stop abusing the system.
this @patrice person who is posing like a saint here is a cheater himself. He and his butt buddies from @steemcleaners are harassing me for past 2-3 days
weekly quota, there's a whole ring of these harassers and they're keeping it low so that nobody can notice what they're upto.
@tournego is not a member of @steemcleaners.
Use relevant tags and we won't ask you to stop using irrelevant tags.
@minnowbooster is a program used to help new users get their content recognized. That has nothing to do with @steemcleaners.
As I told you before. Everything we do we do publicly it is all on the block chain if you know where to look.
I hope we shouldn't leave our originality ,and should always express our own feelings., not copying others.. I am not a good blogger but your inspirational posts always helps me to think in positiveway to go ahead in steemit.
I'm glad you find my posts inspirational. I hope that I do help the community in a positive way beyond finding and fighting abuse.
Thanks to know that you like my post
It's a tricky one but I agree with you here. If someone just dumps stuff and runs for the money it's hardly in the spirit of the platform is it. However and there always seems to be a however, if what is dumped is genuinely appreciate and voted on for that then fair enough. What you have detailed here though it's not that so yes, I agree.
Eventually!
This is a though one. There is spam and there is spam, and it's hard to say exactly where these examples fit in. Personally I think posting dozens of memes a day is a lot worse than what booking.com does, but neither really add value to the platform.
What's more interesting to me is why a whale like @hendrikdegrote upvotes those booking.com posts..
I think @hendrikdegrote has been absentee voting for a bit. Last resteem or comment is 2 months old.
Yes....will go with the rest. It is tricky since everyone has his own standards. Mine are quite high actually. I already find spamy if there is more then 2 posts per day....sorry guys. Its just...I follow round 100 people so if everyone would make lets say 5 posts per day that is 500 posts. Forget it if you think im going to go all over them. If you feed the fish to much they wont bite. Rather thoss a good nice bait. :D
I imagine there are plenty of people who would like to flag these accounts but won't because of potential retaliation. That is a problem that has never been solved.
Yes, I agree it's spam. I think spam is any content brought to undeserved attention.
Pretending to be some other and for that i am really sorry the violation of the steem community.This thing will not ever happen again. I felt so bad in the matter that what i did in the post. Please cooperate and unban me.
I will never ever post such a thing in the community.Thanks.@patrice sorry for whatever i did in the post.
Everyone has different amounts of time to "engage". Different ideas of what engagement is. Content should be judged on the merit of the content, by the evaluator. (reader)
I've never engaged with Dear Abby or Dave Barry and many other great columnists. In my opinion engagement with the community is a bonus.
@patrice, this is a tough question to answer... we can go back and look at it in the context of the "intent" of Steemit.
As always, that's where we will find our first problem... ALL project leads and crazy genuises like Dan HUGELY UNDERESTIMATE the sheer number of bottom dwellers who'll sell their parents and their kids for 10 cents without a second thought. "But that will never happen HERE!!"
Yeah, nice. It CAN and it WILL. And 10-100 times worse than you could imagine.
As I write these words, there are probably five million people who'd invade Steemit if you told them they could make 1/10c for each comment they paste on Steemit. They don't care about Steemit, about Dan's vision, about cryptos, about community, about creating content, about becoming stake holders. Most likely, the only thing that's keeping them at bay is the fact that they can't cash out to PayPal every time they have 25 cents.
Think I'm exaggerating? I've been playing this gig for 20 years... same story, new venue.
We're blessed here because we DO have an active and engaged community.
Sorry, I've evaded your question.
Repetitive posting of the same thing (with, or without, reference to the original content) to such a degree it looks like "it could have been done by automation" constitutes spam. Some spam is innocent/inadvertent... initiated by some who are simply on a "monkey see, monkey do" quest... and can be redirected to productivity.
Some is systematic "harvesting" as you are well aware of.
Which brings up the issue of whether an action is "defensible" simply because the code allows it. Including spam. Some "freedom purists" will argue it is, and that anything we do has to be done at the code level.
So then we run into our second philosophical conundrum: Code vs. community.
"Communities" are-- by definition-- built by PEOPLE, not by code, bots or automation. Of course, once you involve people, you also involve subjectivity. You can create the smartest algorithm on the planet, and it still won't be able to tell you whether any one piece of content is "spam" or "content," in its current context. Cheetah is great because she points things out, but then a human gets to double-check. Sadkitten is only as effective as the parameters humans feed her.
Spam? Well, we can create loose descriptions of "undesirable content" and those interested in saving Steemit from meltdown can form their opinions from there.
Sorry I've been so busy I missed this comment.
I really don't think you are exaggerating.
These are the users I wish I had more time for.
Code purists drive me up the wall. If I found a code flaw that allowed me to blow up the world, is it an acceptable thing to do? I actually asked one purist that and their answer was - Yes but no one will ever create a program with unsecured access to allow it. Doh! There is a reason it is called a flaw...
Sadly this is true. Now that we have dealt with the large scale bot net scammers hunting down small groups and individuals using the data has been challenging and time consuming. I haven't fed @sadkitten in a week or so.
The problem I have is how to explain to the community the difference between what I perceive as 'undesirable content' and abuse. Often I'll find users reporting good content just because someone used a copyrighted photo with or without the source. When that photo adds little value to the post and the contributor isn't trying to make us believe that the image is their own work I don't see it as 'abuse'. It may be 'undesirable content' but the intent isn't there to abuse or deceive.
My favorite argument: There are no rules on steemit! So you can't flag me for plagiarism!
Check out @dtworker too! Kinda like a second @cryptomonitor
Hi thank you @patrice ! There is a post of @littlehelper that was flagged with @steemcleaners ! I hope you help him! you find in the link below a description of his problem : https://steemit.com/freesteem/@littlehelper/update-i-need-your-help-daily-free-sbd-steem-september-12