For months, I neglected my flag, using it only in extreme cases. I apologise for this. @berniesanders was very generous with his at the time, so I didn't think there was much need for me to share my own.
However, I realise now that my actions were completely selfish. I am changing my ways for the good of this platform, and will be handing out free flags to a number of people from now on. I already gave out more than 10 yesterday!
If you would like a free flag, which is very likely, because everyone on this fucking thing is all of a sudden looking for something for free, then all you must do to qualify is;
Leave me a comment asking me to follow you.
Leave me a comment complimenting my post without actually touching on any of the subject matter.
Leave any of the aforementioned types of comments on a post that I am reading.
Randomly posting links to your active posts in my or any other post I am reading.
Randomly sending links to your steemit posts to my steemit.chat or discord.
Making a post about "How to Self-Vote More Efficiently and earn 50% More." (Really?)
Sucking up to whales or dolphins in my presence.
Made a post a couple of weeks ago about an idea for a bot to go after some of the things you are talking about. Particularly people who spam comments in hopes of getting a whale kiss.
I am still in the early stages of the early stages, namely research. I Figure one important thing to do is to get people to donate 1% of their voting power to flags to help clean up the system.
On phone so can't link but if you fancy reading the post you should be able to find it 5or6 posts back on my blog, and see if it hits on some of things you think needs dissuading let me know and or what else my bot could help with
I think it would be too difficult to write a bot like that. There would inevitably be a lot of mistakes, and innocent people getting flagged.
I thnk the best approach is just for us all to make an effort to show spammers that by spamming, they are making it harder for themselves to succeed here.
If you are curious about anything, as yoiusaid you are in the research stages, I have a pretty good understanding of how things work here at this point. So, if you have any curiosities, find me in https://discord.gg/v3GpU4N and you can ask me whatever you want.
But, heads up. I am as honest as they come, so if you want me to sell this place to you, ask someone else.
As i mentioned in the post I have some ideas to safe guard innocents at the expense of only catching the most extreme Spammers.
Sell this place to me? Not sure what you mean
I see, I will give it a read later. By sell this place, I meant, tell you only its qualities, whilst omitting its less than desirable aspects.
INDEED
Hahahahaha...um where do I start. Oh yes, follow me and nice photo, very detailed. Whales, I'm here!!! Still, you might want to take a look at my latest link post?! Nearly forgot, I am going to upvote this at precisely 6 minutes and 9 seconds from typing this as I have determined that is the optimal way of making precisely no extra money.
You should have written this post...
@onetree, that was brilliant! A tip in your... ermm... of the hat to you!
Lol... ROFL 😂😂😂
You have named yourself incorrectly. You are father of satire, "son of satire" is an understatement... :P
Before leaving, let me showcase my skills so that you start to follow me... 😜
Peace ✌️✌️
@vinyprop, in awe with the satirical sardonic post of yours, it's quite ironical
Thank you @vidyabanjan 😊😊
LOL!!!! Love it! Brilliantly done.
Thank you @coquiunlimited for the kind words. :)
No no, my friend. You have failed to comprehend that my name in itself is satirical, because I am actually the daddy of satire. Lol.
Just messing, obviously. Cheers for the compliment, and the poem, has earned you that follower, even if it was a tad spammy. Lol
How this is what I call "two birds with one arrow".. Not only I got to have a conversation with you but also got an esteemed follower. Humbled. Thanks mate..!
How about two paedophiles, or two politicans (is there a difference actually?) with one arrow, instead of those innocent birds?
Also, your words are completely insane. I am just a random dude, as you are. Please, don't humble yourself before me. Lol.
You are absolutely right mate.!! Killing anyone innocent isn't right...
i will not call my self even a small minnow, i will called my self a newly hatched fish. and yet i got those spammer comming to my post. it made me smile and sad at the same time.
but can you tell me what is the effect of the flag that you give? do you have any flag percantage? I tend to ignore them, and play safe. just in case that i will get in trouble for doing that. but still i want this site to be a good place, can you expalain to me please?
You can choose to flag with 1-100% if you have enough SP that it allows you the option. I was flagging at 1% for the last couple weeks, gently hinting at spammers to desist with the annoying shit. However, this seems to have literally no effect, as things are still escalating. So, now, I have been flagging at 100%, just as I vote, for the last few days.
When I flag someone, it negatively effects their rep if their rep is lower than mine, and just about every single spammer does have a far lower rep than me, so I am able to make their posts go invisible, UNLESS, someone with more SP than me has already upvoted it. Then my flag will simply remove some of their rewards.
well thank you for your explaination. because as you said in the other comment there might be one person hadling those account. because i see two exact user commenting on some of the other post almost at the same kind of time. and they are just doing it like tandem.
i might still need more time to see it again, but might flag them in the coming days if it is still the same.
It's very possible that they are controlled by the same person. But, I would do a little more investigating to ensure you're right before taking action.
If you're unaware, steemdb.com is a great site to explore past transactions on the block chain.
In fact, if you ever just go to the top of the address bar and change the "it" in steemit to "db" for database, it will take you to a page that will give you a lot of information on that blog/post/comment.
Nicely done. I do love a good laugh in the morning. I wouldn't be entirely in favour of flagging, I'd just tend to ignore spammers, but I do understand your frustration.
I ignored for long enough, and I condemned @berniesanders for all his flagging. But if you are too lenient, people start to take liberties, and my first comment received on this post is testimony to how relevant the post, and the need for flags is becoming.
The only way to stop the spam is to show spammers that it does not work, and at the moment, it is clearly working for them..
I'd suggest you use them, as I'm sure spam was one of the reasons the flag was implemented in the first place..
I read a lot of the articles here on the rights and wrongs of flagging, I know you're likely correct and still, I can't bring myself to do it. I guess I'll just have to toughen up and maybe have a '3 strikes and you're out' system.
I understand. I tried to use mine as little as possible for months. Probably only used it like 3 times in my first 4 or 5 months, that I can remember at least. But I have watched this place slowly become more and more about self-service, and less and less about community support and succeeding together. I need to make some sort of effort to counter this shit, because it's hard to watch a place I once loved become... this.
I was really not expecting that to be the first comment on this post. it's good to see people who have been through thick and thin of steemit evolution coming forward to make the steemit paltform more enriching. I'm sure this kind of sanity check will make spammers think twice before deteriorating the quality of this platform.
Has to be done, man. I really hope you will join me in this war-on-spam. Lol
#war-on-spam :D
Hopefully will have more success than all the other war-on-stuffs.
Too fucking right.
Sounds like it could be a trending tag. I'ma have to edit the tags on this one. Thanks :D
These kind of things will never go away, regardless of how hard you try, for example the two biggest players on the internet, Facebook and Google are unable to get rid of the hateful things available on their platforms, spamming is here to stay for a very long time @son-of-satire
I disagree. Facebook is centralized. We are not. We have the power to stand up together and say, no more of this shit. All we have to do, i smake it very clear, that it will not be tolerated.
I used my first flag yesterday :(. I've been getting more comment spam lately. I find a majority of the comments I receive appear genuine, but this "chick" was talking about photos of me on one of my posts, and I don't have photos of me in any of my posts.
Lol. Yes. After close examination, I have noticed that some of these spam accounts are completely automated. They cycle through templates when they use comments, and their content is sourced straight from trending sites.
Crazy man. I bet there is probably one singular entity behind a large portion of them too.
I've started flagging those sorts of comments. It's easy to check if they are a repeat offender. I only use a few percent, but that will cancel out what they can earn from a self-vote.
The post about efficient self-voting was pointing out some flaws in Steemit with how delegating SP works. I think it was a valid post.
Is there any chance you can link me that post if you remember who did it? I clearly acted hastily, if it was a satirical thing, so I'd like to remove my flag.
I thought it was just a cunt teaching others cunts how to be more cuntish.
It was this one https://steemit.com/steemit/@twinner/howto-vote-every-post-or-comment-twice-a-tutorial-for-the-advanced-selfvoter-increase-your-income-by-50-now
Nah, that's not it. The post I flagged was titled something akin to,
"How to get 50% extra out of your voting power. An intensive guide for the avid self-voter"
Or something like that.. But, you still have me wondering if that was satire. Didn't look like it, but I'm going to run through my history on SDB and see if I wrongfully flagged someone.
This one did say 50% originally. Looks like he re-calculated
It is still not the same one. Different image and there is no flag for me to remove.
So, this means there are multiple posts about how to self vote efficiently out there at this moment. Lol. I suppose what I said in the post was more relevant than I even knew at the time.
Interesting. I do try to read enough of a post to tell if it's encouraging bad behaviour. I also check for comments by Cheetah to indicate plagiarism.
Really enjoyed your post on whatever it was about, can't remember. Please read my posts now HERE because I read yours, now you read mine. You can find out how to earn more $$$$$ by changing your vote strategy (hint: self vote). Big shout out to @berniesanders
Plz follow, follow for follow, vote for vote, eye for eye
Love this, only I am sure they aren't reading the posts at all. Lol
i just had a flea ask me to upvote and he didn't even upvote mine - i unfollowed him - but i should learn to use flagging -thanks for your humor
Yeah, I think this last hardfork has really changed things. I have over 900 followers, and my posts recently will be lucky to get 30 votes. They are more powerful though.
But, someone the other day, commented on a post of mine saying they loved it, it made them laugh etc.. But, still didn't upvote it. And, that was after 20minutes and it was on like 15 views and 0 upvotes. Lol.
People are becoming too stingy. I still vote 100% all the time. Yes, it depletes your power quickly, but it's not like you can actually run out.
My full upvote is 4c an when i use too many it drops lower, i have people who upvote and it is worth 0, but i still appreciate it as like a like on facebook. A lot of people are only chasing money here, so they get involved in curation trails and don't upvote anyone personally. Others are not upvoting cause they have so few to give each day. I appreciate your replay and it is good to start to get to know you-David
I am hoping that they will amend the voting power, so that you can get at least 12 100% votes a day without it depleting
As long as it goes down this quickly people will continue to withhold their votes even on posts that they thoroughly enjoyed.
I appreciate the comment too. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Yup, ive been meaning to start doing the same.
But my conditions are a like this.
If you post that garbage comment on my post without upvoting my post atleast at 1% just for the fcking sake of upvoting my shit because you decided to come by and ask me to upvote your shit!!
Wtf is that!!
That pisses me off more than anything..
Anyone who has been here more than 1month knows better.
So i agree with handing out flags.
Trust me, start doing it too, or things will only get much worse as newcomers take their cue from those who are spamming on every post. Try to think of it as doing them a favour, because you are. They will have a much better time here if they actually take the time to engage properly.
Hahaha I wish I could have put a message with my resteem of this post!
I have been hoping for addition to site too. Should be able to add why you are resteeming it to your followers, or just add a random comment.
What would you have said?
Something sarcastic like omg, this is awesome! If you don't have a flag you need to check this out
Great post, follow me 😂
I'm afraid I simply cannot do it, friend.
As I already am.. Lol.
Lol, figured I would have some fun :) I wouldn't have minded if you had flagged it - I was expecting it 😂
Well, I am disappointed if you truly believed I would have flagged you!
Figured that you would have to treat everyone equally :)
I do. I flag greed. Your message was not inspired by greed, it was inspired by a desire to make cunts laugh. This, will never deserve a flag in my book.
This post made me lol 😁
😂😂😂 I've often thought about doing this to those God dam follow freaks but never have! Maybe I should start too!
Yes. You should. You will be helping in the long run, and everyone else.
Funny stuff! I do notice the need for using the flag ever so often myself. I generally save it for the worst of the worst of the spammers, plagiators, scammers and other filth that refuse to bugger off this great platform or at least adjust their practices. I realize people are all up for a freebie but doing any of the issues you touched upon in your bullet-points seem like a very valid entry point for winning a free flag.
Glad to see that so many of you agree... Was starting to wonder to be honest. I keep seeing the spam comments getting upvoted.
People need to start valuing their upvotes more if this network is going to succeed. When you see junk getting rewarded it makes you question the future of it really.
Oddly enough, I disagree. I do think it's important to reward good content. But from my observations, it is people's unwillingness to part with upvotes since the last hard fork that is the biggest danger to the platform.
THAT. Right there. They dubbed the last HF "Equality" but I think it should have been "Selfishness." Of course, I'm naive as fuck, but I still believe in the whole notion that Steemit could be a working model for a "gift economy" where people reward each other for worthy contributions through upvotes. The whole upvoting of your own comments at 100%... but NOT upvoting anyone else? That just rots...
Truth in Disclosure: I have upvoted a handful of my own comments... but only to lift them above the ocean of "nice posts" so someone might actually read them. A *handful." In several months...
I agree with that! I still don't feel comfortable with my own strategy, where I try to keep my voting power at about 50%. Why not keep it even lower, all the time? My vote would still be worth more than before HF19. I would really like to see some analysis by folks that can bring up some example from the blockchain.
Hmm...I didn't really express what I was thinking properly. My mistake. It didn't mean that people should vote less but only that they should use those votes on good content as you say. Not on junk (spam, scam, stolen content). I do see that people are getting stingy with their upvotes and I guess it is only fair since they have 4 times the value they had before the HF 19 if people don't have a voting slider.
Yeah, I do get that. I'm hoping they amend it in the next one so it's not quite as powerful.
Me too...not for me since I will probably have a slider soon but for the rest of the redfish out there. However, if they do amend it the power of those redfish will be decreased. It does suck to see your vote make 0 difference in the potential payout. You just feel completely powerless.
I already did many selfishness but i am now starting to change my emotion and many others.
Sharing is a promotion of yourself!!!
As long as you learn from your
mistakeslessons then no one can ask for more. Glad to see you making an effort to make a change, though, your motivations still sound to be self-serving.Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by tonyr from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
Well thank you kindly. I shall return to that chatroom later.
I am flagging your post -- but in a good way! I generally upvote all the good comments people make on my posts (not my own). So the junk comments end up at the bottom with no reward. I don't get too many junk comments. I think you have convinced me to flag any self-upvoted junk comments - and maybe more. But they won't get this same dandelion flag! ; )
Thanks for the flag! Lol
i dont think that there is any spam here on Steem
its just many people dont want to make long
conversations and like to come straight to the point
as pls.follow me and visit my post upvoted you
and so on :) its very simple many people
come to Steemit with the wrong expectation
to make big money with little effort
and many do exactly this after a while they get
delusion and give up because Steemit is not like
fuckbook hmm im not sure how to write it
correctly i think its facebook LOL well thats
how it is and reality will catch up with anyone
on Steemit !
Cheers Steemineros, Hasta Pronto
I think, by the definition of spam, there is a lot of it on here. I understand that it can be diffiicult to obtain followers at the start, but sending 3 word comments on everyone's post will only earn you the type of followers who follow only to get followed back, and these types are the ones that self vote.
If people just took the time to actually leave thoughtful comments, they would earn followers that actually intend to follow them, instead of using them as a tool to get paid.
Ok, you are right ! but there is no cure for this kind of behavior
except that everyone will have to make its own experience
how Steemit works and you guys doing a good job
of explaining it how a Steemian should behave :)
The next problem this platform will face is when people
from pour countries join steemit and dont speak
english and those have not being proper explaint how
Steemit works they might go the spamming way because
its the easiest way to get noticed and earn some money.
Im italian, english is not my mother language but i
know what spam is and i know how to avoid it
but many dont know its like children that have 2 be teached.
Thank you for doing exactly this, even if its the satire way !
SteemOn Son
Stunning emoji you have there @son-of-satire :)
That's a legit photo of me, mate. But thank you for insinuating that I look so far from human that I must be an emoji. How lovely of you.
Thank you for writing the truth.
It's what I do! NO need for gratitude, it should be the norm.
Crazy post cheers mike
My name isn't Mike, but thanks!
Sorry mate my name is mike a poorly written comment by me . Cheers mike
Hahha. I was just kidding. But, it shows the importance of commas.
Cheers mate
like and voied
Thanks, I have never been voied before. You will always be my first. <3
VOIED. Victim Operated Improvised Explosive Device... First, and last...
This made my stomach hurt.
Sorry don't understand the rules. How can i get a free vote here? 😊
Did you read the post at all...
It was a joke. Come down. 😂
I'm just happy that i didnt win 😂😂😂
One thing I've been thinking about doing, aside from the flagging that I've already started doing on the spammers, is replying to the comment with something about their spam and then 1% Up-vote my own reply, but not theirs.
Yesterday I posted a single pic and got a reply "Nice pics I really liked them..." I answered "Oh but I wonder which was your favorite." I didn't upvote myself on that one, I just considered it, because it would have made me happy, but my comment was fun to make by itself.
People use the same amount of time and energy in writing the spam. If they start writing real comments, this will not only increase their thinking but also they will be rewarded more. Even they can share something great with the community. Writing a good comment is not too difficult, the main problem is that people do not try.
I started following the instructions because I like free shit, then I realized what you were talking about.
I'm here for my free flag @son-of-satire!
Seriously, though... I just got through 10 days of doing the "Steemit Community Engagement Challenge;" name's pretty self explanatory... point being I just got through looking at probably 1000 posts and 20000 comments and this shyte is running rampant. And I found myself starting to sprinkle flags to some of the worst offenders. I understand what Bernie was trying to do... just a shame he let himself get sucked into a flagging vendetta.
At the risk of writing an essay here, "Houston, we have a problem." I think most people don't quite grasp (a) who these people ARE and (b) that we are just at the very tip of a very large and very ugly iceberg.
If we truly give a damn about Steemit and its long term success, we need to focus on making it extremely clear that this is not a PROFITABLE place to run bot spam in order to make a few pennies. These people could care less whether their substandard garbage is allowed but if there's no money to be made, they will go away.
Let's consider, for a moment, who they (or many of them) are. They are not content creators. They are really not social media users, in a general sense. If there's a key phrase to sum them up, it would be "get paid to click." You will find concentrations of them on Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" where they seem to think that transcribing supermarket receipts for 12 cents an hour constitutes a "Great Way To Make Money Working Online!" (caps added for satirical effect); you will also find them in any number of "Best Places To Make Money Online!" forums... which number in the thousands, and some of the forums have hundreds of thousands of members.
Just adding a little perspective.
This "being Steemit" means NOTHING. Zero. Zip. Nada. We could could saying "Make Five Cents Counting Tacos Online" and they would be here by the thousands. To them, Steemit is nothing but a fancy cash dispenser and the more ambitious ones will go to almost any lengths to find ways to "game" said cash dispenser to maximize payouts, by hook and by crook.
The purpose of any "countermeasures" we apply should primarily be to have them go back to their forums saying "That Steemit thing is a scam, you can't make money there!" or just "You can't make money there!"
I know some people are going to say "But Steemit.... blockchain... no censorship.... for everyone... freedom... yadda yadda."
Yeah... no. Until you've watched a couple of dozen "content sites with rewards" go down in flames specifically because of this kind of action... you don't entirely understand what we're dealing with, here. Yes, I realize that since this is not a "cash based" site, it won't go bankrupt, but do be prepared to live with 1/2 cent Steem... maybe a year, maybe two years from now, if this is allowed to run unchecked. If the Steemit social platform is the "flagship app" for the Steem blockchain... we run the risk of being part of "just another shitcoin" if we develop a reputation as just another spam repository.
Sound harsh?
I meant it to. Because we need to wake up and nurture our community... think of Steemit as a garden... and there's a cloud of thistle seeds heading this way. We can either get busy "weeding," or we can have a thistle farm. But to think we can somehow teach the thistles how to be roses... sorry, I'm not THAT much of an idealist!
/end rant
I don't think that is too harsh at all. Perhaps I am just too optimistic in my belief that everyone has the potential to be more. But, I won't pretend that I haven't recently considered that perhaps some people are simply lesser humans.
I don't want to think like that, however. It seems arrogant, and far too cynical. So, at least for a while longer, until my faith in humanity takes a final blow, I will remain hopeful that even these spammers have something to bring to the table if they look inside themselves to find it.
Thanks for the comment!
Honestly, I don't like being cynical... and I have lots of faith and hopes in Steemit I just have less in humanity, in the broader sense.
My wife is (among other things) a very accomplished and experienced life coach and counselor and one of the things she's always passing along to her clients is that optimism and faith are awesome characteristics, as long as we don't use them as "blinders" to shield us from a reality that might harm us.
So if we were to give the spammers a chance... let's look at their motivation and experience. First thing that comes to my mind is that their approach is rooted in short term thinking. They care about "how do I get 5 cents NOW?" That's not surprising, because most "make money online" schemes run for a few months, pay out a little... and then go bankrupt. So we have to convey a "long term" approach to them as a better solution...
Part two (and I'm grossly generalizing here), many of our newcomers come from nations/cultural backgrounds where "cheating the system" is an inherent part of the culture. Not because they are "bad people" but because they were raised with and live with corrupt governments. Those in charge make unreasonable rules and demands, so you "cheat" to get ahead; to survive. Here in the west that might make us "pretty criminals;" elsewhere it's simply "a way of life" (I lived in Africa as a kid)
But now we have Steemit... which is a GLOBAL community... which cultural rule set do we build our foundation around? And HOW do we do that? @ned and @dan had a great vision for Steemit, but they were undeniably not born and grew up in Viet-Nam or Bangladesh.
So that leaves us with "education" at a very fundamental level. This sort of gives me an idea for a post... but whether enough eyeballs would see it is a whole other ball of wax.
Thanks for the conversation @son-of-satire.
"Leave me a comment complimenting my post without actually touching on any of the subject matter."
?????? Really ? I'm with ya on the rest but a compliment gets flagged for not leaving detail ? That's crazy man
Like I said I'm with ya on the rest but to threaten a flag for a compliment that just doesn't give enough info to show they read post is wrong dude
I disagree. I don't need my arse licked. If I spend a lot of time writing a post, then sure, I'm hoping for engagement. Someone who leaves a comment saying "nice post" is not looking for engagement. They're looking for upvotes and follows, and I don't need that shit on my post.
Perhaps poorly worded, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
"Great post."
"Nice post, thanks for sharing"
etc...
That's nothing but spam.
follow me)
I am reading your posted.
Please to follow and upvote me.
We have a winner!!
Here; As promised ;)
It feels good doesn't it?
I think if it catches on, we might just encourage a few people to examine their process of engagement. The interesting time will be when the floodgates open and a million new people arrive.
I hope more people will start flagging spammers who goes to all new posts and paste Ctrl+V in the comment section. So far this has gone pretty unpunished, but I hope we are able to get rid of most of these in the future. If they get flagged on all their posts, or at least those who earn them some money pre-flagging, they probably won't bother to keep this up.
My thoughts exactly. Glad you are with me on this one/
Yes, I think it's imperative that we get things on track before the mass influx happens, because they will take their lead on how to act from the community, and if there is still a ton of spamming being accepted, the newcomers will follow suit.
Oh, boy. I was so close. Just beat me too it :p
Better luck next time I guess...
Right on cue.