Announcing: Minnow Support Project Anti-Abuse Team
Recently, an initiative to cut back on the abuse of the @minnowsupport upvote bot was started among the leadership team.
As we have gotten new tools in place to help track down and identify people abusing the $upvote command, we decided it was time to move forward with the Anti-Abuse Team.
This team of sorts, being led by me, is intended to help return the value to the free upvote available to all members of the Minnow Support Project. We watch for abuse of the bots that might lower the value of the upvotes this service offers for free.
First, let's cover what we consider abuse of the bots:
- Any method that may allow an individual steemit account to repeatedly receive more than a single @minnowsupport upvote inside the 12 hour cool-down.
- Any use of multiple accounts, all receiving their own upvote, but owned by a single individual.
- Repeated use of the bots to upvote spam, plagiarism, or copy/paste content.
All of these present an unfair distribution of what is a FREE upvote from a bot with a considerable amount of SP delegated to it by the community. This would be unfair even if it came from one person, but with everyone chipping in to help, it is worse. It would be wrong to have any one member of the community get more than any other through nefarious means.
We want people free to show support to any member.
This means that we will do our best to identify when a member is getting more $upvote uses towards their posts for valid reasons. We want you to feel free to use your cool-down to help someone else. Just try not to always aim it at the same person, as this will be considered abuse. Spread the love, help everyone get a boost from this wonderful bot of ours.
How can you help us identify this type of abuse, or others?
We have an 'msp-abuse' channel in Discord for just this purpose. If you see something that is out of the ordinary, or posts getting upvotes when you don't think they are worthy, drop us a line. Please be sure to explain what you have found, rather than just dumping a link in there.
We use that channel as our points of contact with @steemcleaners and other similar groups, so it will be seen not just by us, but others as well.
You can also message me on Discord. (I promise I chose this username long before Discord was a thing, it bears no relation.)
Now, what do we do about abuse when it's found?
So what do we do when we first detect possible abuse of our bots? We investigate.
Please do not think we just ban you from Discord, and blacklist you from the bot blindly. We do check on it. I won't go into details how, as it could serve as a road-map for how to avoid detection, but it is very thorough.
Then, depending on what we see, we decide what to do.
If it seems like there may be a valid reason for it, we contact the users in question. We ask them what is going on, and use their responses versus what we have found as a way to determine the intent of the users.
If it is a blatant violation of our rules about having a single Discord account, or there is a clear connection between the SteemIt accounts, we will ban the users in question from Discord, and place the SteemIt accounts on a blacklist (@minnowsupport mutes them, so their content can't be seen/upvoted by any automated means).
This generally covers most of the situations we run into, but there have been specific situations regard plagiarism, copy/paste or low-quality content causing different reactions.
Keep in mind that any Moderator for MSP can remove an upvote from a post by setting it to 0%. You will get a comment on the post stating that it has been changed to 0% as well.
What can you do to earn your way back in?
So, you might have been banned from Discord and want to speak to me or another member of the Anti-Abuse team about your situation?
How do you reach us, as Direct Messages on Discord are blocked unless a server is shared?
We have created today a Discord server for just this purpose. I will provide the link here, and it will be where anyone who has been banned will be sent.
There, we can discuss the nature of the abuse that was found to be done.
If there is a possibility of returning you to the server, we will discuss that in detail. We want to help all the Minnows grow and become the best Steemians they can be.
To this end, we are usually able to allow you back into the community. Though, you may not gain access to the upvote bot for some time. We work this out on an case by case basis.
In summary, if you screw up and decide to try and get more than you were allowed to out of our community, we will find you. If you decide you really want to get back in, you now know where to find us for discussion.
Stay posted too, I will be posting weekly updates on the progress, statistics, and developments regarding the Anti-Abuse Team.
If you have any questions, please contact me on MSP or MSP-Probation
Thanks -
Discordiant
MSP Moderator and Anti-Abuse Team Leader
It's been great working with you! Look forward to helping when and where I can.
Great post, Disco. Glad to see you're heading this up, especially as we grow!
Going to be a crazy bit of work eventually I think.
Thanks Disco! It's great to see it. Thanks for taking the lead here!
Nice service there. Well I don't know why anyone would want to abuse the bot system. It is something the community is giving us to help people with and they will abuse it...well hopefully people will see the fault and stop.
I am very happy to hear this. Nice job.
Looks like we got ourselves some sardines to lock in a can. (for a while anyway)
Nice service! Thanks! <3
How come everything ends up with having to police something? I really don't understand it, I use Minnowsupport on every post I make because I don't get too many votes, I have sometimes made the mistake of trying to get the upvote before the 12 hours have passed and all I get is an additional 12 hour wait for being too needy. And now you are telling me there are people taking advantage of this by using bots? What is wrong here, I mean the most I get from Minnowsupport is maybe 50 or 60 cents so to make a decent amount I would have to have at least 100 bots, and if people have to resort to that, Steemit is really in deep trouble.
We tend to agree, but for whatever reason, they still do it. I catch 10-15 a day averaged out over a week. Sometimes I find a bunch at once, other times I go a day without any.
My future weekly posts on this will go over the stats.
Excellent step by amazing people. I can't thank you guys enough for being so supportive and for the efforts you're putting in to help us beginners.
I LOVE this police whale!!!
u dont mess with this whale! hes mad!
Thanks, it was a fairly easy edit of the image made by @malicered as our new logo. I am happy with how it turned out.
Great post Disco! Eye in the sky...Sad you have to resort to regulating because some people just don't know how to be honest and appreciate the good intentions of MSP and upvoting system.
i love the chaos star logo profile pic and ashowed discord steamspeek the whalecop graphic! it should be its own post!
I hate that it is necessary and that great people like you have to spend time doing it. But I sure appreciate your efforts!
Thanks for that. If we couldn't take a joke, we shouldn't have signed up.
YEAH!!!!!!
I fail to find this relevant? Spam?
I have had some of those bots claim they upvote me but don't. I even had one I called on it and they never responded. They wanted steem in return for their fakery. I am a newbie. Been here a whole 20 days. I appreciate people like you trying to make this environment a better place. I see lots of newbies having problems here. Your efforts and those of others helping us is greatly appreciated. I thought my comment demonstrated my appreciation.
We only have the one bot that upvotes anyone? Also, talking to our bots won't get you a response anyways.
We are here to help new members. Feel free to click the banner at the bottom of the post to join the main server and get some help.
Why are you calling my comment spam? I like what you are doing.
This post received a 10% vote by @netuoso courtesy of @sammosk from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Join us in Discord.
Be sure to go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses, scroll to the bottom of the page, and vote for @netuoso.
This post received a 10% vote by @minnowsupport courtesy of @sammosk from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Join us in Discord.
Upvoting this comment will help support @minnowsupport.
I agree
But now I am thinking I will be a target 🎯 for someone that believes I get too many upvotes
I have Delegated Steem Power to@minnowsupport @minnowsupport @muxxybot and @msp-shanehug
Now I received upvotes from @banjo @minnowsupport @lovebot @muxxybot @msp-shanehug
Quite a few right?!
Can you please check my blog and let me know. I will have any problems
Thanks you very much for your help and support
As I said in all the other places you have asked. You are fine. The upvotes from minnowsupport are normal ones. Banjo upvotes mean nothing as they are just for records keeping mostly. You get upvotes from each bot for delegating directly to muxxybot, shanehug, and minnowsupport gives you the lovebot.
All perfectly normal for someone who has delegated SP to a few of our bots.
I apologise for writing in the other places too
I appreciate your response
I am really interested in Helping the community Minnows Support Projects
And I will sonn delegate some more
My first on the list is @muxxybot
I will increase my delegation from 50 to 200 Steem Power
And I will continue in the near future to delegate my earned Steem Power the rest of the Bots From Minnowsupport Project
Have a lovely time
Why My Pal Account Was Banned?
they muted me .. I just made a mistake in a letter when voting, I do not think I did something wrong or illegal.. I agree with peeling the abuse but not for a small mistake