I've been here for over a year now. This activity makes me want to use Steemit less. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
In my last post, I announced that the first roll of film in my 35mm photo-per-day project was expelled and ready for processing. I posted a single image of the film roll itself to go along with it. For any intelligent person who actually read the 2 whole sentences that I made in that post, you would've realized that the image of the roll of film was not intended as a showcased or artsy photo in the least. It's just a cell phone pic of the roll that came from my camera. That's it. But all the replies I got were canned bullshit that appear to be programmed replies for posts that show up with the "photography" tag. I don't think a single one of them was an actual human being.
Here was my post - I mean really, you don't have to read TOO carefully.
And here were the responses I got.
If even a single one of those were a living, breathing human being, then their reading skills are severely lacking. Otherwise, 100% bots. I mean seriously, one of them mentioned how beautiful the hat was. DO YOU SEE A HAT IN THAT PICTURE?
This is incredibly discouraging because genuine comments are ammunition for good conversation. I can't reply to a single one of those comments, because either A) none of them are human, or B) none of them understood this simple post at all and starting a conversation from that foundation would be nearly impossible.
This is a consequence of HF19 - the comment bots are hoping for an upvote from an unsuspecting minnow who is delighted that someone, anyone, voted and commented on their post.
A minnow with about 130 steempower can deliver about 3 cents. So if your bot can spam thousands of photography posts and even 10% of them get upvotes, then it's kerching!
Agree with this completely, Its boiling my piss, I can tell you. This, and the people just posting pictures that they have pulled off stock photo sites and trying to pass them off as their own. It just de-values the quality of the geniunly talented people on here. Any old idiot can copy and paste an image from google.
I don't know if this is a common saying where you're from, but consider it stolen. I LOL'd.
Nice teeth bro! I talk about Leonidas here haha :D.
@styleyfrancky got you a $0.98 @minnowbooster upgoat, nice! (Image: pixabay.com)
Want a boost? Click here to read more!
it is a nice hat. lol
When the price of Steem started climbing a couple of months ago I thought to myself "here come the money grabbers"
Meeee too! Bot world domination is on the rise....
Nice pic. Awesome post, love it. Thank you for sharing with us. Follow for follow?
:P Just had to poke you a bit there ;)
I've replied to some like "You commented after just 1 minute, why comment if you didn't read?". One of three was actually a real person :O
See, and I can't actually do that because most of what I post is just an image, maybe with a little bit of text. So someone could feasibly have a response typed up and posted within a minute or two. I think I'm just going to start looking at replies from each user to see if they have a pattern going, indicating spamminess. If they fit the bill, I'm flagging it.
I don't even think its bots its just a bunch of people trying to get a quick penny and not understanding that quality over quantity is what matters. What we need to do is police this and flag it when needed and only vote on people that give good quality comments and post good quality content that is what gives steemit its power we the people.
That's something that could even be turned into a slogan:
"Don't want to be labeled a bot? Then don't act like a bot."
Agreed, these are just as likely to be hapless minnows.
Nice car bro. Just kidding. I never thought about people using bots. That explains some of my comments I received from my posts. It makes me wonder if something deeper more sinister is going on regarding this platform. I am afraid to share what i think is really going on with Steemit
There is nothing sinister going on just your "good old internet money grabbers" trying to make a quick buck with bots.
I guess they tag you to try and get more attention. I'll be flagging persistent offenders. That may deter them
There is actually a comment bot? 🤔😂
Apparently there are a lot of them. I've had a couple of them show up in comments on a few of my posts. It's a simple way to get curation rewards without having to do anything. If there's a way to scam the system, some people will find it.
Shesssh! I had a few of them but didn't know it was a big prob lol
I suppose it depends on how you look at it...
Just enter into #introduceyourself and you will see always the same comments
Yeah, I've just joined and noticed this. Does this place have a spamming/vote-mining/bot policy?
Nice Hat tho @winstonwolfe
Yeah bots are really annoying man :(
I've noticed the same thing. I'm no programming expert but I wonder if there is a way to limit the use of bots? I've also seen an increase of "copy and paste" posts. The cheetah bot catches them but it'd be ideal if there were a better flagging system. Maybe HF20 will address these problems.
Hahaha this is fast becoming a world of bots. I am very much human. I also commented on a photo of your cute son I think yesterday. Something ought to be done about this or this stops becoming a community, and starts becoming really just a means to generate extra cash.
I have resteemed this to reach my few followers as well. I am sure they are experiencing the same thing. I encourage getting this upvoted everyone, when this goes viral we might just be heard. Will also post in other social media platforms.
oh the irony :D
lol you noticed :D
the bots coming :D
I stopped using the photography tag just for this reason. I made a post about my son and his ptsd with a portrait I took of him. What is the first comment? A bot asking me to be careful with photo attribution. I was so annoyed to see that when the whole post is about the circumstances and situation of how I took the photo.
I am so dumb that I replied to the bot and then someone came in and explained it to me and said it was because I used the photography tag. So I don't use it now.
I was wondering if the problem was fixed. Apparently not. I'm sorry this happened to you too and now you know my advice - stupid as it may be.
Resteeming so others can see this.
Very good post, you shed more insights to the issues bot in steemit, thanks @winstonwolfe
Are you a bot?
Sadly @winstonwolfe, looking at the comments they've posted, @reachfem24 seems to be a real human being.
It might have been better if they were a bot.
I got them too, I just ignore them....
I would gladly ignore them if I didn't get 100% percent of all my comments from them. No kidding, all 6 comments on that post aside from mine are bots.
That sucks but it will stop because there is no benefit in it for them.
Good luck with that :-)
Yeah, it's an epidemic on the rise. I have been that active myself but I am resteeming this because ppl need to be aware of how things are getting inauthentic.
This is on point! I read a post about an earthquake somewhere and the comments were like "nice! thanks for sharing" or "awesome. great to have you here". Thank you for putting this out there.
I'm with you they really suck. I take solace in knowing that most of these spammer bots seem to get knocked out pretty quickly with a few nicely placed flags from some heavier hitters.
Same .. the bot-rush en-masse when one writes the first intro sucks the lemon too hard.
I agree with you 100% winstonwolfe! It is very annoying to be Bot replied or Spam replied. 😡
What is even more annoying is when someone bothers to leave a comment but they don't think it deserves an upvote? 😝
Eh, I can understand that though. At least it's a human making that decision.
Resteemed to help get the word out.
I know I shouldn't laugh, but it is a bit funny. lol. Like you caught them red handed. Smh...One thing I learned from STEEMit from the jump and -- you know who told me this directly in a comment @sweetsssj "You know how many hours I've put in?....up late...." I --is you gotta put that work in man. This is a marathon, theres no easy way around it. Even if you manage to get the curation points, if your content is trash, you'll always be having to leech and never see anything real, ya know. Thanks for posting this though, makes me think on the work I still have to put in.
Wasn't trying to catch them red handed. I'm just trying to put a spotlight on a problem. It's like having flies in a room with you. One or two may be tolerable. But then toss in another 5 to 10. Suddenly things start getting disruptive.
And I was tired when I wrote this. I meant to say "lol" caught them red handed...smh...I'm still laughing like man..how obvious is it that they're bots. lol
Hey @banjo! This guy doesn't like bots! Get him!
Do you think I'm a girl or a boy?
That's not really what I had in mind.
Fool! What right do you have to assume my legend. As I was saying, my mornings begin with a cup of tea.
@banjo may be one of very few exceptions. ;-)
Don't pull that psuedo philosophy junk on me, I don't buy into it.
I would have responded to the hat lady. I am curious to know what about the hat she liked? :D
Don't give up hope that bots will learn and do better soon enough
Haha like that. I would have done too.
"Ohh, where did you get that hat? Where did you get that tile?..."
What hat? That hat!
That's brilliant go back and do that! And then let me know what she says
Interesting to see the basic nature with which these bots respond. It is like bot 99 was offered in place of bot 101, at least structure your responses better. This is not rocket science... Most likely it is copy/paste code/script.
I get those first two on almost every post I make too. I thought she was meaning to say "Nice that" Lol!
So was there a new influx? I don't see any posts that don't have them anymore!
Sharing to get others to chime in..
@winstonwolfe. i wonder if (and i am no technologist) profiles could have a flag as a bot or not.
The default steemit user would allow for postings/comments from both types of profiles (bot and non-bot profile). If a user wanted they could turn on a flag which would not allow 'bot' profiles to post on their blog posts.
For these profiles similar to tools on FB, instagram if there were specific bot profiles the user wanted to interact with, the individual could search for the profile and enable those on (i.e. an example is @steemboard)
In this manner those who argue bots should be allowed, the default setting (new user) would allow for all activity; however, users would have an easy mechanism to filter out unwanted acitivity.
In terms of determining what constitutes a bot profile, ideally the users would self-elect. If a bot profile was not categorized correctly, users could flag the profile as a bot (similar to what you have done below @winstonwolfe) and if a threshold was hit on the profile, it would switch to a 'bot' profile.
What can you do, spammers didn't go to school, so they don't know how to read. I get them too, I ask them politely to remove their spammy comments, but no response. If this continues, I might call upon the powers of the cleaners to hit them with the ban hammer.
P.S. @winstonwolfe don't use watermarked images 😎in your posts.
It's a stock image. There is nothing wrong with using watermarked images here. Don't make up rules out of thin air.
I thought they were copyrighted.
All images are copyrighted at the moment of creation. I'm a photographer by trade, so I have to know these laws. However, this is a content sharing website. I'm sharing content.
AMEN!!! I seem to keep getting them... had no idea it could be linked to a tag! I wasn't sure if it was bots or just a copy and paste response but thats for clearing that up for me... is there any way to stop them, or at least hide their comments? Surely there must be a way that we can actually get rid of them?
I guess this incentive driven platform encourages people to try to gain profits, but it is true that it is annoying seen always the same comments in all the posts
:)) I see it every day :))
We used to have waaay more bot activity, now we witness an even worst situation where people just pretend to be bots.
It is 2 AM here. This is what my sleep-deprived mind thinks of when I see mindless bots commenting nonsense.
I've just joined steemit and I've been saying the exact same thing! When i voiced my aggravation about "nice post" drivel comments, i was ridiculed for not appreciating the traffic!
Really? I came here to share and have interactions,not get drive-by bots posting
It seems very few people are brave enough to use the flag for fear of retribution, especially those who have just arrived. Perhaps we should be flagging serial offenders, and bots who constantly spam posts with rubbish comments. Ignoring them doesn't seem to be working.
You can mute them, but you'll still see that you have a comment in the counter, even if you can't see the comment itself. When I mute someone, I really wish I was just as invisible to them as they are to me.
I have only been on Steemit for about a week and have already realized the bots are a huge problem here.
Sucks being a minnow and only getting comments from bots and no one else looking at your actual original content...
Awesome photo! (Just joking). I think some of them are bots but never underestimate the human ability to just be lazy and not read. I think those people would probably use bots if they could, but they don't have the technical expertise - so they just "cut and paste" spam comments.
Can't say I won't flag them for that too, though. I mean if you're not going to be genuine, why should you be rewarded for that, yunno?
Yes that's true.
I have to admit to being a little disappointed, although probably for the exact opposite reason your post points out.
Yesterday I wrote a very nice post (personal bias notwithstanding) about the comment spammers and I included at the bottom that any comment spam I got would be sent the link to the very post they spammed.
Do you think a had any?
Not one.
Maybe I should have tagged it as photography?
Sorry that this is happening to you in such high volume. I might get one or two spam comments on a post, but nothing like this.
Anyway, I'm a real person and I've upvoted and followed you in an attempt to counterbalance the bots. I don't post my own content often (yet), but enjoy perusing other folks' blogs and chatting in the comments.
Looking forward to seeing what's on that roll of film once it's been developed. Have a great weekend!
We need to all start flagging theses bots, because it's ridiculous
As far as bots go, one of my favorites is:
Congratulations! You have achieved some accomplishment on Steemit!
Makes me wish I knew what kind of accomplishment I achieved to receive such high praise . I just accept the stickers, ignore the rest and carry on. :-)
@winstonwolfe You are very right. Just based on tags, these bots are firing off comments. I get pretty much the exact same comment on all my posts from some of them. I am not sure that all of them are bots though. Some of them are what I call 'comment snipers' who lurk around for new posts and fire off a 'cut paste' comment. However, I still believe, that Steemit is a platform of intellectuals and such bots will not damage the value of Steemit interactions. Thanks for voicing this issue. Upvoted.
At my end - after I created a GIF based post on 'Bathing beauties - Save water Elephant style' , I have posted a blog with a concern about Endangered species of Ground Hornbill. I would be honored if you take a look and help me spread the message. Your valuable comments will be eagerly awaited. Thanks
That explains it. Thanks. I'm fairly new, too - back after a break. I just thought a couple of people were being weird. Even worse, what I posted was a vid about an Israeli anti-child-abuse activist who was asking for international help so I thought that maybe people were putting her down......when anyone into protecting children would have watched the video (never mind the upvotes),
Wow! LOL. That was pretty funny. Ok, sad but funny. I don't understand the purpose of those bots stuff. And what's with "follow me, I follow you," bullshit. The same three people upvote on all my post and same two people comments. What happened to the other three hundred something people that followed me?!
Goodness, this space is....I don't know what to say...
Nope, not bots. Those look like the spam copy paste comments that people have been complaining about. You should see the follow me spams and upvoted you (but not really) comments. It saves them time and every once in a while, they get upvoted or manage to lure some people so I guess it's why the tactic is still being used.