Warning about view-counts on Posts!

in bug •  7 years ago 

First off, I am aware that the viewcount has probably been possible to game in other ways before which should have been in most people's minds, especially those going off theviewcount to reward some authors extra. Hence why I put the "warning" in the title to not have users be tricked into rewarding a post more because the amount of views might seem really high, feeling the post deserves it more because of it.

Having said that it wasn't as easy to game it as to just press refresh multiple times in the past so something must have occurred in the meantime. @steeminator3000 made me aware of this bug.

This was tested with Google Chrome on a post and was adding views on each refresh. Please feel free to test it with other browsers if its the same.

For the time being please refrain from voting posts up higher because it has a lot of views and attention since it very well might be fake by users that have realized of this bugs existence.

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I don't think this was a problem in Opera until a few days ago, but I've noticed it has started there, too now. I honestly preferred it the other way, because it meant I could look at my post as many times as I wanted (I'm an obsessive proof-reader.) without affecting the count. So I wasn't inflating my view results if I looked at my posts every day -- or even several times a day.

There seems to be another bug in Steemit which breaks images that were fine when the piece was originally published, but suddenly the image is missing, and only the name of the image appears. By playing with this I've found it's actually a lot more complicated in ways I don't understand and won't try to explain here.

Sometimes exactly the same code works, and sometimes -- under different circumstances -- it doesn't. Again ... it's impossible to explain quickly what I've discovered about this. But I can make the very same picture appear and disappear -- until the post is too old to edit. And then it's broken forever. Which really annoys me, because I can't fix it so it will stay fixed. And I can't trust that just because it was right in the beginning that it will stay that way. So I've gotten pretty paranoid about checking my posts for as long as it's possible to get to them in the edit feature.

But, yes I would really like it if I could check my posts as often as I want and not affect the view count. That annoys me, too ... so @acidyo, if you have any influence over this, please continue to push or work on the issue. And thank you so much for this post noting that you and others are aware of it. (Makes me a little less crazy. Which, as you may be able to tell, is also a problem!! [smile] )

It used to be a thing for youtube before. Don’t know if it still works but pretty sure there are people selling views there too.

Yeah it is a known bug, the code which was written sees if there is a refresh happen on the page or not. If yes then it will increase the counter.

The code can be modified to use one per ip address. Then also people will find a way to use proxy websites which give you different ip every time. But it will be little better in terms of

Yo acid

Are you talking about Steemit.com, I presume so?

Currently on the eSteem app as the above appears offline.

Also we have busy.org, I'm wondering if the stats can be fiddled using these locations too.

Cheers

Asher

dang that’s cool someone found this out. thanks

Thanks for sharing... nice to know about this particular feature. What is alarming me though is for posts receiving hundreds of votes with less than 10 views which may mean only bots are voting for it. It degenerates the quality of engagement here in steemit.
As a social media platform, I believe, we need real people for interactions and engagements not just bots that are upvoting or downvoting one another.

Bots are run by human beings. Bots are human beings voting with their stake in an automated manner.

Bottom line is that most of the time (99% of the time). They are upvoting or downvoting without really reading the content or even without them logging in which means that there is no real interaction.
Interactions or engagements are the values of a good social media platform, if Steemit won't have it then there is no real value in the platform.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

resteem and upvoted. lets spread this article it will be helpful.

@cleverbot

People should be voting the article if "THEY" like it, not if the post have been viewed by many people. A lot of views does not mean that the Post is deserving your upvote!

Good point, views dont send posts to hot or trending and I always check contents...however I have my favourites in my steem voter and you are one of them...thanks

still happening
Log in to you account
On blog tap click any post.
Mark the counter let us say it’s 15.
Close the post
Refresh the page
Click the post and look at the counter it should be 16.
Repeat from point 4 the counter keep going up.

Some people upvote posts without opening it. So view count shows very less. Is this practice ok @acidyo ?

You will succeed,when you must be work.

No wonder I found some posts with unbelivable number of views but very small amount upvotes... thank you.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Not always the case, I had a post with 3 upvotes (before using a booster) and around 2,000 views, views came from Google.
I doubt anyone is manipulating the view count tbh, people do it on youtube to increase their search ranking, that doesn't apply here.

The posts with low views and high upvotes bother me more.

Okay thanks for telling us. Damn people really trying every little dirty trick for getting more attention and money that is so pathetic.

This is vital information. ..good thing I followed you. Ive seen this happen with my browser I get so confused,cause when i come to my app,the numbers are difterent. Thanks for making us aware

Ah! it's a bug. Thanks for the info @acidyo. I noticed it a little.

I never voted based on view counts before hehe. Damn i wonder why my comment became an "I" earlier.

Thanks for sharing this important information..

great content! acidyo

Thanks for bringing this to my/our attention. I had no idea and it is good to know.

That's pretty crazy. I've never actually checked a posts views before, let alone thought it could be manipulated.

I don't think many users give their upvotes because a post shows more views. At least I never have... It has been kind of inaccurate anyways.

Some numbers to me seemed really unrealistic , now we have the explanation to why it occurred .

Why do some people vote on popularity though? I personally only vote if I think the post is good and makes valid arguments or something. I'd upvote stuf that everyone hated, if I liked it, and ignore stuff that is mainstream if I thought it's shit. In fact, I do think alot of the mainstream stuff is shit. I mostly stick to small, honest people :)

Dude it happened with me, I was upvoted by @minnowbooster with more than 10SBD, and in two days it has gone down to less than 8SBD. I was confused coz of the bug, and I am still seeing these bugs.

Dude check this out, Battlefield 3.
Posted just for you coz I know you enjoy playing games like me :P

Good to know...i I don't think I looked at my post that many times but sometimes I look for comments then I wonder with that so many views why nobody upvoted I felt it showed they didn't like it this actually makes me feel better to know in a way it makes me feel worse because that means not many people see my post well that is the way life is some good some bad mostly I'm not going to worry about it. Still it is good to know thank you

This post was so good I viewed it 5 times!

Lol me too

People upvotes according to viewership? Thats good to know.

I guess for whales it's hard to read every minnows post and will just tap the up V button. I'd probably do the same..

Thats is interesting for sure and always amazes me the tricks people may try to game the system

Good information

Thank you for the heads up Sir @acidyo
If the views will count to generate some earnings then we can see a whole lot of problem with another bot system. But #steemit is different, it has the best system.

Good catch!

Thanks for sharing :)

i usually upvote posts if i like the content or if i find it has value that can help other people. but yeah thanks for pointing this out @acidyo!

Thanks for the info! Personally I vote for contents I like not on number of views. Hopefully this bug will be fixed soon.

Thank you so much for 1 steem I receive from your Stream giveaway! Yes, I also encountered that glitch plus this one today "Application error An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details" with busy.org. While a HTTP ERROR 503 "steemit.com is currently unable to handle this request" error.

resteem and upvoted. lets spread this article it will be helpful.

I can confirm this BUG, just found out through refresh of my own post as well as test by another user viewing and refreshing one of my posts.