It's obvious to most of us that there is a huge problem with the rash of empty comments. These comments serve no purpose other than to elicit an upvote.
Users throw thousands of these comments out everyday in the hopes that they will get at least a penny with each comment. If you threw out 5,000 comments a day and you got a penny for even only one thousand of them you would still get $10. If you had a bot that did this on 10 different accounts then you would get $100.
Every day.
You wouldn't even have to do anything because it would be an automatic process.
Source: Giphy.com
So how do we determine these bot comments?
These comments have a few different things in common.
Sometimes they include your name so that they look like this....
"Nice! @jeezzle"
That's a good trick to make it look like somebody actually read the thread when they didn't.
They might look like this.....
"I like your viewpoint"
"Great share on this"
"Excellent post"
"Amazing work"
Of course we have our very favorite one that always makes me smile.
"Beautiful pictures"
I think the beautiful pictures one is absolutely hilarious especially when applied to a thread that does not have beautiful pictures in it.
I've even seen one on occasion that says....
"Wish I was there"
I remember my friend @marxrab posted a thread involving a bag of chips she had bought and received this comment....
"Wish I was there."
I remember chuckling while thinking about that. Wish I was there.......... in Tennessee........ in the middle of nowhere at a convenience store buying a bag of chips in a part of town that I'm unfamiliar with. Doesn't that sound fun? Wish I was there.
Most these people seem to have very low reputation that's because they keep getting flagged and rightly so.
Source: Giphy.com
It's really a shame we have so many people posting this way.
The problem is that you might run into somebody that really did think you had an amazing post. If they write "amazing post" down then I wouldn't want to flag somebody that is just being lazy but actually read my post.
I would only want to flag somebody did something really terrible.
To be honest I'm really against the idea of flagging anyone at all.
So my new policy is going to be that I will no longer upvote any comment that does not directly reference my post.
So if you're used to posting....
"Nice post"
"Amazing post"
You can rest assured that you will no longer get my vote.
I'm not going to flag you either. I'm just going to let you sit there because I think that you are a bot and several people are using these bots in order to cast out thousands of comments from thousands of computers somewhere.
Thousands of worthless accounts posting worthless comments.
Meanwhile the whales don't even seem to be swimming in the ocean anymore throwing out their high dollar votes.
Instead we're just surrounded by meaningless comments looking for a penny here or there. They add up I guess.
Let's see how many meaningless comments I can get in this thread.
it's like a desparate guy sliding up in the inbox trying to get a piece by chumming the waters. I get it but it's always fanooches like that, who end up ruining a good thing. It's why we can't ever have nice things. Lol.
Any who, Nice Post. 😜
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I wish I was there.
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@tipU - send tips by writing tip! in the comment and get share in service profit :)
By upvoting this comment you support the service - thanks!
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tip!
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@jeezzle. Good post! 😂 Just kidding! Meaningful comments mean the world to me so I make a point to follow people who leave encouraging or helpful comments.
The worst are the bots that leave trite comments that don't match the emotional tone of the creator's post.
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That was well said. Thank you for commenting and I definitely agree.
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nice work. lol. I wondered about those bots too.
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!
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The sad part is bots (or should I call them scripts) are getting more and more smarter, soon we won't be able to differentiate between genuine comment and one made by Machine learning script. Reminds me of that movie 'her'
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More and more smarter? We better get more smarterer than that.
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That is very true. It's sad and also a little bit scary.
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Skynet is a mass marketing algorithm for weight loss and erectile dysfunction.
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You can always check their account, though, and see if the same comment appears over and over.
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Insert generic comment here.
Random gif.
You make good postings.
Please upvote and follow.
If you don't starving kids in Africa will starve..........more?
Upvote to say amen and Jesus loves you. Keep scrolling if you want the devil and terrorists to win.
I have no idea how crypto currency really works but if you upvote me I'll not be in poverty any more.
I think I have covered all the bases.
P.S. I'm naturally sarcastic.
Have a thumbs up from Phil Collins.
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Haha awesome! The only thing I can think of that you forgot was to type out your user name so they can easily click on your page to follow you. ;)
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Dammit! Don't forget to follow @HarleyMechanix All the cool kids are doing it!
Oh and send me some bitcoin! 1KzAF8oVDqSjWzsPDDQuZbkTksywyfZsLW
There. Better?
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Perfect!
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I love this ...you both are too funny!
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You get my upvote just because I love Phil Collins. lol
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Hahahahahah YES!
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Thanks big Phil
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I think it is just human nature to try and get the most reward with the least amount of effort. You are right that sometimes all somebody has to say is something generic like "Good Job" and you can't really read a person's intentions from that. But usually if you look a bit closer at the other posts that account has made you can determine if it is a bot.
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The problem is that sometimes I only get a few comments so it's easy to look through them and sometimes I get a whole ton of comments and I have other things to do throughout the day so checking steemd or other accounts is kind of a huge pain in the butt...... instead of doing that if I don't see something that looks personal like your comment here I might just ignore it.
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That makes sense. As a newer user it doesn't take me long to check.
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Hahahaha - you surely make me laugh - o this is so true.
Great post, beautiful pictures hahahahaaha. Resteeming
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I was guilty of this when i first opened my account - read posts but would often skim through them quickly and leave a short comment. Then i realised how little the $0.01 vote matters to me in comparison to the time it takes for someone to sit and write something from scratch. Now im more grateful for posts i read and being able to read them myself :)
Maybe there are bots here purely to make money, but we cant hate them for it. So, I think youve found a nice middle ground there Jeezzle!
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Ah yes we all know about the bots. When i got the "I only say meep" one i gotta say i almost fell out of my computer chair. Like who comes up with this shit.... Anyway nice post. Wish i was there! Lol...
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Nicely done. Thanks for commenting.
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Won't say anything.
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Nice haunted house picture. I wish I was there. I only say meep (yes, I have seen that one!). Upvote and Resteem. How's that for a meaningless comment? Just your friendly @tradeqwik writer having a little fun. I actually did enjoy reading your article. Nice post. Nice article. Etc.
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I very much appreciate it and I'll be seeing you in Discord. ;)
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Ha, indeed. Wish you were here while I was sitting in my pj's, the room filled with stale cigarette smoke, three mugs of cold coffee next to me, yesterday's takeaway boxes still sitting next to the computer. Although I do have to admit that sometimes I just say: "Beautiful pictures"...
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Well sometimes a beautiful picture is a beautiful picture.
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After reading your pots, I scrolled down and found one comment by @hrhabibur. If I were you, I would reply back to that person asking him why this post is nice and what did he understand after reading this post? I was like seriously, just wrote "Nice Post"!!
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It's probably a bot that's just commenting without any actual user interaction.
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I wish I could be there................lol j/k @jezzle seriously though, awesome post, damn I keep doing it!
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I don't know, the flags kinda let you know what is going on and serve as a warning. If I'm unsure I quickly check out the person's profile and see what exactly they are up to.
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I'm not saying you shouldn't flag someone if you want to. I'm just saying I personally choose not to.
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Yeah that totally cool and I got that. I just wanted to put my two cents in. The spam is really bugging me. I saw a post today where over 1,000 accounts were linked to one person.
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I have friends that have been trying to get on steemit for over a month and can't because of the backlog of new users and a single person has over 1,000 accounts? That is infuriating. Uugghhhh. This is why we can't have anything nice.
Also David I followed because
Texas!
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I won't leave you a mindless comment, but I will be so bold as to say you have very eloquently said everything I have been thinking over the past couple weeks. :(((
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Why thank you.
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I agree! @jeezzle
But seriously, I have pondered this matter as well. I have tried flagging a few truly obnoxious spammers, but really, it's a poor use of my time. I'd rather upvote good content, but that is also getting harder to find as new users flood the feed with reposted youtube videos and copy/pasted articles.
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I agree that upvoting good content is a much better use of time than downloading bad content but it really is hard these days with all of these terrible posts and comments that are nothing more than an attempt to gain a few cents here and there that add up to a few dollars at the expense of our time and our vote.
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Hey, those were the most amazing potato chips anyone could eat. The envy of all other potato chips. One should be so lucky to be in that convenience store buying them. I mean they were BBQ flavored. lol.
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They did look pretty good......... I have to admit.
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Nice Post.
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Are you really going to leave that comment on this post? The whole point of this post is for you to realize you need to stop spamming people with this shitty comment that doesn't add any value to the conversation. Maybe you just don't realize what you are doing but now that I'm telling you, maybe it's time to put a little more thought into your comments. Here's a shot of your spamming comments from just the last day.
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Wow, what a view. I wish I was there, great job.
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Really though, you have raised a great point. I used to be against the flag function, however this kind of situation shows the need for some type of communal content control.
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Beautiful pictures
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I appreciate your post. I am not even interested (at least for now) on receiving crypto currency for my posts. I am looking for community and quality content. I love that there are so many people interested in a variety of topics on this platform. I do feel very small, which is fine. I am looking forward to finding like-minded people. Thanks for expressing what I was seeing in the comment section.
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Dam, you mean I could have been using bots to comment instead of spending time reading and then commenting? :)
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It's kind of like the kid is school who does something that gets something taken away from everyone. I hope that those who are using bots to get more money get booted out. I enjoy your posts...I really do.
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I always check the comments of the person making those simple comments. It's pretty obvious that they are spamming when there is 40 identical comments in 30 minutes. Sometimes the comments are slightly different but it's pretty easy to see through. I almost made it a year without flagging anybody, but these spammers need to be stopped, or at least have their penny taken away where it can be.
The key is to always check and make sure it's not someone who may not speak english as their primary language and is actually just trying to be nice. And to confront them on one of their posts somewhere. I have told this to a few people and they just didn't realize what they were doing and stopped once they were confronted.
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I love it when someone comments on my post and says something about what I wrote. At least you know they did read your post. There is nothing worse than voting and not reading. I am very picky so if there is someting in the post I dont like, I just pass.
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You have been spamming meaningless comments exactly like the ones this article addresses. Uncool, bro.
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Dude I saw this same message on a friend's post. Did you actually read the article, this is not what you're supposed to do if you want to get attention mate!
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