I'm quite an old dog here on Steemit already. Bots and spammers are nothing new to me. I can imagine newcomers might have an odd experience at first. Back in 2016 I was greeted by @wang on most of my posts. Later on he became a good bot, giving valuable links to all newcomers. There were other bots and spammers too. No one ever read my stuff so at one point I wrote a letter dedicated to bots who seemed to be my only audience.
https://steemit.com/bot/@sulev/an-open-letter-to-bots-it-s-original-because-of-brackets
There have been many changes over my time here on steemit regarding the activity of bots. One time I even had bot armies upvoting my posts. It was funny. A post with 5000 upvotes, but was worth a few cents.
In the beginning there weren't many vote for vote kinda spammers, but they have gradually increased. I feel as if they are slowly dying off again. And by dying off I mean they have changed their strategy: instead of "vote 4 vote" they now post random generic replies that might apply to atleast 50% of the post they post them too. So it's good seeing that they actually but some thought into it.
The sad side all this are the new users who don't know what's going on. They will naturally try and mimic others. Maybe spamming is the way here on Steemit. It's not. But the thought will surely cross their minds and lead some of their actions.
I have a lot of selfdoubt when I flag someone. I don't want to make some poor bloke bitter because he/she didn't get how things are supposed to be done on this platform, but there is no other choice I think. As I've written in some of my previous posts: we learn from our mistakes and flagging is giving everyone a lesson, therefore it's actually a good things and it will benefit the whole community if we teached everyone to stop spamming pointless stuff.
All this to say one simple thing:
I will flag anyone who comments on my post with something pointless only for the sake of commenting
Don't comment if you don't have anything to say.
Don't comment if you haven't even read my post.
Don't comment if all you want is an upvote.
Don't comment if you all you want is to promote your account.
Don't post random pics on my posts with 0 explanation.
etc.
I'm pretty sure I'll find someone to flag with this post.
We'll see :P
What's your take on bots, spammers and flagging?
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Upvote, comment, resteem and follow if you like!
Have a great day!
Man my feed is riddled with the little maggots. I mean I dedicated a full poem to exterminating the spammers this week. Bad behavior is just not tolerated in my comments anymore and I wish more would help slap greedy hands at the table. No more spam - no more vote fishers - no more
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there should be a flagwhale too
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I'm with you. I'm here since January (2017) and I observed the increased of the spammers and their "strategies" in time. The spammers seems to be increased with the growth of the value of steem, but I noticed the number of the spam comments grow up also when a content has an "interesting" payout or the author has an high reputation.I have to say that I'm really boring to see many spam comments on my contents and I started to flag them (for some months I replied with a "friendly" tip abut this rude way, but now it's really too much)
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I think there's really too little incentive to flag spammy posts. Steem really needs some cleaning up, but everybody is too absorbed with upvoting...
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I have begun spamming them back.
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I feel you man <3
I have these moral doubts for some time now, because whales that endorsed me in the past are gone, and I'm not making money for 4 moths now.
Do you really need to spam whales etc to get any attention?
I see that people that spammed me now make a lot of money.
And I'm like WTF, do we really need to do that?
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Don't know. :/
I'm experimenting with vote-bidding bots right now. It seems to be the only way if you don't have any whale friends (like me ).
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No whale friends for me as well :( Voting bots are ok for getting some ROI, but what's the point of creating quality content if only paid bots "appreciate" it?.. Kinda sad...
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same on every other social media site... and in the real world. Time, consistency and engaging will bring you an audience. You need to market yourself somehow. Commenting thoughtfully a lot will get you on the radar of people.
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If we take bots in the sense that they come under your post and just comment anything that is taken from their .txt algorithm then yes, it's utterly annoying. Although vote-bots and such have been such a big help (for me) because otherwise I wouldn't have had no place to start. But yes, I too feel like the spammer and bot (annoying) community is becoming slightly too big.
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Yup. There are a lot less spambots now than there were a year ago. But it feels like there are more legit spammers now that simply copy paste random text to as much posts as possible.
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Yes it is a bit of a problem.
Someone here told me a couple of days ago that flagging cost you SP as well as upvoting...
But it is irritating indeed.
The whole idea with this new concept, a blog platform on a blockchain, is also that posts on the system are impossible to remove afterwards....
So these spam or irrelevent postings will stay endless....
It would be a good idea if there was more space on top of your homepage here on steemit so that you could place a warning message, like the one in your posting, on the top of your page.
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I don't get them too often, but I have grown weary of spammers, bots, and people who behave like bots. If I can tell it's a copy/paste response, I generally just ignore it. I've only ever flagged one spammer because he actually posted nothing but a link to one of his posts that had 0% to do with the post he commented on. Upon further inspection, I found that he had posted the same link to about 20+ posts back to back.
I think a lot of people miss the point when they read about how to gain followers on Steemit. Many people are told "comment for exposure!" But they don't take the time to understand that there has to be something of relevant substance in their comment, or there won't be a real connection (which is what I think actually drives users here to build a real audience).
Great article. I really appreciate more established users letting some of the newer Steemians know that people can tell when they're fishing for upvotes.
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Hello. I’m quite new to here, and honestly at first I immediately considered to quit because I saw such pointless “A nice post. Upvoted.” kind of comments everywhere. I even thought steemit could be a platform for that kind of people. Fortunately I met a bunch of creative and interesting people, so I decided to stay.
It’s also interesting to know their “strategies” has changed in time. I’m still hesitating to flag, though. I totally agree with you downvoting is good for the community, but I still feel like there would be somebody who revenges, for example, downvoting back every single posts of me.
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I have an argument to this.
I always post "I have upvoted and resteemed. I also started following you so I can see more of your work." I don't post that on every article I read, just the ones that I agree with , that I feel are beneficial to the website. I make the assumption that people like to be told when they have good work, and when someone out here feels they are contributing. I don't mean it to be spammy, nor have I ever put thought into people flagging me for saying that they are doing more than just posting a picture of a kitten, and putting "Happy Monday" underneath it.
When do you draw the line between people trying to give you a compliment, and people trying to spam?
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If it's good grammar and You respond to following questions then it's good.
I think comments should reflect the post. Are you really gonna comment "A nice article" when some wrote long one, mostly not. I bet you can come up with questions or ideas you'd like to share :P Short comments are however suitable for art in my opinion, because there really isn't much else to say sometimes, but "Really nice, well done!".
And this leads to another topic - how to comment. Short comments feel lazy and aren't engaging. But they aren't spam in my book.
Spam comments are more like "hey, nice shot" while the post is not about the cover picture at all.
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Is it acceptable to acknowledge that you upvoted and resteemed a post?
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sure, but the problem is some are abusing this by simply copy-pasting the same line everywhere while not even upvoting the posts. That's why it's always better to link your comment with the contents of the post in some way, to show you are not simply fishing for votes, but sincere.
It can simply be something like: "I liked this and that about your post. I upvoted/resteemed...".
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A downvote is only as strong as their upvote.
I'd suggest not flagging anyone if you are afraid of that at the beginning.
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Thank you for your advice. Perhaps I’ll flag after I get more SP :)
By the way, if it would be okay to you, I would like to translate this article into Japanese and post it in #Japanese tag. I’m a professional translator of Japanese, and on steemit I translate informative / inspiring english posts once a week, with the permission of the author. As our Japanese community is rather isolated due to the language barrier, also issue about spam comments is yet to be openly discussed there, introducing your post would be very helpful for our community. I’ll encourage readers to visit your page and upvote your post, of course. I’m glad if it would be acceptable for you!
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go ahead :P
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Thank you! But if you feel somehow uncomfortable I simply won’t.
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I am pretty sure you are gonna get at least one of those
Don'tshere :)Almost like a challenge!
On more serious note I hate those too. I noticed those with photographs lately. Not a single word, nothing. Just a photo. Pretty annoying...
And all the spammers I simply report ;)
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You're definitely right that Steemit is pretty confusing for new members, I still haven't really got a clue what the difference is between good bots and bad ones.
The spam comments annoy me too, I don't have too much comments on my posts in general, but reading through other people's comment section I can see that spam is pretty rampant.
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A bot is any account that is automated to do certain things. Bad ones are those that aim to gather maximum attention/followers by simply posting random generic replies to hundreds of post per day.
Good bots usually have a visible team behind them. They specialize in curating original content, supporting newcomers or fighting plagiarism. They have a post explaining their mission and post weekly updates etc. Like @cheetah @curie @minnowsupport etc
Then there are vote-bidding bots, that will upvote your post if you send them SBD. A lot of them seem to be uncurated, but the bigger ones are curated. (to avoid 1pic posts to be upvoted. We want legit posts to earn more not spam)
You can make your own account into a bot too via steemvoter.com - it will automatically upvote authors you want upvoted with your account.
I also suggest installing this addon for chrome/firefox https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/steemit-more-info/dcbpmclnlapbkgkddhencielibcjogcf
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OMG, I forgot Steemvoter after setting the voting "rules". I was trying hard to find out, with what Streemian configuration I was auto voting. Whoa, it's Steemvoter and not Streemian.
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Well I can certainly agree that spam is bad....mkay...lol. Luckily I don't have to deal with spammy comments on my posts much because I'm a nobody but it is annoying when I'm trying to read comments related to a post and that's all you see on the more popular posters. Most of them should get flagged, maye they will learn their lessons. Maybe some just need to be told to smarten up but if you go look at their comments on other peoples posts, you can clearly see some are excessive spammers and deserve what they get. That being said, I know people like bots, they may help good writers get visibility but the downside, they don't care what they upvote and crap spam post get visibility and thrive with 5-10 bought votes per posts, giving spammers more encouragement to continue posting poor quality junk. For that reason, I'm not a big fan of bid bots and it' starting to make the platform kinda sucky and discouraging for those who try hard the legit way and without bought votes.
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Luckily the bigger bid-bots are periodically curated with blacklists.
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That's right! Too I do not like meaningless comments. Otherwise people probably do not teach ...
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agreed!
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Spammers will always be them nowhere to hide. I'm not paying attention. It annoys me when my posts write: I put upvote and follow to you. Thus implying that I did the same thing. But I follow on those who are interesting to me
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Honestly, when I just started posting posts on steemit, I was glad even to reports and upvote of bots, because besides them no one looked at me. But I perfectly understand a person who already has a high reputation and many regular readers. If I had to look for some real comments among 20-30 same-type notes, I would be angry.
P.s. I'm not a bot) I really read yours posts.
Perhaps, I do not always write understandable because English is not my native language.
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I think, that many people support spam themselves, especially in comments, when they are responsible for all comments and even vote for them. Maybe we should stop voting for comments, and you will know, who are really interested in your posts and who is chasing profit. Although, sometimes I read the post and think "Cool post", but I try not to write it, because it is also a kind of spam. And it just pisses me off, when people in comments ask to vote and follow in response
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This post has received gratitude of 4.82 % from @appreciator thanks to: @sulev.
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You won a flag! congratz!
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There's always one. ;)
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hah
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