Steemit Improvements | Bot Content / Upvoting Service Comments

wolo (51) in steemit • 7 years ago (edited)

Messy!

That is my first thought when I think of all the bot, spintax and auto-generated comments on Steemit.

So what can be done to improve it?

I think a monthly flag by a panel of witnesses would be excellent in cases such as the one linked below and also the ability to prevent "user notifications" by abusers:

https://steemit.com/health/@luiza/myths-about-coffee

The comments are completely ruining posts made by authors putting in effort and most importantly their time! It would also be super demoralizing thinking your post was popular but turned out to be a bot malfunctioning..

So what else?

When an author decides to use multiple upvoting services a thread gets messy very quickly.. It pretty much hinders commenting..

I know the services want to attract users but this is not the way to do it.

I suggest any of these options:

Having known upvoting service comments moved to the bottom of a post if they contain the usual comment/regex.

Upvoting services giving the author the ability to not post a comment after upvoting e.g. with sending SBD with a memo flag like:

"https://steemit.com/health/@luiza/myths-about-coffee -nocomment"

Or even only allowing the first upvoting service comment to show in a sort of "the author decided this bot was the most beneficial" to his post and therefore used this service first.

If you liked this post please see the following others:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@wux/steemit-improvements-user-profile
https://steemit.com/steemit/@wux/steemit-improvements-or-flagging-downvoting-comments
https://steemit.com/steemit/@wux/steemit-improvements-or-pay-to-remove-your-own-post
https://steemit.com/steemit/@winstonwolfe/the-bots-are-getting-out-of-control-and-it-s-kind-of-tainting-steemit-for-me

Thanks for reading!

steemit steem improvements bots

7 years ago by wolo (51)

$8.58

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worldclassplayer (67) · 7 years ago

Hmm - if you are using voting service - seems like the cost of doing business to me - suppose it could be arranged to have no comment appear

You Received an UpVote from @worldclassplayer. To Learn More, See DetailsHere

$0.14

1 vote

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wolo (51) · 7 years ago

I appreciate your reply, glad you like one of the options I suggested.

$1.83

2 votes

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randowhale (67) · 7 years ago

This post received a 4.2% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @wolo! For more information, click here!

$0.00

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neilcrabbe (39) · 7 years ago

I was really tempted to reply looks decilious, but it might not be as funny as I meant it to be.

I completely agree something needs to be done. Could the system not be configured not to allow Bots at all? I know nobody likes seeing lots of captcha prompts, but you really want real comments, not junk.

Not sure what the answer is, but it's definitely a problem.

$0.00

7 votes

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wolo (51) · 7 years ago

Unfortunately even captcha prompts aren't the way forward..

They will get bypassed through services like deathbycaptcha/2captcha and just make it hard on the genuine users.

If bot owners obtained no profit from spamming comments then they would stop (or really improve their system to the point it looks legit)

A mass flagging operation/blacklist would work but it could end up harming an honest user..

Honestly I think there needs to be a way for a communal suspension (under a certain reputation threshold of sorts)

$0.00

1 vote

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fraenk (62) · 7 years ago

I actually think it's good these comments appear!

It helps everybody notice what's going on and why a post has an inflated reward.

It used to be that randowhale comments get auto-upvotes... easily pushing it to the top of the comments, which I found very annoying.

But just leaving the comment as "evidence" is something important imho, also (maybe especially) to show who bought that vote.

(I would have never been able to catch that minnowsupport abuser without the comments)

$0.00

1 vote

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wolo (51) · 7 years ago

Well I guess the evidence would still be visible e.g. through steemd.com etc for compiling a case as you did, I do agree those comments would of certainly helped you investigate though and it would most likely be an isolated case where someone would abuse..

I myself check who upvotes content I read out of habit not sure how many other steemian do that though.

I think pushing them to the bottom would be nice and still very visible.

$1.23

5 votes

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fraenk (62) · 7 years ago

well, steemdb will only reveal that (e.g.) rando upvoted you, it won't tell who sent rando there.

pushing the comments to the bottom... absolutely agreed, they don't add any value to the discussion! But removing them, nah... I'd rather like to make them a requirement for voting-bots actually.

$0.00

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wolo (51) · 7 years ago

It would show their transaction amount sent to rando and memo URL ;)

Take a peek https://steemd.com/@randowhale

But yeah I think it would be nice if they appeared similar to flagged comments myself (some of the images such as minnowbooster take up a lot of space)

Love what they do though!

$1.65

5 votes

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fraenk (62) · 7 years ago

works for rando... wouldn't work for @minnowsupport.

actually... you know what... voting trails should start leaving a notice, too :P let's spam that comment section to hell, lol

I think I am looking at this from a different angle than you, but I get your point totally, comment sections full of the same old booster comments are kind of ugly!

but really, (from my pov,) I think it would be nice if bot-votes and manual votes could somehow be separated... that's a technical impossibility, though, I guess...