The Blacklist

didic (68) · 6 years ago

This is a great project, and one with huge potential upside for the Steem blockchain. As a member of the community, I thank you for creating and maintaining it.

Apart from minor proofreading issues, the post itself is very well done. This project, not being a software project in itself, is a bit of an outlier for the Utopian blog category, but it is licenced using an open source licence, and is an important one for this open source platform. I found the post engaging, and the personal aspects particularly interesting. I had no idea of the level of abuse you've taken for your good works on the platform. Thank you for sharing that.

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$6.45

4 votes

utopian-io (71) · 6 years ago

Thank you for your review, @didic!

So far this week you've reviewed 11 contributions. Keep up the good work!

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https://loggiaonfire.com/magazine/it_is_time_for_humanity_to_eat_our_feedback_1490821089.html

loggiaonfire (52) · 6 years ago

@themarkymark It is regrettable that people are resorting to threats, but money and social media bring out the worst in people, and Steemit combines both. I'm sure you anticipated that response from some, inexcusable as it is.

However, having been designated a bad actor by your system, resulting in every post of mine being tagged by your bot, I can understand the frustration some people are feeling.

I use my account to publish original content using automated tools. Some people may not like my content, and that is fine. But it is legitimate content, and I consider it to be art. I have described my purpose and method in detail:

https://loggiaonfire.com/magazine/fresh_and_exclusive_culturally_recycled_haiku_to_grow_your_brain_1491508203.html

I suspect I was "referred" to your system by someone that does not like me. Plenty of people don't, because of my association with John McAfee. An association that I leveraged to help bring eyes to the Steemit platform.

https://steemit.com/dogecoin/@loggiaonfire/wow-much-endorsement-john-mcafee-selects-dogecoin-as-coin-of-the-week-on-twitter

The comments give a good idea of the traffic that resulted. I did not need to publish here, I have my own blog. I did so to give the platform a boost. Mr. McAfee was gracious enough to play along and, as usual, got only abuse for his trouble.

Rather than threaten you, I am going to humbly suggest that perhaps you are casting a bit of a wide net and, as a result, waging a campaign of automated slander against people using the platform in good faith. Regardless of you motives, that is not a good outcome.

Or perhaps you evaluated my content and genuinely believe it to be such garbage that it qualifies as spam. That is your business, but realize that this attitude holds Steemit back. I've spoken with quite a few individuals over the last year, some with very large audiences elsewhere, that will not come over because of this kind of hostility towards content producers.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. You may continue to denigrate my work - no harm will come to you from my direction. But I wanted my perspective to be in the record.

As a footnote, I must say that it is interesting to me that your profile tagline discusses not taking life too seriously. I subscribe to that philosophy to a religious extent. But it is hard to reconcile that sentiment with the image of a self-appointed policeman such as you have become. I can't say I get it.

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cryptosharon (69) · 6 years ago

I even have a bounty on my head for 100 SBD by one user to get my personal information so they can come to my house and film whatever they plan on attempting.

Oh my god! This is terrible! Why do they feel so entitled to ruin other people's lives as if the world around them belonged to them? This shows their dedication to breaking the well-being of the community for their own benefit. I'm glad you still go ahead despite all of this, but I wish you'd take care of yourself. I don't want you to be a victim of these people.

Maintaining a blacklist is not easy, it is extremely time consuming

Is it automated or do you push every name by hand? If you could create an API and then just "approve" new blacklist insertions, I think it could save a lot of time (unless you're already doing this).

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2 votes

brandonfrye (64) · 6 years ago

I know (from my own experience) that the work you put in to make this blacklist available is incredibly time-consuming, and doesn't even benefit you as a promotional service. As you've mentioned, from a financial perspective, spammers are our best customers. And rarely do you even get a thank you for researching these users.

So I thank you for making this available for all bot owners to use, and I hope more will decide to use it. It's an invaluable resource and if more of us simply plugged this in then we could really put a huge dent in the abuse here. Keep up the great work. It's exactly why you have my witness vote (oh, and the fact that you run 4 full nodes!) :)

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iamstan (62) · 6 years ago

Thanks for all the hard work you do.

You are well deserving of a top 20 spot on the witness list.

You stay up late and get up early. I believe you are doing your very best to help all grow on steemit.
Abuse fighting is very time consuming and some days I don't even want to vote at all.
Then something happens and I get my focus back and start all over again.

Everyone needs to help us establish what is good and acceptable on the platform. And right now the only tools we have are the ones we create ourselves.

Its odd at times that the folks at steemit inc don't seem to care. I think they do but have limited what they can accomplish by the quality of help they have hired. Its odd that a company that creates money from nothing can not hire enough good people to get the job done?

There must be some other agenda we don't know about?

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tryskele (64) · 6 years ago

There are so many of us that appreciate and support your work on this project. It sucks that more don't upvote just to help you maintain it. It doesn't even help just bots, it helps all of the groups and communities (especially the curation ones) to help maintain quality.

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sku77-poprocks (67) · 6 years ago

Are you in the steem speak server for discord?

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themarkymark (78) · 6 years ago

Yes. Right now in my pool but I show up there a lot.

2 votes

sku77-poprocks (67) · 6 years ago

Ahahaha, i realize you are there. I saw you on the server.

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mihirbarot (57) · 6 years ago

@themarkymark in your first line you have written @badcontent means if suppose any person who is abusing on comment or if some has write a very bed thing on blog we have to use it?? Please correct me if i am wrong. Thank you

Posted using Partiko Android

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themarkymark (78) · 6 years ago

It is my bot that comments on posts by users on my blacklist.

mihirbarot (57) · 6 years ago

So is there any specific things by doing it your bot keep that user in your blacklist?

Posted using Partiko Android

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psos (63) · 6 years ago

Your Blacklist should be part of Steem Blockchain code :)
Good job mate!

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cryptosharon (69) · 6 years ago

I don't think a centralised blacklist could be added to a blockchain described as decentralised, but witnesses could work it in nonetheless. It would be pretty hard to push for it, though.

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themarkymark (78) · 6 years ago

The problem is the only solution to many of the problems steem faces are centralized. Until the community has the resources and desire to police itself, it will decay or require centralization in some degree.

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2 votes

cryptosharon (69) · 6 years ago

Totally agreed!

Regulation is centralised in nature given the subjectivity of rules, but to create a community with certain basic limits to enforce safety and comfort, it's necessary. I'm not sure how it can be done without hardcoding it into the blockchain.

As you say, the community needs more resources and desire to police itself. There is a lackluster unwillingness to meddle with shady projects.

The ideal solution, also unlikely, is the birth of many measures like your blacklist. People creating bots, stuff like Steemcleaners, to massively influence the quality of the site. The community needs moderators, but decentralisation blocks this in its core. Though it's accomplishable, it's much harder than on any other community.

Do you think blockchain-based centralisation is the best solution to this?

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themarkymark (78) · 6 years ago

I think it is the best solution considering the near zero community involvement. It’s not best for decentralization but it is the best for getting the done.

psos (63) · 6 years ago

Decentralized doesn't mean all's fair..

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cryptosharon (69) · 6 years ago

Doesn't mean one party can block everyone from even posting in the blockchain either.

It's one thing to flag or deny certain services. That's the purpose of this blacklist. If someone wants to launch a project and they don't want fishy users in their land, they can plug their verifications to this blacklist and it's easy-peasy.

It's another thing to disallow digital presence. Decentralised Freedom of Speech means that anyone can create an account and post whatever they want. The principles by which Steem was created and by which it's publicised make this an essential quality to the blockchain.

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psos (63) · 6 years ago

Right but, decentralised freedom of speech doesn't mean all's fair because freedom doesn't mean all's fair.. if "you" come here just try to scam someone you don't come to speech, you come to scam/steal

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cryptosharon (69) · 6 years ago (edited)

Yeah. Let's make an assumption. Let's say the person who created the blacklist is not themarkymark but someone else, someone without scruples who pretends to be noble. Everyone believes this person and allows them to create a blacklist where they personally plug in those "approved" as spammers and scammers.

The blacklist is inserted into the blockchain. This person then writes a name into the list of someone who's speaking against them (someone like Wikileaks vs. Hillary Clinton). Not a scammer, not a spammer, just someone saying things that are not convenient for a "purpose". Boom, freedom of speech is dead because their posts are "rejected" by the blockchain.

The only possible conciliation measure for this would be to create a consensus system where people "agree" that the person is a scammer or a spammer and does not deserve to post on the blockchain, but that could also be played with if everyone is plugged into the first person's blacklist and they just "approve" whatever they insert into the list and make it global in their own lists. Or if the most influential witnesses all want to play the same game.

It's not about fairness, because I agree with that. It's about who would have the right to decide on other people's right to speak.

We already have flags and warning bots. We have @arcange, who tells people when a commenter under their posts has a scammy link. There's a lot that can be done protect people without taking away the right of accounts to post to the blockchain due to centralised lists.

I repeat, though. I love the blacklist and what it currently does. I'm just arguing against making it a centralised blockchain-based censorship measure.

psos (63) · 6 years ago

What I've said "blacklist inside blockchain" of course I mean that blacklist should be approved by witness, like hard forks, etc... Anyone ask you if HF20 is ok to you? But it doesn't come from "someone without scruples who pretends to be noble"

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cryptosharon (69) · 6 years ago

Yeah but those are different. Under HF20, everyone has the same rights, no? Nobody can come and say "@psos is criticising me. Let's not allow @psos to publish to the blockchain". If the top 5 witnesses wanted it, they could probably influence the rest into pushing a blacklist that contained your name in it just because you criticised the wrong person.

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viraldrome (67) · 6 years ago

The amount of spam on this network is crazy. I see Cheetah catches a lot but some of those spammers it's only like 1 in 10 blogs that it picks up. I sometimes cruise Facebook steemit groups which are full people who don't speak English but post transcribed lectures lectures from professors, and a shit ton gets by. I don't either bother taking away their 1 cent with a flag. I don't know if robots can catch a high percentage of scammers on here maybe we need gangs of downvote vigilantes. Good job with the shitlist

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abasinkanga (61) · 6 years ago

Nice work @themarkymark your influence is really being felt on steemit. Kudos!

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beeyou (59) · 6 years ago

I have to applaud your effort in battling the abuse and maintaining the blacklist. People do take it to the extreme, as exemplified by your two comedyopenmic post entries. Appreciate your time in tackling such an ugly subject here on Steem.

You now have my small witness support. I didn't think I would vote for another bot owner besides yabapmatt, but I know you are also doing a lot for the Steem community.

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themarkymark (78) · 6 years ago

Thanks :)

beeyou (59) · 6 years ago

YW. Thanks to you too! :)

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mrchef111 (69) · 6 years ago

You definitely have my vote! Thanks for all the effort you have and continue to put into making Steemit scam free. "I aim to misbehave..." Just not on Steemit. lol

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irfanbera (32) · 6 years ago

Plz remove me from blacklist

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dooglehiltz (29) · 6 years ago

My question would be, how do you define abuse? Are you talking about abusive language or harassing of people who have a differing opinion, political or otherwise.

I want Steem to be a community unlike the other platforms where people are experiencing censorship and deplatforming simply because they don't hold the right opinions.

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ceruleanblue (56) · 6 years ago

lmfao! 100 sbd to DOX you? I'd require alot more SBD than that! :P Thanks for doing all this for the community :) People are ***holes, but I can only hope the rest of us make up for it!

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