The Pursuit of New Content on Steemit... and Utter Nonsense

Back in my earliest days here on Steemit, one of the approaches I would use to help build my fledgling account was to spend hours simply watching the "new posts" feed, refreshing the page every few minutes and reading anything that sounded interesting, just based on the quick summary I could glean from the list.

In truth, it was one of the most effective ways through which I found many new content creators to follow, some of whom have become mainstays in my friends feed to this day.

Of course, you see all kinds of stuff when you sit and refresh the new posts feed!

Doing this particular thing — boring as it might seem to some — means you also get to see (and catch/report) such things as attempted scams, phishing attempts and obvious site abusers.

I'd like to think there were at least 2-3 occasions on which I threw together quick "warning posts" that I might have saved some folks from getting their Steemit wallets emptied...

Anyway...

One of the many jobs I have done during my years of self-employment — some of which were spent as an independent contractor performing various tasks that usually have to do with the English language — included a stint of grading California high school exit exam essays online. As part of that task came the important job of spotting anything that might be "suspect" or look like somebody was cheating.

As such, I actually became rather good at pattern recognition and being able to tell when the piece of prose — however well written — was suspect.

I have to admit that most of the time not a lot of skill or detective work is needed to pick out suspect content — usually in the form of "rewards farming" — here on Steemit.

Sad... but true.

Earlier this evening I watched a large number of "garbage posts" come through, most of which were likely created by some combination of AI and an automated content spinner. Just made me shake my head sadly to see that this was still around, while at the same time not being entirely surprised.

There were all kinds of "tells" from the same images being used by a large number of accounts across different content, all which had originally been created at pretty much the same time... with the actual posts seeming to be the same six paragraphs being run through a "de-plagiarizer" utility to the point where it was "the same, only different," over and over.

For now, I'm going to save the actual content discovery for a separate post to be published in a few days — it's late, and I'm too tired to do a thorough job right now — but just spotting these things made me think about what lies ahead for Steemit.

I'm saying this in the context of the fact that we're seeing the crypto markets starting a seeming upswing and — even though it is currently primarily the large cap tokens that are moving — I have to think that there is an alt coin rally in the making as well.

Of course, when the price of Steem goes up we have previously seen the the number of active people and the posting activity rise sharply.

Of course, this also lures those who would try to manipulate the system for profit. How prepared are we for an onslaught of garbage content and sketchy behaviors designed to do very little other than — to use a very old piece of local terminology — rape the rewards pool?

After almost eight years, I actually find myself still giving a damn about not letting the community descend into a cesspool of garbage... particularly in view of ongoing efforts by @the-gorilla and others to modernize the user interface.

Hopefully there are enough people who not only care, but who also have influence enough to make it "not worthwhile" for sketchy characters to run their shady dealings.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Do you notice "undesirable" content on Steemit? Do you think such content should be constrained by downvotes by larger accounts... or should it just be "left alone?" Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.11.14 00:58 PST
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