a SPAMMER GOES HAYWIRE - The Story
Introduction
Recently we passed the 300.000 accounts at Steemit. A milestone for sure! In last months we may have doubled in size from number of accounts perspective. With the enormous increase of accounts, we also experience an (enormous) increase in spamming and scamming.
A week or two/three ago, I started helping the community to try to fight some of the abuse and using my flag / downvote option in case of obvious scamming. Thus far I only commented to spammers and generally ignore the spammers addressing my own account or channels at Steemit.Chat and Discord; I did not use the flag for spammers, yet.
A Spammer Goes Haywire
Yesterday some new account in our community @rahuljaichand, decided to flag one of my posts (here) without giving any reason in a comment. I'm of the opinion not providing the reason for this flag was quite inappropriate, since my post was not spam or scam, at least in my opinion.
I was interested to learn a bit more about this account, so I checked his/her blog and comment channels. I discovered this account is in the act of comment spamming, writing those meaningless comments, many of them. I wonder if he/she actually reads the posts and comments to which he/she reacts. @cheetah @blacklist-a @firepower @steemaccess were already flagging him; I was pleased to see that. Three days ago, @cheetah posted this message to a post of the account "Warning! This user is on my black list, likely as a known plagiarist, spammer or ID thief. Please be cautious with this post!"
Subsequently I decided to post a comment to my own post to warn the community for this account. I also send this account a message into his/her wallet, since I could not find a recent published post to which I could reply. The message was "Really? You flag without commenting why, and you seem to spam the system with all your copy/paste comments?" Maybe not the most diplomatic message, but in essence I don't see anything wrong with it; I'm Dutch and we are known for being upfront, direct and clear in our statements.
The result of my actions:
- 6x 100% downvotes on my most recent posts
- 4x 100% downvotes on @qsounds of which I ReSteem posts
- downvote to the comment I created to my own post warning about this account
@rahuljaichand account was created in August 2017 - very new - and has just above 30 Steem Power and a reputation of 0 by now, so he/she didn't hurt me at all in terms of reputation and rewards. Good!
He/She seems to have a YouTube account (https://www.youtube.com/user/rahuljaichand) with 66 followers. Didn't investigate further, since I'm not interested at all what happens at YouTube. Maybe you are? :)
Why This Post?
I would normally not write this type of posts, but I do today because this account shows on multiple levels bad behaviour IMHO and I also do not understand his/her illogical actions:
- Flagging without giving a reason
- Throw more flags at me after I confronted him/her with his/her actions
- Flagging an innocent account simply because their posts are in my posts channel due to ReSteems
while
- The account is already identified by reputable Steemit services and Steemians as a spammer
- Flags have no results due to low Steem Power and reputation
How I Deal with Spammers and Scammers
In case of spamming and scamming, generally I post a comment to try the accountholder to stop his/her actions and/or ask for the reasons of such behaviour. When I get an response - whether I like the response or not - I generally do not flag.
Thus far, I only flagged the very obvious scammers, for which I do not leave a comment, I mostly joined in with many other Steemians on clear identified scammers. In case I will flag an post or comment that is not very obvious scam, then I for sure will write a comment to explain, something I think everybody needs to do in such cases.
I'm still figuring out if I will start flagging spammers. Somehow I don't like to do that, but accounts like @rahuljaichand gives fuel to change my behaviour. So far so good though, I didn't even flag in this case. I wrote this post instead. Wondering if I'll get a flag :)
EDIT: @rahuljaichand is back downvoting, not only this one but also my other (new) posts; Still not realising it'll bring him/her nothing other than a drained vote bucket; The account doesn't even show up in the vote drop-down menu of the post, so tiny is its SP, and the reason I give the update her in the post. Having such great fun!
I really dig your approach, it shows a lot of wisdom and maturity. We need more people like you honestly! I was flagged recently by an account X (wouldn't mention 'cause its not worth dragging him into this anymore) and I tried having a civil convo with this account but NO...he wouldn't even try to but instead went ahead to call me names😁. Now seeing your post....naah, I have to give you props for the way you handled the situation.
You both are too cool ! 🌺🌺
Loool!! 🙌
Thanks so much for your kind words. Sometimes it is not easy to handle these kind of things in a professional way and try not to let the situation escalate. I would suggest to write a post, at least that gives a bit better visibility of some accounts consistent bad behaviour and it may give you a bit better feeling without using the flag option :)
Exactly edje! Exactly, that works better
Who flagged you? @trillex ?
Oh mahn, its the Great 'Kyriacos'🙌
Why don't you just mute him ?
Because I'm not done with him/her! :)
I don't think spam alone is a good enough reason to flag someone. That kind of thing should be taken care of through a lack of upboats. Which seems to be the case after a quick view of his comments.
However someone throwing around flags so willy nilly does deserve some flags thrown back at them.
That account deserves all the flags it can get IMHO. It is not only my posts that gets flags, but also other Steemians. The account has some shady posts done in the past as well. And, although I did not use flags to comments, I get really tired of those Steemians who copy/paste comments to many posts, or write 1 or 2 generic words in a comment to try and get something out of it, and did not read the post. I do however like to take things a bit moderate,, when possible, give Steemians the change to better their lives. But sometimes a Steemian is not open for any help, suggestions and simply bad for the community. Thanks for sharing your views!
Yeah, its a good thing the power of a flag is based on your rep vs theres. Otherwise calling them out on their shit could be devastating.
You definitly took the right course of action imo, I wonder why he even flagged your original post to begin with. Im a pirater of content myself so I cant really bash @cartoontv for uploading it, but you do bring up some good points.
Mainly that where I get my stuff from can always be shutdown or removed. Having it in the blockchain means there is no such possible action unless they decide to attack steem as a whole. Good or bad im interested in what the outcome will be. It could either turn the world toward or against decentralization.
Edit: appears that @cartoontv is shutting down.
Yep, cartoontv is no more, at least that is what hey say. But dont be fooled, chainflix and musicbox are very likely the same individual(s) behind it and they did not stop.
Also I am very curious why this account flagged my post, it was even a followup in which I informed the community on my steps taken and the outcome, which was mostly the support for these new activities. Anyway, this guy went haywire, is probably angry at the whole world, and has no idea how to behave somewhat decent with respect for others.
These people are stealing money from the system and making the value of steem go down. Ignoring them is not an option. Flagging is actually a responsibility and is the very best option.
I wouldnt say spamming alone is stealing money from the system. Nor would I say spam makes the value of steem go down.
It definitely wont help the value of steem rise, but you know what will? Voting on actual content. If your spending all of your voting power on flagging (a potentially infinite amount) of spammers then your fighting an unwinnable war, while good content passes by making nothing.
I would rather see good content get the rewards that they deserve, then see bad content get stripped of rewards they dont. The real issue here isnt that people are spamming, but that spam actually gets votes.
It doesn't matter that you wouldn't say it's stealing because it is stealing no matter what your opinion is on it. Taking money out of the system for not contributing (spamming) is stealing.
Flagging bad content keeps the rewards pool more full of money to give to good content, so you're wrong, and it is a winnable war, but you're not going to win by giving up before you start. I'd rather see a lot of things as well, but I do like dealing with reality. Yes, spam getting votes is part of the problem, but it's not all of the problem Things aren't as black and white and simple as you'd like them to be.
Just because you call something stealing, doesnt make it stealing. Its spamming. Spammers arent stealing a penny out of the system, because other people are the ones giving them pennys.
There are people who upvoat their own post, is that stealing to you too? I could argue that it is with your logic and from better ground as well. Should I start flagging those who do so?
Using your voting power to flag bad content instead of to promote good content means the only people who are going to get recognised are the ones who already were.
And I dont see how fighting them is winnable, there will always be spammers joining hoping to make a quick buck. Let them rest at the bottom while the good content goes up.
And this issue is pretty damn black and white. Voters are 99.999% of the reason spammers exist. Instead of hating on the people trying to game the system hate on the people who are encouraging it to happen.
How do you know if you've been flagged?
steemd.com (whole history of everything done for your account) and steemnow.com (last x transactions).