Thoughts on Those News Bots
Every time I view the feed I run into one of the news bots. They're pretty recognizable by the author: or source: part of the preview, but while they are easy to avoid they're still annoying. When I started using Steemit I muted several, but there always seemed to be more. I wasn't sure what to do about them so I started looking at their profiles to see what exactly they were doing. Here's my findings and what I've decided to do about them:
I'm going to use @jack.the.ripper as my example for this post, since he pops up in my feed the most. Every 5 minutes his bot scrapes the title, picture, and first paragraph of a news article and posts it with a link to the full article. He then uses all of the proceeds (100SBD and 21SP last week) to buy upvotes for his posts.
Here's why I believe this type of content is not acceptable on Steemit:
- It is not original work. He is just copying someone else's work and getting rewarded from it.
- It is not adding anything of value to Steemit. His short summaries contain almost no info and do nothing but send you away from Steemit.
So what would be an acceptable type of news themed post on Steemit? Well, you could post a list of your favorite articles of the day and your thoughts on them, or you could do some research and write your own. Steemit articles need to be unique and you, not just copy and paste.
So these news bots are spamming the feed with plagiarized content. What should we do about it? Should we flag them or just mute them?
I started this post undecided on what was the right course to pursue, but viewing some of the bots' blogs made up my mind. They're copying and pasting content, paying for upvotes, and violating Steemit's core principle of proof-of-work. This surely deserves a downvote! I'm not able to affect their 50+ reputation but I'll do my best to take some of the reward pool away from them and give it to the minnows who write thoughtful content.
Would you help me downvote these bots? Don't waste your time by hunting them down and depleting all your voting power, but if you're browsing the new feed and stumble across one of them, take the time to give it a quick flag. You'll have my and many other's thanks!
I agree with the basic sentiment of your article. If they weren't essentially buying their own votes, I would say the market would take care of them. With the reward pool set up the way it is, though, these types of bots are indeed taking away rewards from the rest of us.
If you haven't already, you might want to connect with @seanengman. He's looking to get proactive too. The steemcleaner crew is doing what they can but I'm sure there's just a lot to try to police.
Steemcleaner is doing a great job! I try to report stuff to them as much as possible but like you said, they can't police everything. Steemit is community run and more users need to realize that and start flagging. It's encouraging to see that quite a few of the new users are realizing that and getting involved.
I think there's value in linking to interesting articles if the intent is to have discussion about their content. If the summaries are lazy and brief, that's clearly not the intent of these bots.
The bots are one major factor that makes Steemit difficult to get into. The other major factor is obsessive self-reflection. The top posts are usually about Steemit itself, how to make money, etc.
Imagine a person who only talked about themselves all the time (we can probably all think of one prominent example...) Wouldn't you rather spend time with someone who had interesting, original thoughts on the world or helpful information?
Exactly! I'd enjoy reading thoughtful posts about trending news, but these copy-and-paste summaries are useless. They're almost as bad as the accounts that post lists of the most popular posts...
If we can start promoting the original stuff and downvoting the unoriginal, Steemit will get a lot better. I try to browse the new feed everyday to find new authors to follow. There are some gems out there!
Sure, I can help throw a few flags at the bots.
Image by Matan Segev. Everything else is my @OriginalWorks
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @carn to be original material and upvoted it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
I have to admit, that these sort of bots are something I have so far been completely unaware of. If they are indeed the spamming nuisance you describe, I'm sure some action against them is on the way.
The thing I don't understand, is why you downvoted my latest post. I'm here some 6 month now and as an artist I only post original content, mostly my own work.
If you could give me a quick hint, about what you dislike about my post, I would greatly appreciate it and hopefully improve my blog in the future :-)
I downvoted it because, at the time, I felt like it should have the nsfw tag. I looked back at it and since many people don't consider nudity in art as bad as in images, I removed the flag. It's just not the type of art I appreciate and wouldn't be safe for work for me. That said, I won't flag anymore of your posts but I will probably mute you. Hope you understand
Many thanks for your kind reply. I understand your concerns and of course respect your decision.
I used to add the nsfw tag to such works in the past and was often ridiculed for that. One person even accused me of trying to extra votes by making it "more interesting" with the tag.
Then I'd start my text with a note about this containing nudity and again people made fun of me, stating with art its not necessary... you're wrong if you do and you're wrong if you don't...
Thank you for removing the flag :-)