What is Spaminator, Part 2. Interview with @Patrice

This is continued from the post by @shello: What is Spaminator? Part 1. It was a team effort, which we both contributed quite a bit of effort into. It got to be fairly long, by the end, so we decided to split it up into two posts. Make sure you go and check her post out as well.

^{(image credit: @atopy)}

Part 2. Interview with @Patrice

@newsteem: Did you start spaminator

@patrice:

Yes I started spaminator.

@newsteem: Where did the idea for spaminator come from, was there an event that inspired it's creation?

@patrice:

I was really irritated after one too many bot spam comments. I really just made the account on a lark to go and comment anonymously in reply to spam. A couple days later I got a tip on the @dart/@ecoworld comment farm and decided to use @spaminator to report it to the community.

I didn't have any concrete ideas on how to approach this until I was invited to collaborate with a group fighting spam accounts. Not long after that someone approached me with the idea of forming a group to support the effort.

@patrice: What criteria helps to identify bot accounts and bot rings?

@patrice:

That's what I call the 'secret sauce'... If I tell you then the spammers will just find more clever ways to avoid detection.

That being said, I have to thank @fubar-bdhr for adding notifications to @beerbot for me that keeps me informed when known groups are active. Also I couldn't do this without SteemSQL and @arcange.

This effort is looking at not just one community, but steemit as one space.

@newsteem: what's the difference between spaminator and steemcleaners?

@patrice:

There are a couple of differences between spaminator & steemcleaners. The first is community involvement. We hope to engage the community in discussions on what is and isn't spam in their view. We also hold 'Downvote Parties' to remove rewards from comment spam rings.

My vision for spaminator is to be more proactive in spam finding and fighting when it comes to accounts that spam in an effort to drain funds from the reward pool. With the shut down of sadkitten it will be a bit more difficult as last night I found about 200 new accounts I believe are owned by different individuals taking advantage of the situation. Until someone steps up to replace sadkitten or I find help programming a new bot and someone to delegate that bot I'll be posting lists of these accounts that need flagged regularly.

I also want spaminator to be more interactive with the community and get the community involved on dealing with low level spam on their own.

@newsteem: why did sad kitten shut down?

• @personz - SadKitten Bot Shut Down

"While I do not disagree with manual flagging in principle, I cannot vouch for the other people using @sadkitten, nor do I know who really has access or what their criteria is, etc. I can't put my name to something which I am not party to the decisions and full information so I am pulling my support, which means pulling the bot."

@newsteem: Many of us want to combat spam, and may express interest in joining together. Can users apply to join the spaminator initiative, if so how?

@patrice:

We can always use more SP delegations, but we recently got a 100k delegation from @freedom, so that helps a lot. I do need a volunteer that would help me manually verifying accounts. The verifying is to weed out innocent users from our list.

Another way to help is to check my daily reports and flag a few posts from there. I've refined the reports so that it lists comments & posts that need flagged instead of accounts.

@newsteem: What are some projects Spaminator has coming up in the near future? Are there any announcements or details you can share with us?

@patrice:

While not new, we haven't deployed Jack our PSA (Public Service Announcement Bot). We will be rolling him out in the next week with any luck. You can read about it here:

• @spaminator - Announcing the Spaminator PSA bot named Jack

@newsteem: Is there anything else you would like to add?

@patrice:

My friend and housemate passed away last week. Today's his funeral(11/12). I've been down to one or two hours a day the last two weeks.

• @admiralscheer - Martin. June 27 1949 - November 3 2017

I appreciate the condolences, support, and understanding of the community. @spaminator will be back in action 100% in the next few days.

• @patrice - Heartfelt Thank You.

@newsteem: We are very sorry to hear this sad news. We will send prayers, and continue to support in whatever way we are able.

References

• @shello - What is Spaminator? Part 1.
• @spaminator - I am the Spaminator
• @spaminator - Spam or Plagiarism eng-spa-ita-fr
• SteemCleaners Report form
• @teamsteem - Spaminator Needs Your Help
• @patrice - Heartfelt Thank You
• @spaminator - Announcing the Spaminator PSA bot named Jack
• @personz - SadKitten Bot Shut Down

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