The Shit Post Diaries 1/11/18 (#1)
I think I may make this a series based upon user submissions, "The SHIT POST DIARIES" series.
Is the title inflammatory, maybe so, but it gets the point across and you instantly know what we are talking about. I think my reasoning behind making this a series would be to see if it is possible for us to act as a community, band together and negatively impact those that choose to abuse the platform rewards system.
That said if you follow you likely remember this article of mine.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@pawsdog/please-join-me-in-flagging-a-shit-post-and-reward-pool-abuser
In which I detailed how some choose to farm the rewards pool through 6th day vote purchases. I will excerpt from my previous article to explain the process.
So what is this last minute vote buying thing?
In its most basic form, a user (typically a dickhead) waits until the last day before post payout and then spam purchases a metric shit ton of votes from various vote sellers. This deprives the greater community of due time to evaluate the quality of the post and downvote accordingly if the rewards are not commensurate with the quality of the post.
That is the long and short of it, as they have basically created a small business enterprise of vote purchasing and harvesting.
Now shortly after creating that post I caught a bunch of flak in the comments section about "why are you targeting a minnow", "these little accounts are not doing damage" etc.
The thing is, as I have begun to investigate it more, I am coming to the opinion that these are in many cases not singular accounts but a network of accounts working in concert to perpetuate their scheme of farming the rewards pool.
Evidence to this fact is a comment I received from @gregory-f in which he noted they transfer SBD between each other to pull this scheme off across multiple accounts. His comment is below:
I looked at the wallet of @pradeeprajora and noticed he was sending all of his SBD to two other accounts, @rajorajiten and @deepverma. Both accounts are pulling the same "shit post" upvote buying scheme and since they are using the same selfie pictures, I assume they all accounts are owned by the same person. I threw some flags on the posts getting ready to payout. Feel free to join me in flagging these "shit posts":
https://steemit.com/art/@deepverma/rangoli
https://steemit.com/photo/@deepverma/selfy
https://steemit.com/love/@rajorajiten/trouser-test
https://steemit.com/business/@rajorajiten/business-promotion
https://steemit.com/love/@rajorajiten/7w4yir-baby-love
When looked at it that way, as to what a damage a network of these types of accounts can do the rewards pool the number would be fairly substantial I'm sure.
So in honor of the new series above is a list of "shit posts" submitted by @gregory-f
Also I would like to mention @anthonyadavisii and his initiative:
Apparently a project designed to reward users for helping to keep our little home clean. The good enough white pages can be found here:
https://steemit.com/steem/@anthonyadavisii/proposal-steem-flag-rewards-program
Looks like my dad has a little bit of investigate journalist in him too! Good work to @gregory-f and you for compiling this. I will stay tuned to see what else is uncovered by Detective Steem ;)
:).. Steemit, a family affair.. :)
lol, so it seems :)
I have found another, check the latest #shitpost :) This dude has snatched nearly $1000 so far with numerous $20.00 posts..
I often see useless collections words voted by armies of bots. I know they are bots because the user had 5 views and 25 votes. I know sometimes you have bots voting for you that you didn’t invite.
I know. Even though I never communicated with any bot, never invited any bot, never paid for any bot, there are still bots who vote me.
I suppose they are the “good” bots designed to reward good bloggers (which I am). However the “real” people votes are far more numerous.
Take for example my latest blog.
At the present time it has 261 views, 85 votes, and 65 comments. If you look you will see that almost all the comments are long and meaningful. Those are real humans.
Now take a look at some of the posts in the hot or trending section. Sometimes the ratios look all wrong - more votes than views. - The number of comments is small compared to the number of votes. Anything less than 50% of the voters making comments is highly suspect. Of course it depends on the blog. There’s not much you could say about a nice photo, except “nice photo”. (You wouldn’t want to say that for fear of being perceived as a spammer).
I say we should make bots designed to chase other bots. Then the bots can all go off to war down-voting each other, while we are left in peace to write useful and meaningful blogs.
I began to notice myself being bot upvoted after putting together a few good posts that paid well. I think they are some type of curation bot, although I wonder how effective they can really be as most of the accounts associated with them are rep 25-40 with negligible SP. I did track a couple down and it seems as if a few of them all dump their minuscule curation proceeds into a parent account. I would have to go back and track that info down again as I cannot remember which one, just that I found it to be suspect at the time.
I like your idea of bots chasing bots, I considered making that an initiative of mine once I acquire the requisite horsepower here to put together and effective campaign in that regard.
I figured that it would not be to difficult to script an application that monitors known bot activity and counteracts their upvotes with requisite downvotes plus say 10 percent. This would quickly diminish their profitability.
That said, their numbers are many and its difficult to get to the source. Also I eventually came to the conclusion that the power required to go after them would likely be better distributed helping lesser users climb the ranks. I may feel differently in a year or so if I have a spare 200,000 SP lying around.
I also agree that I wish we could just blog and let the bots go after each other. We could even host bot wars, place bets on which will win etc.
Thank you for the well put together comment and generous upvote...
Have a .14 rebate :)
Haha betting on who wins the bot wars...... I like the idea. It makes me laugh.
Great Post pawsdog!
Thank you, I do hope your not just fucking with me, but regardless I do appreciate the comment and hope we can squash our previous beef and move up together...
can you come on steem.chat pls?
Here's a candidate for your next post, @shaileshgiri. Just posts plagiarized youtube videos without even bothering to put any text, then pays for bot upvotes.
On it, just saw the message..
Hey there, just found out about your Blog. Looking forward to read more AND I was wondering if you're active on Discord. What channels are you in or do you even have you own one?
Not really on discord that much, occasionally on steemit chat
Well, if I run into you I'll say hello. But I'll keep an eye on your site.
:) thank you..
I see that we were able to reduce the payouts on some of the posts to less SBD than they spent on upvotes, so small victory!
If we can keep that up hopefully they will either stop wasting SBD on "Shit posts" or better still start putting a little effort in and make some quality posts.
I'll be watching these accounts for more last day vote buying.
Sweet, I'm in and lets keep up the work. Thank your for letting me know and I'm on it. .I agree perhaps we can make it a non cost effective adventure for them. I know I must of annoyed him as I got a retaliatory down vote :)
Lol, yeah I saw that tiny, little downvote, made my upvote all the more enjoyable.
Same here.. .:)
Just downvoted these posts. Good iniative, keep fighting the good fight :)
Every day... :)
I'm okay with the shit post diaries lol. It will help my with my abusers list. It's getting pretty large.
Add them in the comments and I'll include them in the next diary.. I see @pivi is either fucking with us, or has changed his tune. Either way I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, till he proves otherwise..
Have you tried the @steemflagrewards thing yet? I've had a read through a few of the posts, but I don't quite understand how they get notified that you've flagged a post... Do you comment with the plagiarized source and then a followup comment @steemflagrewards? Kind of like @originalworks ?
I'm not sure, I'm trying to find out more about it. Perhaps @anthonyadavisii can comment and explain the subtle nuances.
On a side note, and I don't remember where the post was buy you asked if I used software to track my steemit progress? What type etc.. examples? I use nothing but steemd and steemworks, the latter of which you showed me...
Do you mean if I asked if you tracked mentions? Like... if someone mentions your name like you have with Anthony above, would you know about it?
I get the impression that Anthony is specifically after people who copy other people's Steemit posts and then flag them... but I wouldn't know how to find that... or notify him that I've flagged.
(Not that I have much to flag with)
yes, that is what I was referring to.. tracking my mentions, resteems etc..
So I used @ginabot but that does mean you have to have the Discord chat running all the time for it to be effective. I only use it for mentions though. Discord is a chat program that sits in the background and pops up messages.
Otherwise there is this:
http://www.minnowbooster.net/users/aussieninja/mentions
I haven't used it though... but it might help you see when people are talking about you... I know there is a heap of things I would have missed without the @ginabot.
Sweet, added the link to my tabs.. so I can keep track of it.. cruising toward that 55 rep.. :) I going for 70 this year...
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @pawsdog to be original material and upvoted it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
I think what's also important is to recognize the potential for shenanigans before they get to become anything... like this, which seems like the precursor to some kind of "havesting:"
https://steemit.com/@ximedark
https://steemit.com/@ximedark0
https://steemit.com/@nollza (lots of following/followers)
https://steemit.com/@ximedark3
I see that and their posts are most certainly garbage... I think @nollza is the parent account.. to the others..I think it is time to go to see if steemcleaners would be of use, in most cases they are a waste but lets see.