What is Spaminator? Part 1

"My goal is to root it out and remove the financial rewards of those spamming for profit."

Spaminator is a group effort lead by @patrice of @steemcleaners, along with our own Steemit detecive @sherlockholmes, and AI furbaby @sadkitten to find users who make bot accounts with the aim of mass upvoting their own comments and posts. These people who are botting are draining the rewards-pool by throwing ma$$ive upvotes on their ring's comments, and old posts right before payout, to try to game the system on Steemit. When thinking about "bot abuse" this is one of the most damaging offenses. Often made by one person or small circle, controlling many bots, with no intention of contributing anything back to Steemit, nor helping anyone.

You can read more about what exactly is the definition of spam here:

• @spaminator - Spam or Plagiarism eng-spa-ita-fr

The full list of the services @spaminator provides can be found here. One thing to consider is how much SP us as Steemians use up as downvoting any post or comment results in a -100% downvote. By delegating some steem power to @spaminator, we can help vote out established spammers/more powerful scammers on this platform that are hurting everyone's rewards the most.

This proactive flagging effort is not done by a bot, but by real users investigating and shutting down spam with their combined efforts.

Curation Tools Meant to Help the Community

Steemians have the option to manually curate and upvote posts that bring value to the platform, however reading and browsing posts all day can be time consuming, and difficult to find and reward authors who bring value and quality content. We are plagued everyday by undiscovered authors, and amazing posts that get lost in the wave of articles made every minute.

A service was introduced called Streemian, which allows users to follow the curation trail of fellow curators and authors we trust, and "trail" their votes. The people who manually read a post and have a good approach to voting valuable content can be followed, and by signing up, you can vote on what they vote on. This service was meant to help properly award minnows, discover new talent, and lighten the workload of the entire community by providing a honest effort toward all writers.

Abuse of Curation Tools

Streemian is not a premium service and is free to all users on Steemit. Spammers have found it and are using these tools for personal gain without concern for anyone but themselves. A spammer makes several Steemit accounts, and sets them up to all trail one another, voting all comments and posts in the bot ring they made. This is serious business, as oftentimes a single person is controlling hundreds of accounts.

What makes this difficult to detect at times is that so many accounts are being used in each ring, from the outside they pose as a community with many users, and do not interact with any real accounts.

@sherlockholmes burst a large-scale scam wide open running a 1700+ bot ring back in August, who were vote farming and transfering rewards out of Steemit. The more creative spammers are impersonating artists, and even entire countries by using these methods, and must be stopped. @ecoworld is one of the largest examples of what kind of abuse can take place if left unchecked.

Spaminator Knows Who to Flag

By following the @spaminator account, you will be able to see the daily posts that detail which account names are abusing the system and are in need of downvoting. Each post is divided into two sections; one for posts, and one for comments. By following them, and delegating SP to @spaminator, we can get one step closer to getting rewards to everyone, bringing Steemit up as a whole.

How to Help if You Have Low SP?

Can't delegate? You can still help! The best way is to report abuse to the SteemCleaners Report form. If you have question you can go to #steemcleaners-public on steemit.chat, or @steemcleaners on discord. By learning what types of comments that get flagged, we can better distinguish real users from fakes, and combat this major issue. This wil help put rewards back for all of the hardworking and creative authors that make Steemit what it is, and aims to be in the future.

Another thing you can do is vote for spaminator witnesses, specifically @patrice.

This article by @teamsteem gives a detailed list of steemians who contribute and which ones are witnesses:

Spaminator Needs Your Help

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Make sure you check out What is Spaminator, Part 2. Interview with @Patrice

This two part series has been a joint effort between myself and @inquiringtimes

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References

• SteemCleaners Report form

• @spaminator - I am the Spaminator

• @spaminator - Spam or Plagiarism eng-spa-ita-fr

• @teamsteem - Spaminator Needs Your Help

• @inquiringtimes - What is Spaminator, Part 2. Interview with @Patrice

Brought to you by @NewsTeem

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