We need better tools to control spam
Recently there have been a lot of new accounts that have been abusing the introduceyourself-tag and copying content from elsewhere.
To downvote them more efficiently we need better tools to take care of the problem. My suggestions are:
- Users should be able to mark spam accounts so that they will be shown differently. This is important because it makes so much easier to identify spammers when browsing newest posts. If somebody has posted spam earlier, he will probably try to do it later again. This doesn't need to be a blockchain feature, Steemit can save the information, so it should be easy to implement.
- Maybe also give possibility to mark suspicious accounts. Some spammers might try to make first a few posts that look genuine but later start to spam. Maybe show confirmed spammers with red tag and suspicious accounts with yellow? This would be also good way to mark accounts that have been abusive in some other way.
- Show posts that are most downvoted, so that everybody else can see what other people think is spam and downvote it too. We have to make clear that polluting the blockchain is discouraged!
- Implement the feature I suggested in an earlier post: we need an easy way to buy new accounts. If there is a flood of new spam accounts, it might be good idea to suspend giving away free accounts (maybe for a few hours or days). Or if spammers are coming from one particular country, disable free accounts only for them. If spammers have to buy their accounts, they will probably think a little bit more how they are going to use it.
And here is a message for spammers:
Please, don't even try. If you do stupid things like plagiarize content, you are ruining the reputation of your account. Because Steem is build on a blockchain, everything will be saved forever. You can't delete or change your posts and comments fully, you are just changing what Steemit will show. The original will stay on the blockchain. Even if you start to use your account in a proper way, other users will remember what you did and maybe not upvote you ever – or even downvote your good posts.
Steem is intended to be a platform that encourages original high quality content. If you want to make money, make great posts and you will be rewarded. Spamming is not going to work.
PS. Tell your ideas for easy to implement spamcontrol features! In the long run there are lots of stuff that Steemit can do to handle spam, but it would be nice to find quickly at least some ways to relieve the situation.
Some of these spammers are hoping to get a few casual or accidental votes, which they often do. Instead of making a fake post, spammers, please use that time to write two good paragraphs on a subject that interests you. In the same amount of time, you can make some legitimate money and your account will not get flagged for spam.
Policing spam is a very challenging task in a world where we wish to avoid censorship and protect freedom of expression.
We have some ideas on how to flag accounts that are prone to abuse.
Well, so far we have seen quite clear plagiarizing in hopes to get rewards. That should be discouraged as soon as possible, to make sure that we promote good culture for Steem community.
Political fights for rewards will eventually come, but hopefully not too soon. I think the most important thing will be that Steem is uncensorable for everybody, even though some might skew how the rewards are allocated purely with political intentions in mind. But even if somebody will remain in a discriminated minority and get less rewards, they will be still able to use Steem to get their message out.
Yes. This is needed quickly. Adding these 3 features would help
This would allow users to block annoying users, allow users to block entire subjects, and allow users to only see posts they can read. Users can tag posts with spam or scam or nsfw, to make policing a community effort instead of a position, then each user decides to block or unblock those tags. If it is setup this way, each user would be responsible for their own comfort, and no moderators would be needed yet.
I'd love to see those language settings! This would open up the platform to a much wider audience :)
The reason these copy cats exist is because every stupid "introduce yourself" was getting a ton of upvotes. I personally believe a very small percentage of them represent actual people introducing themselves truthfully. Some interesting creative writting, sure, and maybe I'm just cynical, but most of the content seems to be built to get upvotes rather than people actually upvoting interesting content. As soon as someone does make a post in some random topic that gets a bunch of upvotes you can be sure there will be a billion copies of that as well. The solution is to pay more attention to the content we are individually supporting instead of trying to bandwagon onto popular ideas for the rewards.
You're right. One of the superusers mentioned a few days ago that 42 of them were the same person...
Just stop upvoting them and only upvote interesting posts.
Yes.
Also, @wang needs to get slapped with the ban hammer.
Why? He is really friendly guy! Stop robot abuse!
People just envy his wallet )
im fine with you.help vote me..
Yes, good ideas!
Perhaps users could be given the ability to pay for a button or flair that goes onto another user that everyone can see (the flair or button could appear everywhere near the username). The funds for these tags go back into the communal pool / new user faucet or something.
Shameless plug: https://steemit.com/steem-standards/@arhag/moderation-standard
I love this beautiful ideal that animates the community Steemit. But freedom has a price. There will always be someone who will abuse. This is the dark side.