Steemit has a large roster of curation, upvote, resteem and other minnow-supporting bots. Steemit also has a large roster of spammers, blockchain abusers, and other miscreants. We'll call the former "good bots" and the latter "abusers" for now.

Issue

Comments by good bots are ending up populating the posts of abusers.

This is a problem for numerous reasons:

• Rewards abusers by encouraging them and either promoting or spreading the malicious post.
• Grants the abusers additional followers.
• Inadvertently triggers private/unknown curation bots.
• Depletes the reward pool in the case of high rep abusers.
• The Steem blockchain does not need superfluous transactions on it, adding to the myriad there already.

Example of Issue

A post with a serious copyright violation that can seriously harm Steemit was made and flagged by @blacklist-a, @dan and others.

However, it triggered two bots.

Suggestion

All bots should be altered to only upvote/resteem/comment or otherwise engage with posts that have not been flagged by an anti-abuse service.

If flagged by @steemcleaners @cheetah etc ⟶ No vote/comment/resteem/etc

To achieve this, instant bots must have a minimum time parameter that a post was live for prior to engaging.

Posted 20+ minutes ago ⟶ Action
Posted 20- minutes ago ⟶ Waiting for 20 minute mark

If there are no reputable flags after the 20 minute mark, the bot engages.

Bots that typically activate 20+ minutes after the post is made or on the basis of the presence of mixed factors, must include the flagging by reputable accounts parameter.

20 Minute Mark

The 20 minute mark is to account for any front end delays and other unfortunate issues that may cause the user to lose legitimate rewards by inadvertently exceeding the 30 minute optimal author rewards window. (If the optimal window is no longer 30 minutes, please advise in comments below.)

Example

@randowhale gets a transaction request to upvote a post. @randowhale waits to perform the upvote until the post is 20 minutes of age. If post has been flagged by a reputable anti-abuse account in that time, @randowhale cancels the upvote and either returns or keeps the fee, posting nothing.

@steemitboard becomes alerted that a user has made his first post. @steemitboard delays posting the congratulatory message until the post is 20+ minutes old. If the post has been flagged by a reputable anti-abuse account in that time, @steemitboard does not post it's congratulatory message.

Why Change Your Bot

Adding these parameters or similar parameters of your choosing will reduce the number of transactions, including costly upvotes, your bot generates, therefore optimizing it's use and revenue-generating capability.

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