The Plague of Inane Comments

There is a plague in our platform that needs to be addressed. Empty copy/pasted comments either offering generic compliments or begging for follows/upvotes are cluttering our posts, and need to be addressed.

As a content creator, I like to see notifications that I have new comments on my posts. I like interaction with the community. But then I see a list of empty comments that appear to be bot-generated spam composing a significant portion of these comments.

This kind of comment seems to have greatly increased since the last hard fork that increased the reward share granted by each upvote, meaning these spammers can see a significant return on receiving just a few upvotes. This wouldn't matter much on most blog platforms, since most don't monetize upvotes or comments, but Steemit is different. This kind of behavior is harmful to the platform itself, and the incentives built into the network encourage it. Worse still, newcomers see these spam comments and can easily believe it is an accepted norm, adding to the spam clutter as they repeat what they have seen on their own posts due to ignorance of basic netiquette.

That is why we Steemians need to address it directly. I don't want to advise a reflexive flag campaign due to the possibility of newcomers, so we need to reply to spam comments indicating that the behavior is unwelcome. If users reform, no action need be taken. The last thing we want to do is drive away new users by coming down on ignorance with an iron-fisted punishment. But when there is a clear disregard for community standards, we need to act.

I will begin actively trying to open a dialogue with those who leave such comments on my own posts, and explore user comment histories to verify whether there is a trend of spammy comments, but I will also be flagging those who I believe to be abusing the system with such spam after I am personally convinced they are bots or uncivil individuals. I am only a small dolphin, so my impact will be minimal, but if we all work together, we can discourage such behavior using the tools at our disposal.

I must again reiterate the need to ensure such power is used responsibly, and all efforts be made to ensure ignorant newcomers are not swept up in efforts to eliminate the spammers gaming the system.

Spammers, if you want to stay under the radar, at least upvote the posts you praise to the heavens! A comment of, "Great post, I love your writing" with no upvote is a dead giveaway that you're just fishing for upvotes yourself.

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