Let's talk about @andyluy (60) spamming new Users with selfupvoted comments
So I met a new Steemian yesterday by the name of @ladyreijya . She is a tarot card reader offering her services for Steem! Even though I don't necessarily believe in fortune telling, I also do not not believe in fortune telling. There might be secrets in old traditions that are yet to be rediscovered.
The Case
Upon visiting Lady Reijyas's introduction post I encountered @andyluy (Rep 60)(6000SP including distributed power) and a very unpleasant encounter it was: An automated comment talking about his experience on Steemit, linking several of his articles. About a page of text in print. He used @randowhale to upvote it and upvoted it himself.
"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes." indeed.
Additionally there was no vote by @andyluy on the original content of @ladyreijya. She had a 0.01 payout before I voted, now she has 0.04... The comment by @andyluy was counting a proud $1.53 .
I looked up his comment section and surely it was no surprise that he spammed the ef out of the comment.
The Weapon
He started this behavior about 4 days ago and it is increasing rapidly. Judging from the intervals I would tend to guess he is just using a template for the copy paste action - a halfautomated process at best.
Further Investigation: Introduceyourself tag abuse, plagiarism and selfvoting
@andyluy really loves the introduceyourself tag, not only is his spamming aimed at Users posting in introduce yourself, he also for some reason tagged his news article and SteemPolice. That he posted in Steemit Police is so funny that it actually makes me sad, but more on that late.
Just for fun I looked around the early posts of @andyluv and what do we have here? Plagiarism... Unless he created a one year old Reddit meme that is on top of the results and actually worked for Abject and decided to re-upload it in shoddy quality. Also it is really nice to see him get an almost 10$ payout on these arguably overvalued posts.
Andy's drift souls video vs Original that was not linked or mentioned on Youtube that was not linked or mentioned
Catmeme by Andy vs Original on Reddit that was not linked or mentioned
He also is not afraid to recycle a majority of his partly delegated voting power into himself according to http://steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=andyluy
I am afraid there is still more to find but for now I have enough evidence of the common ruleset we have on Steemit being broken. Wouldn't you agree?
Stopping toxic behavior vs witchhunt
I want to emphasize that I do not want to kick @andyluy off the platform, but I want to show him that if you don't play by the rules there will be consequences, and by that I am not talking about ignoring his posts, I am talking about denying payout on spam, tag abuse and plagiarism aka flagging.
I am not strong enough to effectively flag Andy. This is why I am reaching out to my followers and fellow Steemians with this post. I am also curious if you are as convinced as me that @andyluv crossed the line with this behavior.
Established User vs Newbie
I actually met @ladyreijya in my own comment section.
Was her comment after my post has been available for 3 Minutes. " Damn new Users spamming and selfup-voting all articles" was my first thought. The share it on other media part was a little intriguing to be honest, so I wanted to see if this might not be spam and indeed, it was a rather unique comment looking at her recent history.
If a new User is not in complience with Steemit etiquette I will always try to reach out first. The case of @andyluy is different, he is almost as long as me on the platform (2-3 months), has a higher reputation than me and looking deeper into the actions of his account I am quite sure he is testing the limits on Steem and breaking rules that he is very well aware of. I doubt that me making all this claims to him in Chat would convince him to change the way he treats Steemit.
A little message to Steemit-police and @sherlockholmes
You resteemed @andyluy's rather mediocre post about taking down a new Steemit User for plagiarism. I am seriously doubting your effectiveness with people like @andyluv getting supported by you instead of being called out.
I have reviewed your post and anduluy answer and honestly I do not see you have a CLEAR case here for abuse. There are currently much worse cases for abuse, like the top whale authors. Let's target them. I upvoted your post in the beginning, but now wondering whether it was correct or not. I find good bots useful and do not see anything bad in them. (Upvoted for this comment for visibility and yes, upvoting yourself is NOT A BAD THING.)
Oh OK. I don't see how having someone doing worse is really a good argument, but out of curiosity: who are the whales you are referring to?
I have mixed feelings about bots. I met some good ones, but seeing all the spam here I am not sure bots are as healthy as I once thought. I don't see how this got anything to do with Andy, who does not actually use a bot.
You see, I am completely against self-voting, but I understand how many people, especially the ones who hold a decent stake in Steem, like you good sir, want to have influence and visibility for their investment and be a able to also give themself a little bit of a payout.
I prefer honest self voting over disguised selfvoting through alternate accounts any day of the week. But I think there is a limit were honest self voting stops and greed begins. I would say 67% is in the realm of greed. You have 0.8% self-voting btw... not sure why you would argue for limitless self-voting.
There has also been a post on this topic.
I honestly don't think that Andy is a bad guy. We all want to make money on Steemit and he got a clear goal on what he wants to do with the money: Study in Japan. As I am a massive fan of Anime, I would love to see him reach that goal.
However in this game of Steem there are certain rules and I think his willingly trying to bend them, him proofing to be actually rather stubborn the topic and you taking his side, maybe I was wrong about his intentions and I apologize if conclusions were made too fast.
I still think he should change his habits.
Hi! After reviewing @andyluy current posting habits I almost have to take my words back.
I would lie if I didn't admit I enjoy this "I told you so" :).
Was there anything in particular? I didnt pay too much attention to andy these last days.
I saw somewhere that he boosts all of his comments with money. Maybe that is too much for money.
I thought he had stopped that. I still see his high self votes but I dont see his comments self upvoted anymore, maybe he just got smarter.
I still have to talk with @steemcleaners about recent inproper flags and I am somewhat bound to go the official way I guess.... kinda frustrated with this all this shit to be completely honest.
@andyluy is a nice guy who just wants to make some moneys so he can travel to Japan. He is obviously overstepping boundaries that many Steemians would respect, but I have no Power to flag all the overvalued bs on Steem so why should I even bother and bully one guy just because he happened to cross my radar.
oh and if you are referring to @berniesanders , I also admitted in this comment section that I talked to him about this topic, partly because I see @randowhale responsible - @andyluy has been using rando since his first post. I thought that Bernie would maybe care, I was a vocal opponent of Sanders in the Korea Wars and I encountered him when I was part of @Steemtrail again, but I was not vocal this time other trails (Not Rick&Joe!) asked me to not get too involved in the discussion and I kinda regret that I respected that in hindsight.
I always hated the way Bernie made his posts, I don't believe cursing should be part of a serious discussion. However my short talk to him and his reaction to this post confirmed to me that @berniesanders does care a lot about the success Steemit.
Judging from the responses I got from @andyluy he might actually just not see how harmful his behavior is and I might have taken a wrong approach - I should have talked to @andyluy before writing about him.
Hi! Upvoting yourself is bad, but again, if good guys do not do it, bad guys will. That means bad actors will slowly gain more power, so do upvote yourself, otherwise you are hurting the platform too. I was referring to mindhunger, me-tarzan and tamim. Jerry banfield had a post on that 3 of them combined suck almost 35% of the reward pool by creating automated content and upvoting themselves daily
While @andyluy isn't using a bot - the content is repetitive. It could be argued they provide a service. If you don't like it - flag it. If they retaliate then let someone me or someone else from @spaminator or @steemcleaners know in steemit.chat.
@patrice
The Spaminators
I fully agreed on what @patrice said in name of @spaminator.
Thanks this is exactly how I wanted to handle it. I was afraid of retaliation or even me being portrait as the aggressor in the conflict, though. I would have loved to clear the conflict without contacting the officials on Steemit, however I am thankful to @ats-david for finding the right words when talking to @andyluy on Steemit.chat.
Next time I see someone who is in my opinion violating the etiquette of Steemit I will try to solve it more directly, but it is good to know that there are people I can turn to in case it escalates.
You can always stop by #steemitabuse, #steemcleaners-public, or direct message me (@patrice) if you have questions or want advice on how to handle something.
This is only my recommendation for comment spam. You may want to reach out to @steemcleaners for help with other etiquette problems before flagging.
@patrice
I think you have a case to do as you please. Having said that, have a look at @personz and @smackdownkitty to see if they can add to their list.
Three are a few others and a quick line to @personz in chat may help you get a better path than going it alone. At least he is deep enough in knowledge to point you in a direction.
Thanks for the hint. I would have loved to do some self-justice in the good ol' anarcho-fashion, but I guess reporting him to the higher-ups/institutions is the best way. Steemit is after all a mere image of todays society.
It is not just about that, but it is a voting power thing and you will wear yours thin. Perhaps there are other ways-
In cases like this where it's contentious you should take the gamble and voting power hit to flag on your own account if you really believe in it.
But absolutely it's good to get other people to weigh in. Thanks.
And here I am trying to make consistent posts and up votes and follows, resteems and comments... lol I also ran into this person on my feed. :(
Feelsbadman, I saw that the number of automated introduceyourself messages has increased. There were some good one but most were spam, but at least they were short. This one is long and not really that helpful. Makes a bad impression on new Users when they see overvalued spam like this, wouldn't you agree?
You get a vote from me for trying to be a good Steemian.
And a follow for me for the kindness in return!
Thanks! For more up-votes, join my weekly give-aways. They are for helping low-level Steemians like us.
So we could use @Cheetah to check comments as well!
I thought cheetah is only checking plagiarism not spam.
Well if you copy yourself that's plagiarism too and that should be noted! Spammers will copy/paste their spam for sure to save time.
I see where you are coming from but I can not share that notion.
Maybe first off because I am not a defendant of IP and Copyright, because I think ideas are free and dont belong to people.
Also for a counter example: There are footers many Steemians copy/paste under there post. That is not spam ;).
Sure and I agree but spam is something else.
thanks was really helpful..... Upvoted!! please kindly folow back
Good information. Thanks for support me back @maulanailham