Why there are so many fake accounts and abusers?
I have never felt so disappointed as I did in the past few days. Earlier, I only used to observe the wrong-doers and tried to ignore their posts. Even though my vote wasn't worth anything, to me it's more than a monetary action. It's my acceptance/approval of the content.
I willingly took up the responsibility of a greeter and then a country representative with the aim to set things right at least in my country. It's not even a month being a representative and I feel worn out already.
I see hundreds of fake accounts, plagiarists, below-average content, and whatnot, who are slowly eating the ecosystem. On-going debates regarding content quality and engagement... All these things together make me feel hopeless about the future.
The Steemit I knew wasn't like this. There were many abusers at that time as well but there were "real authors" too who were driven by their audience, not by their voters. Such gems are very few at the moment.
They used to brainstorm, write, read, and read again from the audience's point of view and then proofread twice before finally publishing anything. A positive engagement was considered a true success and a whale's vote was just a cherry on the top.
Where we went wrong?
Promotions?
Many people might disagree with me but I believe random promotions don't work for Steemit.
We need good authors and investors, right? So while doing promotions, our target audience should be authors (people who have a nerve for writing) and investors.
However, the introduction posts of many of the newcomers say otherwise; "I need to pay my college fee or I need money on an urgent basis that's why I joined Steemit."
There's no harm in it if a user needs money, but if the sole reason behind joining Steemit is money then I'm afraid we can't expect much from such users.
Last year, promotions were a thing on Steemit. Many users earned a lot of rewards for recruiting each new member.
rewards for recruiting each new member !!!
This caused blind promotions; people who don't have a thing for writing, and most importantly nor do they want to learn anything, they just want to make some bucks one way or another. Those are the people who don't give a damn about plagiarism. They re-write articles from the Internet, the articles they don't have personal experience or knowledge about. Sure they do hard work but hard work in hiding the plagiarism. They just keep on posting one article after another with zero engagement to/from their blog. All this, in hopes of getting a few bucks.
Has Steemit become an easy-money platform?
I think yes and I will tell you how...
Easy Level
- Recruit a friend and earn steem
- Write your intro and earn steem
- The achievement Program which was created for a better understanding of the blockchain gives you steem
Medium Level
- Choose a community and start spamming your posts there and earn votes from the community curation account on every post and booming biweekly.
- Build up some SP, make a delegation and earn some delegation rewards
Advance Level
- Community curators - I see some curators nominating their friends on rotation to help them get sc01's vote.
- Engagement Challenge - Don't worry about the content, follow the rules and keep posting average quality like a maniac, you will definitely grab a vote or two from sc02 or sc01.
Now I'm not blaming everyone, so don't take it as an offense. There are definitely some very good authors and some who do care about engagement. I'm only talking about sycophants and miserable go-getters.
We say that votes are not guaranteed on Steemit. But you see, all these above programs give almost 70% guarantee for votes.
Steemit team initiated most of these projects with the aim to reward as many quality authors as they can and we think we have all the right to rewards no matter what we post.
Sc01/sc02 is not a boss, we are not their employee. This is not a job. It's blogging or you can even call it a business but never a job.
My Suggestions
(These definitely need more thinking)
Newcomers Achievement Program
Coming back to the vote guarantee, this is causing problems. Account/content farmers who want to make easy money don't usually go further than the first level (Easy Level) and take full advantage of the sc03 votes.
Perhaps, votes from sc03 shouldn't be guaranteed. There should be a certain secret criterion for it that should remain between Greeters.
We already utilize sc03 to support newcomers on their other quality content. We can focus more on this part, this will encourage newcomers to work on their content from the beginning and not just keep lingering on the achievement tasks.
Communities' Curation Accounts
This issue was originally raised by my friend @moecki.
As per my knowledge, a community curation account is only supposed to support its regular members. In the last booming support program, many communities were rejected because they were supporting other users.
If the curation account supports its members only then it looks like a voting service because the same users get votes. The curation account is supposed to be kept busy as well. What should we do then?
A community's curation account should restrict its votes inside the community or it should be kept flexible?
I think the middle way out is to first support the "quality content" inside the community and then move out to search for the content staying within the niche of the community.
For example, Steemit Pakistan should also vote in #pakistan regardless of the community. SteemFoods should also vote in #food. If the curator wants then he/she can invite the author to create content in their community in the future.
Delegations and Beneficiaries
Both of these are done to support a project or community. While supporting something is good but it should be done out of the personal will. Not for rewards. In fact, no rewards (guaranteed or non-guaranteed) should be offered for making delegations or setting beneficiaries.
Not even in burnsteem tag.
Community Curators
Selected curators should do curation under some rules. Like no author can be nominated more than once a month by the same team or at least by the same curator to rule out any biased behavior.
I appreciate that sc01 checks the quality of the nominated posts prior to voting.
Engagement Challenge
As the name suggests, the challenge should be about engagement. Winners should be selected based on the number of engaging comments they make not by the number of posts.
Where quality contest posts are rewarded, their engaging comments should stand an equal chance for votes.
The post has gotten longer than I intended. I have a few more things in mind but I will save those for later.
I will conclude now with a summarized list of main points:
- Control easy-money projects
- Stop voting below-average content
- Sc01/sc02 doesn't need to keep everyone happy, they should vote only highest quality content, the rest already get votes from booming and other curation accounts.
- I appreciate clubs but club status shouldn't determine the vote percentage of a post. Content should always have more weightage.
- Promotion should be done wisely. Promote Steemit to those who you think, have writing ability, have some skill that can add value, or those who have learning capability and the right mindset.
- The engagement Challenge should focus more on engaging comments.
- Overall, comments should get importance equal to the post.
- Lastly, be the change you want to see on Steemit.
If you have taken out time to read this long post, I appreciate it if you also leave your thoughts.
Regards,
event-horizon
Totally agree, only the quality and interest of the content should determine the amount of money the author earned. The problem is that spammers find ways to earn a few cents for their poor quality post. If they didn't earn anything, then they would get sick of spamming.
Yes, Steemit needs to review its guaranteed votes policy. Not because this policy is bad, but because it is the cause of fraud.
Unfortunately, Steemit does not have an effective mechanism for checking content for plagiarism, determining the quality of a post, or determining the presence of other fraudulent activities. There is no penalty mechanism for fraudulent actions. There should be such a mechanism, because we are people, and people tend to choose the easier way, even if it is not fair.
The softest action in my opinion is to show authors that they can make really good money for a really interesting post. That's exactly what the SC01 does. But it should be done by the community.
Imagine a novice, a writer from God. He wrote the first post which is very cool. Somehow he was noticed by SC01 and supported. The writer saw that he received a decent reward for his high-quality work and wrote a second, even better post. This time SC01 did not support him and the post received a few cents. The same happened with the third post.
Writing the fourth post, the writer will think: "Why should I waste 4 hours and a lot of energy, I will finish this post faster, for a reward of 1 dollar it will be enough."
The whole reason is that the readership of the entire Steemit is too weak and cannot adequately reward quality content. Everyone hopes for one SC01.
In this case, quick changes are impossible. It is necessary for each of us to become a curator of quality content. Or we need some big investors to create manual curation accounts.
I was very proud of our ex-curation team (IAT). We always voted according to the content of a post. Clubs were mandatory to get a vote of course, but we never over-voted something just because the author belonged to club100.
As I said, all projects that were created with the good intention of supporting as many quality authors are now misused by spammers. Probably, we didn't deserve this support from the team. :(
Catching fraudulent activities is so tiring. I had some other activities that needed my attention but I had to spend the whole weekend tracking a long list of abusers. I managed to wipe a lot of mess but still, there's a lot to do. I could have spent that time helping a newbie (two people were actually waiting for some guidelines by me). I really wish there was some automatic mechanism for user verification and for catching plagiarists.
The latter seems a little difficult. But we can surely work on the former suggestion. (:
I doubt it!
Readership is only too keen on high rewards. If everyone used their SP to curate other good posts and write posts for other readers, the readership would be very strong!
And here we again come to the problem of delegating SP to bots.
Steemit can give you a good income but if you become dependent on it, it's only going to drag you in a pit. It will give you anxiety and you'll look for ways to abuse the system just to get a few more bucks. The best example is of hundreds of account farmers on this platform who only post an achievement task 1, get curated by SC accounts and leave.
I don't think promotion is the issue. I can't say this for 100% of the promoters but I can say this for sure that there are some users who want to recruit people from their countries so that they can come up with good content and earn something from it as well. We can't rule out the attraction of earning money on Steemit. Money has been and will be one of the strongest driving forces in the world and it gives people enough motivation to come up with something good.
Talking of quality content, I have noticed this from a past few months. A lot of users tend to think that what they're writing is the best there is. No offence to anyone, but a bit of humility would be very helpful for users like these. I cannot emphasize this enough, and I have been doing it for the past 10 months that if you don't have a strong command on English language, no one's forcing you to write in it. You can write in your mother language and you'll be curated on it as well (only if it's worth it)
Talking about abuse, the 'advance level' that you mentioned is irrefutable and to be honest I have been thinking for a long time to post regarding this but this will burn some bridges so I am still thinking over it. But I can actually see things getting out of hands....
What I think and believe is to stop trying to please the Steemit team. This is a blogging site as you mentioned, not a corporate slavery house. If someone wants to 'please the boss' they may as well join some multinational company as an intern.
There has to be a group of critical thinkers on thus platform who have the guts of coming out and saying what's not going right in here. I recently read the thread on @o1eh post and loved it to see the steemit team responding to the concerns. There should be more of that...
The Easy Level as I mentioned. It can only be stopped by putting an end to guaranteed sc03 support.
I know that's you. I want the same. I didn't say we should not do promotions. I think we should put a lot more thought into how to do it effectively and how to keep the mindset of the newcomers right from the beginning. Money is surely an attractive factor of Steemit and there's no harm in needing or wanting money. My point is if we just convey the message more truthfully; A blogging site that can earn you some incentives if you do well, not, get paid for blogging. It would keep the hopes minimum.
Humility!! I so wish some people had it.
The English language dilemma will stay with us forever.
I believe abusers get caught sooner or later. I am hopeful about the Advance Level abuse as well.
Right! This is a blogging site. And for good posts can you earn some money. But many users think the other way round: I can earn money here, so I'll write something!
Yes, and afterwards! Nothing changes!
Because next to the group of critical thinkers there is an even larger group of greedy racketeers. And this group is only peripherally affected by critical thinking.
Excuse me if I put it so drastically...
You have thought very much and thoroughly about some of the problems we all see here. The thing is: these will not stop no matter what is done about them. For me, I have decided to just not let it affect me and do "my thing".
Du hast sehr viel und gründlich über einige Probleme nachgedacht, die wir hier alle sehen. Das Ding ist: diese werden nicht aufhören, egal, was dagegen unternommen wird. Ich habe für mich beschlossen, mich einfach nicht davon beeinträchtigen zu lassen und "mein Ding" zu machen.
For the longest period of time, I also chose to keep doing my thing. But that doesn't help as well. So why not do something about it? Most likely, nothing will change but let's at least keep trying. (:
First, let me answer your opening question:
MONEY! Unfortunately, too often "easy money". For some users so much money that they are not ashamed to pick up dirty money.
And I would like to take up this point very briefly (whereby I can sign all of your listed aspects [By the way, I especially like the paragraph with "This is not the Steemit I knew." I feel the same way... 😔]).
This is a very central point.
Of course, I can understand that many people really need the money, but the biggest mistake is to become dependent on the Steem. Nothing good can come out of that.
The fact that many people think this way is unfortunately due to the false advertising that many people (including "country representatives") do for the Steem: There you earn money by blogging.
This is a big, big mistake!
You get the chance to earn rewards (money) if you do well. But nobody gives you money for nothing. That's not how the world works, not even Steem.
By the way, the fact that for a large percentage of users here it's all about money (users who don't even participate in the "give and take" because they only see the quick overproduction of their own (bad) content) makes more and more long-time and loyal users like you and me lose interest and leave too.
I hope that the point where we have to decide who is more "valuable" for Steemit and its growth is not already passed...
We already had so much unused time to rethink - let's do it now!!!
Btw... the sheep are sheared... 😉
Thank you for the big hug; felt better. XD
Dependency on Steem doesn't let you focus on the needs of a successful community. Instead, you start obsessing over votes because you gotta earn a living.
I always tell people to have a career outside Steemit if they want to keep themselves sane. Otherwise, they will always stay in misery because sc01 is not giving enough attention.
This is where we go wrong and lure people with (as you said) false advertising. I myself realized it after doing some promotion last year and it immediately hit me that I made a big mistake. I talked to those people again and cleared out everything so that they don't get any false impression. Twelve people signed up and only one stayed after I popped the bubble of easy money.
Since then, I haven't done any online promotion. I occasionally and carefully mention Steemit to people who I believe have some caliber.
Absolutely and I will add that nowhere in the world does blogging directly generate money. It's always the traffic to a blog that helps in making money. ;) On Steem, we get incentives with/without the traffic that's just a bonus and nothing to obsess about.
Coming to see them beauties. ;)
Regardless you count my posts to be well done content:
A few weeks ago I decided to no longer using one of the "clubXXX"-tags. My decision was founded on my will to write here and not to look for earning money.
It's my personal "thing" not a way to be propagated by me as a solution for many.
Which in no way diminishes the quality of your posts :-))
Was die Qualität deiner Beiträge in keinster Weise schmälert :-))
Danke fein.
Hi, @event-horizon. First of all, thank you for taking the time to discuss these issues.
I can say I agree with everything you say here and would like to offer my point of view.
The soul of Steemit is two folded: bloggers & audience--or so it used to be--; otherwise, the place will be plagued with garbage content no one feels the need, let alone the pleasure, to engage with. Now the fuel of Steemit is the money. Soul and fuel make Steemit go round--or so it used to be--. Fake accounts? Abusers? They're part of the price you pay to live in a free, decentralized world. They will always exist; and I can't come up with a solution other than working hard to expose them and blacklist them. I don't think they will "eat up" Steemit. If bloggers and audience grew in number and quality, Steemit would be great regardless abusers and fake accounts.
I have seen that a lot of interest has been put in engaging, but one certainly should not feel forced to engage if one doesn't like the content. I have been evaluating this situation deeply. Some truths must be said; one of the basic rights of a reader is they are free to choose what to read. Why being forced to engage when one finds no interest in the content? This will definitely ruin Steemit, as no one who is a serious reader and a producer of content likes to feel they must read posts which add no value to their personal encyclopedia. Personally, I was away for a week because I was sick, and I took my time to read some good stuff for which I am not given a cent. In the end, what moves creators and their readers/audience is not the money but gratification; and it is not my word but the wisdom of thousands of years of "literatures" on this planet. I had forgotten a little about that but it came to me again as I read in my sick bed.
I'm working every day to make Steemit a nice place to me. Does it sound selfish? It is, a little. But it's not a sin. It's good for the platform that its users feel happy to be here and produce/consume content, and upvote what they like, and engage if they feel like doing it. If users who produce content receive remuneration based on the quality of their posts, they will stay.
John and Mary were not engaging because they were busy writing daily posts of whatever content, not necessarily good, not necessarily something the other Johns and Maries enjoy or need to read. Now John and Mary must engage and write even more posts. I don't see how this is going to get better.
Oh, I wish I could say so many other things but this comment is getting too long. So I will only say I appreciate your concern and thank you for this post, which I read with pleasure while having my morning coffee ☕❤️
I also don't think we will ever get rid of abusers and scammers. As you said, this is the baggage of a decentralized system. But we must keep discouraging such acts and at the same time work on bringing more quality authors.
You also said it right, no one is obliged to engage but then no one is obliged to vote as well. Not even steem curators. ;) But here people become hypocrites. Now they want votes and all. So we preach that if you want votes or comments you have to give them first because that's how a community works.
And forced engagement is of no use. The content should be good/interesting enough to attract engagement. We shall know what our readers want to read. Comments will come automatically. 🙂
I doubt you read this bitter post with pleasure but then coffee is bitter too. 😂
No sugar, ma'am 😂 But a good post is a good post.
The quality of readers has also changed to worse, but this is not a Steemit issue. It's universal. My students, for example, are in their twenties and they struggle to finish novels (even the short ones like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland); only a few do it with pleasure and make interesting discussion.
I have seen that no matter how light the text is, they will miss important points and make poor replies. And this is not about upvotes or money; this is, I believe, about a shift in interests and attention. This requires long analysis and explanations not everyone wants to hear.
Excessive use of social media can make an individual lose focus. We have to live with it. 🤣
This is simply amazing accuracy and deep analysis of the current situation. At least what I observe on the platform after a three-year absence cannot be better said. Is it possible to add a strong curse. On the one hand, this is sad in view of the observed realities, but on the other hand, this post is already some kind of hope that the continuation can take place. I hope
I believe that by addressing these problems, we will have a clear picture of where we went wrong and this will enable us to work better on those areas. It's likely that most people don't even care about these issues, either because they chose the wrong path which is serving them well or they have just given up. As long as we have the few people who still want to bring the change, we shall remain hopeful. (:
Life is change, if there is no change, then there is no life)
Yes, I had made a comment about the community accounts. However, it was in a slightly different sense.
It was about the fact that many users delegate a large part of their SP to community accounts and then the SP is only awarded in this community. Especially if the delegating user then only writes in this community, this is nothing other than a vote-bot.
It is particularly worrying when communities make delegation a condition for being allowed to write in the community at all.
Yes, community accounts should mainly vote within the community. There is nothing wrong with significant posts being voted on outside the community if they are in the community's interest. However, voting for posts with almost guaranteed votes (delfin, curation reports) with the community account contradicts the intention of the communities.
My recommendation therefore:
Finally, I must say that your issues raised highlight one thing:
Users need to realise that they are not writing for the SC, but for their readers, other users. Their votes and their comments should be aimed for!
Delegations shouldn't be mandatory, I agree.
People make big delegations to strengthen the community account. I never really thought of it the way you have highlighted the issue. Perhaps, you are right, it does turn into a voting bot intentionally or unintentionally. I have to think more about it. 🤔
Sadly !.., you just made some real points here @event-horizon. I have alot to say here,... unfortunately, it may be weird to some people but it will help to clearify alot of actions i Considered "The Big Cheat".
i'll respond to this in a Jiffy.