So over in the Newbieresteemday @davemccoy dropped in and talked about a new project that he and
@danielsaori worked and I was simply blown away. The idea they developed a system that would help rid of dust threshold in comments. It will swoop in and spray that comment.

Source

About almost a month ago @timcliff talked about raising the dust threshold Proposal to make spam less profitable

If we increased this threshold up to 0.10 SBD, or even 0.25 or 1.00 SBD - then posts/comments that did not receive sufficient votes to pass this threshold would receive zero payout. This would likely decrease the incentive for users to create spam.

The idea was to raise it high enough to deter spammers. While the idea was for something good, it was frankly anti-minnow because when we started out most of our post would be less than a dollar. Most of my post at the start got about 0.06 and even lower so by increasing it to 0.10 or even as high as one dollar then you just turned to dust majority of what minnows get in the platform.

Although the proposal has been abandoned there is still the matter of the dust threshold which is any comment or post that is upvoted and is less than 0.02 on payout it becomes dust and is destroyed.

Oh boy, people were absolutely furious and I was one of them and I wrote a piece about it under You are a Zero | The Dust Threshold So I decided to do something to ensure that I was properly rewarding engagement in posts not just in mine but in others as well. You see a problem and you come up with a solution and not just complain about it.

So I am changing the way that I reward people that I engage with. In my posts I will make sure that it reaches 0.03 cents and this would mean I would upvote less in comments outside of my posts. It will lower the number of votes that I will be able to give out as I will maintain my Voting power to the same limit I have.

Now for those Steemians that have their upvote value is 0.01 only instead of upvoting a good comment you can reply to that and I suggest you check the person out and if you find a post still within payout that you life upvote that and comment and maybe that person becomes an engager and a fan. Win-win!

Enter @dustsweeper

Dustsweeper is a community bot run by witness @danielsaori
This is a joint project by @davemccoy and @danielsaori and it's supported and operated by witness @danielsaori. The goal behind this service is to help the newbies and minnows get paid on the votes they already have, not to make a profit. The fees we charge should equal the cost to run the service and lease the SP to make those votes. If the bot makes a profit, then the surplus will be used do other things to help the community.

The premise is if an upvote on a comment that you did does not reach the dust threshold then the @dustsweeper bot will upvote that comment and upvote it by 0.028. Where does it get the power to upvote it you may ask? It comes from a deposit you send to it which is about 1 Steem or 1 SBD. It will track the balance and will send you a memo when you are nearing in using up your deposit.

What would stop someone from upvoting their own comments and using the bot to upvote the rest of comments and make sure it is past dust threshold?

As with anything new, there will be bound to be some people that will look forward to abusing this but I am confident that they will be able to make regular checks and balances and if someone is caught abusing it then they are blacklisted or punished accordingly.

Abuse Precautions Taken
First, we would hope that people wouldn't scheme such a helpful program to help people get paid for upvotes that fall into the category of dust. But since we are aware that there are sometimes people prone to coming up with such schemes, we will be on the lookout for it and use tools we have worked on to minimize abuse of the system. Naturally, this will be a work in process as with every day that goes by we will have more data to sift through and put the proper systems in place to progressively improve the program.

Absolutely brilliant and indeed this would come from a tandem of Dave and Daniel. I have been looking into Daniel and what he has been doing on the platform and he is active in terms of engagement, supporting worthwhile projects and generally just looking out for minnows and redfishes.

This latest project just cemented it and I have sent my 1 SBD to test this out as well as made a change in my witness vote and added @danielsaori. You, Sir, is a class act!

Thank you also @davemccoy for always looking after the community and being a visionary.

If you want to read more on this click on this link [ANN] Introducing Dustsweeper. A new service to turn Dust into Profit.

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