Spam Observations for 8/26
Whew! What a week! Well, week and a half really. I have been keeping an eye on the spam situation. No massive bot spam to report. I do see a few misguided Steemian's though. I really need to figure out labels for the different abuse patterns I find.
Case #1
These 22 accounts are working in collusion to comment spam and/or participate in the bot trail up-voting spam. You can see them in action here: https://steemd.com/love/@yosra/be-the-love-you-never-receive
If any of these accounts read this: Just stop with the spam!
Case #2
@god-is-love seems to have around 150 accounts regularly upvote comments older than 4 days. He's got some loyal readers!
Seriously though. If you have multiple accounts and use them to upvote your own posts & comments - don't try to hide it and don't spam 'introduceyourself' posts with "Nice to meet you, @insertname :) Welcome to Steemit!"
While these two cases have little impact by themselves... More are sure to follow if they find it profitable!
The Spaminators Art Contest
We have 11 entries so far and only 1 day left!
Introducing 'The Spaminators' Logo Contest - Steemits Spam Fighters
You are doing such valuable work for the community, I appreciate you so much.
Your work is very much appreciated! You're an ispiration to us, we all have to help in keeping our community clean!
'He's got some loyal readers!'
:))) I love your sense of humor! Your name is awesome too! Makes me smile every time I see it. Not 'He', but 'She' by the way. I'm still trying to figure out Steemit and I am not always sure what I can or can not do. It's very confusing that Steemit allows what Steemians might not approve of. I won't upvote my comments in the 'Introduceyourself' section anymore :) I apologize if I offended anyone.
Thanks for stopping by! It's not always easy to tell who is trying to figure things out and who is trying to abuse the system. It was good to hear from you. Check out @minnowsupport
I felt bad for having multiple accounts and asked around first. I also edit posts for my partner and I try to keep it on the up and up. I hate these kinds of things because I know I and many others work really hard to have quality posts here. It is one thing working multiple avenues if you are going to do the work to keep them up. In that case, it is more like one person having more than one business. It is possible but it also means more work! Thanks for doing the good work! I am glad I found this page.
Don't feel bad about that! I have @zoee, @patrice, @spaminator, @flagpediporn and one more that is anonymous. I also post for @steemcleaners.
The important thing isn't how many accounts you have - it is what you do with them!
Thanks for the support!
That's a surprisingly light load... came across the #1 group earlier today... or, rather, a couple of them at the same time, and it seemed a little fishy.
The "misguided" get precisely one shot with me... a guided advice reply-comment that sending the same copy-pasta comment to 100 posts is spam, and here's a better approach to gain followers... ironically, the "advice" bit from me is ALSO copied and pasted boilerplate text.
It is pretty light. Now I'm down to sorting through the top commenters and weeding humans from bots. The bots (or humans acting like) providing a service get a pass with me. It's up to the community to decide if they like them. Same with novelty accounts like @ionlysaymeep.
I'm going to start looking at post spammers next.
Congratulations! You've been resteemed by my Cat-Bot because you posted in one of the followed categories (#steemit)!
You also get a small upvote from the bot (I'd make it bigger, but with so many great posts in the category I'd be out of voting power in no time) to thank you for your contribution.
If you're interested in this category, you should consider following this bot to see what other posts it finds!
Since this is still in Beta mode, I'm afraid the unsubscribe is manual... so I may be a bit slow, but just reply to this post with UNSUBSCRIBE and I will (sadly) leave you and your future posts alone. (I really don't want to spam people, I promise)
However... if you want to HELP make this service better, you can upvote this comment and add to the power these bots provide... or even be awesome and make a transfer donation or a SP delegation!
Or... you can do nothing, and we will happily keep on resteeming and upvoting you every time you hit one of our categories!
Whatever you decide, thanks for steeming and keep on being awesome! This community needs a solid stream of great content like yours!
The problem with your approach is the same as here: https://steemit.com/steemit-abuse/@patrice/blind-upvoting-introduceyourself
You are inadvertently encouraging users to spam for profit.
Curious, do you feel the same in regards to the automated "badges" that users get?
Because that's more how I was modeling this bot's vote-to-support-the-project comment.
If you just re-steemed that would be great. As you grow in SP users will try to manipulate your bot to get a couple of cents up-votes. Run a couple bots in different tags then it's easy to tag spam them, wait for the votes, remove the tags.
Badges like @steemitboard would be more difficult to manipulate than up-voting every person that posts in a tag. If someone were to have a badge that could be easily manipulated to get up-votes I would feel the same.
Since you replied you obviously care about the community. Come find me on steemit.chat. Maybe we can put our heads together to figure out a way to prevent you bot from being abused. Such as not upvoting anything @cheetah has flagged. Having a blacklist for known tag spammers, etc.
I dig that. I'll come find you sometime tomorrow (1am here right now, lol).
The voting isn't working right now anyway, but even when it does I'm only giving a 0.1% vote, lol. But I see your point for sure.
Sorry I haven't come and found you... got nailed with the flu. Not blowing you off. I did go ahead and remove the vote code (and description) from the bot. At least until I can figure out a way to do is that's generous without being abused. I'd sort of like to see it used to help "bump" newbie posters (maybe based on time since signup/etc?) without it being so much of a boost that it makes abusing it really at all effective. Perhaps those who are new, get above 35 rep, and are making a post to comment ratio of a certain percent? Who knows... a lot to think about. Though, it'll be quite a while before it's really even at enough SP to be something to think hard on.
Good work! Gotta stop these selfish spammers or they'll ruin it for everyone else...
please help me @rashidminhas stolen my details and use it on steemit i want your help for removing fake account please please help me check here my details
I added them to @cheetah's blacklist. That's the best I can do. @cheetah will warn users they are a scammer & flag any post or comment they make.
thanks dear my friend @patrice