Cleaning up Spam is like Raking Leaf Litter

in #spam7 years ago (edited)

Each LEAF is like a Single Spam Post or Comment!

I work for a relatively small business, and while my normal work is behind a desk, the Fall affords me an outside duty. Leaf PATROL. Yes, we have big beautiful leaf-prolific-trees surrounding the building, and I have the duty of managing the leaf litter.

spamLeaves.jpg

So, I am outside yesterday raking up some leaves and the wind starts to pick up. The wind started to do my job for me. It was blowing the leaves and even blowing them off of our property. For a second I thought about stopping. For a second I was going to let the wind do the work and go back inside to my warm, comfy desk chair. But I decided not to, and here is why.

As I was thinking about it, I knew that the wind doesn't always blow in the same direction. And these leaves that I let ESCAPE today, may be back in greater droves tomorrow. Additionally, any and all leaves that I gathered up and removed from the leaf litter would be less leaves that our neighbors would have to deal with. So, me continuing to rake and blow and gather up all the leaves I could, was good for the ecosystem!

steemcleanersMower.jpg

This is a good analogy with SPAM. If you ignore Spam, even a single leaf, it will pile up and grow and become a big problem. I believe that the Steemit community as a whole has been ignoring Spam long enough. A spammy comment here. A questionable post there. A little plagiarism that is funny.

It has all been ignored by most Steemians in their day to day 'travels' within the Steemit universe.

And now.....NOW those Spam posters, and comment upvote farmers have learned that THEY CAN earn money just cooking COPYPASTA and SHitPosTs and Using Account Creation Farms to STEAL FROM the STEEM REWARD POOL.

We are now dealing with a large, wet, stinky, rat infested 'leaf pile' of rotting SPAM POSTS!

This won't do. We need to FLAG it when we see it! We need to Report it when we see it! We need to Speak up and warn them that this type of comment spam is not acceptable. This type of proactive effort will GREATLY work to improve the Steemit ecosystem by discouraging and stopping negative, harmful, ugly behaviour. And yes, we should speak to newbies when it seems they maybe don't realize it is wrong. We SHOULD encourage them to post original work, and comment with honest engagement.....or not at all.

This action of Flagging, Explaining and Reporting is like Composting the Leaves in a good way. We gather them, we shred them, and we turn the compost pile so it doesn't get stinky!

Let's work together with @steemcleaners, @spaminator, @patrice and myself @public-eye and Everyone that is working to nurture Steemit into a clean, welcoming, healthy and productive platform!!

Thank you, and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
cuteWhale - Copy.png

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Hi @public-eye, I can’t help but have a little smile when I see you got only 29 views, but 76 upvotes for this post! Well, at least my vote is from a real human and not a spam robot.

Did you know you can use this tool to help confirm possible spammers:

http://www.steemreports.com/account-classifier/

I am all for flagging comment spam and do it often. I have never had any problem of flag wars because of this. I always warn the spammer about his behaviour and then check back the next day. He gets flagged if he does not heed the warning.

When flagging, I deliberately target those spam comments which have been rewarded by the blogger. It takes away his reward to zero. The money is returned to the reward pool.

We have some work to do so ordinary bloggers learn how to check for spam comments before rewarding.

Please keep up the good work, as I will do to. We don’t need those who are here to abuse the reward pool.

Well, I am onboard with this. I'll flag it when I see it. And I see it too much.

great! I know that united we can really clean it up.

then who knows.... maybe Steem will moon up to $10!!

You're an optimist. I like that. Also, Whovian. I like that too.

I agree! We don't like spam and so we are happy to support you!

Thank you so much!!

Did you get all the spam cleaned up??

Not hardly. Turns out it is a job beyond my Steem and beyond my available time/resources. I gave it a nice go. I may work at it again later.

Peace

Okay. I see. But thanks for trying. I wish we could do the same on YouTube! I can't figure out dtube...so.... Anyway. Later

I love the steemcleaners meme!!! They should use that!

Good job today with that #introduceyourself tag abuser. Hopefully they got the message!

Who will get Steemit junk free? Does steamcleeners have any success???

and thank you for the help! I am hoping that they turn over a new leaf! XD

Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by em3 from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.

These photos were stolen from a YouTuber, and you're upvoting and resteeming @patrice? wow
https://www.youtube.com/user/CaliKim29

Hello @rakkasan84 thank you for your concern.
I am interested in having a conversation about this if you are. I would appreciate your input.

So.... first, what is the rule on MEME's?
From what I have seen in my experience, pretty much any image or screencapture is up for grabs when making a meme. If that is not so, or there are better practices that are widely accepted, please advice.
Next, I did take some liberty, since I was using the CaliKim image for a meme, that I used it as my first image, ....minus the meme, since that meme wasn't ideal as the thumbnail, and the other memes did not make good thumbnails.
Lastly, you are right that I took liberty in this post. I had the concept developed before I sat at my computer to compose, and I had neither the photographs from any that I had taken, nor did Pixabay provide any good choices.

So.... what do you suggest? The CaliKim image, I think, does make a good Meme image for the text. If I change the thumbnail, but keep the Meme's is that acceptable? Looking forward to your feedback.

Why was this comment whited out or nearly invisible. Crazy!

it had gotten flagged. No big deal. Crazy things were happening back then. I'm out for the moment.

Thx

Oh, okay. Glad it wasn't a. Big deal. Again, good seeing you!! Take care, bye¡!!!!!!!!!

so....
A. @rakkasan84 has no interest in an 'intellectual' conversation.
B. Thinks that a quick google search, and copy paste of anything similar covers as an answer.
C. places a link to an article and information that, may in fact, not apply to this discussion at all.

I am still interested in a conversation. If you are short on time, feel free to respond when you do have time to.

Thanks

You got caught using a stolen image to promote Steemcleaners, which is quite ironic. Own the mistake, correct it and move on.

Taking a screenshot off a known person's video to make her and her partner into a meme is immoral and is gross misuse of intellectual property. Its more serious than plagiarism since what that does is harm the individual in the image.

If you want to look at it from another perspective, it also tarnishes Steemcleaners' reputation. Patrice works her ass off to keep plagiarism and theft at bay and now there's a Steemcleaners meme with stolen images.

Insulting the person who called you out on the act isn't the way to clear yourself or to correct the mistake.

and not really that it matters... because I did borrow the image without investigating ownership or anything. I admit and apologize for that.
But.... I did not screen capture or knowingly take the image from a known YouTuber.
I searched DuckDuckGo for images for "How to compost leaves" and it showed up in the list. I then clicked on it and chose "View File" it showed up on a page by itself. I saved it.
You are right that I should not borrow images without verifying they are open use(Pixabay). My bad. And the images have been removed.

Did you read my reply?
second, this all happened in the last 2 hours. I never made any claim that I would not fix it. I am trying to findout to what extent it needs to be fixed.
third, the way @rakkasan84 referred to "a YouTuber" I would have never guessed it was his partner. If CaliKim is asking me to remove/ change these images I will most certainly do that. I would never do something with someone's image that They Themselves has a problem with.
finally, can you please let me know how it is that I insulted @rakkasan84 ?
Thank you

I didn't mean that the youtuber is @rakkasan84's partner, was referring to the two people in the images.

Anyways, just use a stock image for the background and recreate your meme, put in some credit somewhere to where the stock image came from. The "extent" is that the image should be replalced with one that's for public use. Seems pretty simple to me man.

Yeah, I'll have to search more for a stock image that will work with the meme. Pixabay had nothing. Thanks

Meme's are constantly being done with images that are on the internet, but are not necessarily public use. Am I wrong about that? Maybe they are constantly 'abusing' intellectual property. I am not an attorney and was just going by past experience.

And I am still clueless about what you meant about partners. The only image I had only had one person in it. Not a person and their partner. I just don't follow what you mean. I looked it up and CaliKim's partner looks nothing like any person I have ever used in any of my posts. Thx