Fighting spam, dealing with losers, and why no one gives a fuck
If you haven't heard of the @buildawhale blacklist, then let me know what island you live on as I can use a vacation.
I spend 10-60 hours a week researching, identifying, and punishing spammers, plagiarists, fraud, and abuse. I do this because I don't want my bot to reward these type of users, nor do I want this platform to have any more of this garbage than it already has.
As I have said before, this is a never-ending thankless job, but most people don't know to what extent I mean and how hopeless it is.
The last few days have been especially exciting. If you would indulge me, let me take you on a journey.
I've said this a few times, so I'll be brief. @buildawhale was built to offer promotion services, discourage spam, and reward quality authors. Much of my spam fighting has been done in the dark behind the scenes but was made public due constant claims that bid bots promote spam and don't care about what they vote on.
Since then, I have devoted a large portion of my time to find and identify these users, stop them from using my services, and try to get their delegation removed and cease their ability to sustain their activities.
I have been very public about this activity so it is crystal clear where I stand. I truly believe one of the biggest issues that need to be resolved on Steem is how easy it is to abuse the system and how many are. It harms the credibility and value of our investment. Left uncheck the platform cannot thrive much less survive.
Here are some examples since I have been here.
Plagiarist about to walk off with $2,800 less than 8 hours to act, I did my part
[UPDATED] Plagiarist with multiple $600+ posts, should I remove our vote or just blacklist?
Spammer going to spam all @buildawhale users in retaliation for blacklist
Thousands of dollars in rewards recovered to the reward pool
Uncovering and blacklisting a massive spammer with over 50 accounts
Having a blacklist, spending hours researching and finding proof of plagiarism and spam is about the worst thing I could possibly do as a bot owner. Spammers are the best customers on the platform, and no one wants to pay for it or even spend the time. Having our blacklist has dramatically reduced our bidding windows, and has costed me far more in time and headaches. (Before someone takes this out of context, this is just a fact, it is not my position.)
In the last 7 days I have been flagged 934 times. All the result of maintaining and running my blacklist.
Fortunately, a lot of these users have zero investment in the platform and their flags are as meaningless as their posts.
That's not always the case though and I'm not one to cry about flags.
Here you have one user @michaellamden68 that has been just posting porn images and gifs for up to $30 using purchased delegation. His delegation has been removed and he has been blacklisted from further delegation purchases.
He even self-proclaims he steals all the images.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am “man” enough to stand by my posts; yes they are plagiarised, ofcourse they are #nsfw.
Yet his alt/whale friend claims no one is stealing, and he will buy steem power to flag this "censorship".
He wrote a post that a lot of the blacklisted users have jumped on and started to chatter.
Two users suggested going to the FBI and reporting the blacklist and flags to them as fraud. One user spent 29 days posting slander about myself and @buildawhale before I said enough is enough and started to flag him.
This user put in an anonymous tip to the FBI about this fraud.
I've seen my share of help I'm being flagged posts but this one takes the cake.
The one who suggested contacting the FBI even went so far to create a 1-hour video exposing me as having a "magical power manipulate the steemit driving engine itself".
The funny thing, he was blacklisted for spam, posting the same video over and over and screenshots of off chain discussions 7+ times a day.
He has almost no understanding of Steem and decides to contact the FBI because he received a generic comment saying he is on our blacklist for Spam, Plagiarism, or Fraud. He not only contacted the FBI but has posted 50 or more comments related to it along with the lovely video above.
Yet I have continued to research and report spammers. Honestly, though, it is becoming more and more frustrating and nearly at the point fuck it, just do what everyone else does and ignore it.
I realize many people don't believe in copyright, but decentralized doesn't mean you are free to do whatever you want. Even if you don't believe in copyright or plagiarism, there is the fact users are making hundreds or thousands a day off other people's work.
By the same mentality, I should be able to use the latest Hollywood movies and put them on @dtube and vote them up for profit.
Most of the stuff I report is "out of scope" and is left churning. Most of the time the delegation isn't removed and it is left to go on for months or longer.
Most of the users on the blacklist are spamming or plagiarising, like these users:
If you want to see the entire blacklist, it is available as a Github repo.
And finally, some peanut butter & oatmeal if you are into that sort of thing.
Why you should vote me as witness
Witness & Administrator of four full nodes
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My question would be:
Then why do you continue with the bid bot in the first place?
We see the effects that they’ve had on the platform. We see them being abused by spammers, plagiarists, and shitposters. You’re never going to be able to get ahead of these people...it’s always a game of catch-up by its very nature. The effort to keep a blacklist is almost completely futile. Anyone can create a new account and go right back to abusing them.
These bid bots are what the “abusers” are able to use to buy their reputations, visibility, and to make a profit. It seems to me that the bid bot “owners” are mostly responsible for the current situation. There’s no ability to abuse bid bots if there weren’t other users running the bid bots...and other users delegating to them.
We can only blame the code to a certain extent. The rest of the blame falls on the opportunists that are capitalizing on those shitty blockchain protocols.
If we were to get rid of delegation (roll back HF18), how many of these high-powered bid bots would still exist?
For the record: It’s the protocols that ultimately need to be fixed - not bid bots. The hard forks that were implemented last year are clearly not working. Delegation, linearity, and the 10-vote target improved nothing. In fact, these things have made the environment/behavior here much worse.
But it’s obvious that this won’t be corrected with the current “leadership” around here. It’s a shame, really.
Exactly. It's like Churchill saying "Yeah, we colonized and ruined half the world, but hey - at least we didn't start World War II or perpetrate the Holocaust."
I will of course not blame voting bots opportunistically exploiting a broken system, but it is nevertheless a corruption of the social network as it was intended. Indeed, I admire voting bot managers for their resourcefulness. The same way I admire scammers like Frank Abagnale or even the infamous Charles Ponzi. However, voting bot owners should accept that it's a corruption, instead of pretending to be altruistic - they are not in the slightest. Maybe some are less corrupt than others, but that's not even a backhanded compliment at this stage. Whales and large SP delegation recipients were meant to curate engaging and popular content, to build the network and make it accessible to the mainstream. The curation rewards were meant to compensate for their efforts, plus a much higher price that would be the result of the network going mainstream. Unfortunately, with bullshit that makes even 4Chan look quality trending regularly, it'll never be mainstream. It's heading towards being the next 4Chan-like cesspit, and regular, sane folks stay away from insane shit like that. If you really give a shit about Steem, instead of lining your own wallets, that's what you should do with a large amount of SP delegation - CURATE. Curate, not sell. Imagine how much better Steem would be if those millions of SPs and 10-60 hours weekly were actually used for curating popular content.
Unfortunately, I don't have a solution. A social network with money involved is probably inherently a bad idea. Greed will always take priority over social interaction. Worse still, being decentralized means scammers can not only get away with unethical acts - they are actually incentivized to do so. Over time, what would be unethical is normalized, and that's what has happened with voting bots. The banality of evil. Mind you, I'm not dumping on Steem here, it's become something else quite different from the original intention. It can still a valuable market and can succeed with SMTs and such incoming. It's highly undervalued (relative to other shitcoins), and I will continue to hold Steem. But in its current form, it'll simple not be a good social network (except in some moderated niches when Communities launch).
Getting rid of SP Delegation will not really help. Ex-delegators will just follow votes instead, and scripts can easily track how much voting % is going where and how much curation reward is generated by each different followed account. Not as easy as SP delegation, but the effect is ultimately the same; and the effort is well worth the exploitation of the Steem network for personal benefit. Increasing the voting target to 40 will make it worse, as that incentivizes the people making tons of votes - voting bots in this case. Same for superlinear - the voting bots command a vast majority of SP, they will dominate even more with prior protocols.
So, yes, I give up. I have no solution. The idea of a decentralized social network with money involved is inherently flawed. Well, I do have a solution, but people here will hate it. Yes, it involves governance.
PS: Superlinear will certainly help with spamming, but that's a different topic. The real problem here, as I have argued before, is the exponentially generous bandwidth limits. It literally takes a few thousand dollars to disrupt the network. (We saw what someone did with a few hundred last week.) No human needs that kind of bandwidth.
Bandwidth is a problem. Like you, I’ve been banging that drum for a long time...since at least last spring/summer. But just like they did with the hard forks last year, the inmates running our asylum decided to remove that abuse mitigation.
And they don’t care about the results. They just plow ahead with their next (likely shitty) hard forks.
Do you think bandwith could improve the user retention @ats-david? From my personal point of view one of the greatest issues is the fact that new accounts are not converted into active accounts since more than three months now:
Daily active users: Source: @penguinpablo
What's the matter with those who sign up but don't start being part of this community?
THAT is to me the no. 1 of all questions.
Usually, their expectations are way too high. They join, expect to make a lot of money, don’t make a lot of money (or any at all), then quit.
Or, they just can’t figure anything out and get frustrated due to the complexity of the system and the horrid user interface.
Those are probably reasons #1 and #2 for the failure to retain users.
Generally I believe if users expectations don't meet with what the product is actually able to offer, it's not only a users mistake. Then it's rather a lack of communication.
Why do people expect getting rich on steemit? 1) Because there are a few who're filling their pockets on a daily basis. 2) Because they weren't educated before joining the whole thing.
Have you ever seen the welcome page of steemit? After opening that page I had actually no more questions... 21st Century, blockchain technology, and then... a loooong text, haha! The most important advice comes at the very end, so I wonder how many people have even read it?
Yes, that's it. But nobody knows.
If this was an article, I'd resteem it right away. Thank you @liberosist!
I'd love to read more about that part actually. Probably one of the main problems of Steem is that people believe decentralization = absence of governance. That's at least what I've perceived during the past 1.5 years on this platform. But decentralized networks don't work without accountability, and accountability requires a set of certain rules.
Right now the Steem community enjoys absolute freedom, a freedom that includes the ability to rip off the whole eco-system and destroy it from the inside.
The result is: stagnation.
Stagnation in numbers: (Daily active users, stagnant since 3 month now - Source: @penguinpablo)
Now I have a déjà vu. I've got the sensation that we've talked about that already a hundred times. Yes, we did! You and me, and all the others...
That's why Steem needs to wake up. Very soon more players will enter the market and then it's too late to fix it. I really hope that these big promises called SMTs and Hivemind will have any impact. Yet, the system like it's today is totally corrupt - not sure if new features built on the very same basis will be even able to make a difference.
Again, thanks for your massive comment. Really inspiring, and I hope a lot more had the chance to read it :-) Happy weekend!
You're absolutely right, of course. I'll write up something.
Nice! Let me know to not miss it then :-)
The more I see posts and comments like this, the more I'm convinced the solution I'm working on, is the right one :-).
I must agree with you guys, even though I like @themarkymark, I would just cut the bot all together, and find a better way to reward quality posts.
Cg
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Off topic but related to the opening Churchill quote; they did something worse, they spread their religion! ;)
Ha, that's an entirely different can of worms.
follow me I just made a publication
sorry, i hadn't meant to make a comment...why is there no delete button???
Its not the fault of the bot, its the fault of the people abusing it imo.
People will always try to abuse things that's why bitcoin was invented and decentralised so if we can't build bots that are abuse proof or at least to a reasonable level i.e 99% then they should not exists and by there very nature they are a magnet for bad behaviour
The other big issue with bot abuse is that it is simply related to how much money one has to start with. It is catch-up because most of us can't really afford to use many of the bots. So as soon as the spammers get going, they can simply stay a head because they now have more money than most people trying to play more fair.
Two words: steem censorship
What's the problem with censorship? Life would be chaotic and stupid without censorship. Newspapers, magazines, webpages... all rely on censorship to have things make sense and be organized. Without it, newspapers would be cluttered with ads no one had to pay for, fishing magazines would be full of articles on knitting and raising chickens, and webpages would make no sense.
Where people get the idea that censorship is 'bad', I have no idea.
Well the question then is who is the one in charge of censorship? Isn't the idea to have a decentralized platform? If you are a fan of censorship then that is bringing in a "centralized" concept onto a de-centralized community platform. When you choose a censorship "authority" then they will be the ones controlling the content that is produced - which is against the idealism that the blockchain/decentralized network is all about is it not?
Why do you say that censorship is "centralized?" I'm sorry but that doesn't make sense. It is an activity that can be centralized or not; it is not inherently centralized.
Property owners are in charge of censorship of their respective property. If you own or have control over the page or property, then you have a right to censor it. Would you think it's 'bad' if you were forced to listen to every Jehovah's witness who rang your bell? Of course you would, because it's your home, the JW's are on your property, and you have the right to censor them.
Is your home 'centralized'? It's an irrelevant question, you are the property owner and you have the right to dictate the terms and conditions of the speech that goes on in your property, just like the owners of a fishing magazine can choose to allow knitting articles or not. That's how property ownership and censorship works.
Now, when the GOVERNMENT does it... that's a different story. We should have freedom FROM government limitations on our speech. The government has neither the right to force fishing magazines to include knitting articles, nor prevent them.
This is a confusion of Censorship vs quality control. Not putting knitting in a fishing magazine doesn't make knitting content completely unavailable, you just have to look at the knitting magazine. This is the marketing strategy of private enterprise.
Censorship is generally referring to government control over what people have the legal ability to view. If a private enterprise had a monopoly on knitting and then hid it, that could be seen as censorship I suppose.
The idea of censorship being bad plagues my every day life, given that I live in a country controlled by an authoritarian regime where you can go to prison simply for the intention of handing out stickers promoting women's rights on women's day.
The reason it's bad is because a small group of powerful people get to dictate what is right and wrong by promoting what pleases them and censoring what doesn't.
Anyway, as pointed out below, this is seemingly totally unrelated to this OP so better leave it at that!
There is a huge difference between censorship and governance. I loath the idea of someone telling me what I can and can't say, but I don't mind being held accountable for my actions!
Where does censorship fit into this?
thats like saying the car manufacturers and gunmakers are to blame for people who abuse them, and thus they should be punished.
What is?
saying the bots are being abused, so its the bot makers fault, and the bots therefore should not exist.
You may need to read my original comment again.
Okay well i may have slightly misread, but still, you are seeming to suggest he should stop with his bot due to the bot being abused... which seems a bit extreme. The bot has positive attributes for steemit and for the creator of the bot, it doesn't solve anything to not have a good bot, letting the bad bots over power?
would you like to do public welfare through blockchain
No
awesome your comment sir,,,
i agree with you.....
I completly agree - let's stop talking about fixing it - here comes my proposal for a solution:
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@steemhq/how-to-make-steem-great-again-the-exponential-author-reward-method
This is real? I never heard of the concept of being anti-copyright, what angle do people take where stealing a painting and selling it as your own is A-OK?
The rest of the post - hilarious. I also experience a whole world of hilarious anger backlash in steemstem, where people blatantly steal content and then deny it despite the overwhelming evidence in front of their faces... What a world.
They deny it because they have no ethics or values by any side. I do not understand how there can be such people, taking advantage of the work of others
If they are aware of it and don't believe in it then they clearly do have ethics... just, weird ethics that don't relate to the real world. Seems bizarre shrug
I mean copyright reform is one of the things the pirate parties have in their program.
Ill say this much, i cant see how copyright violations have anything to do with ethics - we know for a fact that piracy helps the actual holder of the copyright to sell more copies. The positive effects of, for instance, videosharing plattforms on sales of theater tickets has been studied.
Is this real ?
Cheetah is one of the bots I know that upvotes a plagiarized content. And it's useful. But like what you've said creators will always deny it.
Hey themarkymark,
As a legit user of voting bots I really appreciate your efforts and I have upvoted your witness in appreciation.
I don't care about the copyright laws, but I get where you are coming from.
So,.. Regarding the FBI. First I highly doubt he reported it at all nor that they will care. Still, the drama factor is hysterical.
Keep caring!
The FBI thing is hilarious, it's a good troll but if that person thinks for even a second that the FBI cares that shitposters are abusing Steemit ... good grief man get a life lol.
For me I haven't use bid bots because I'm still fairly new here and I don't think i have enough funds to purchase it. Maybe in time...I'll be able to do that as with others. Now, about copyrights, yes that is important in terms of originality and ownership. I would hope that people would understand and learn to cite information that is not their own. The credit should be given where or to whomever it is due. What is wrong with citing anyway? It shows integrity and that one is creative enough to bring something to the surface with the intertwined and combination of his or her thoughts and ideas on something. On the other hand, involving legal authorities for a decentralized platform i think is defeating its purpose. Don't you agree? I'm only giving my two cents as I understand what's been portrayed here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
It is very Important thing for our work
I am upvote you brother
Welcome to steemit. I hope you have a good day. I give you my vote I hope yours, go through my channel when you can ... may God enlighten you
You can get flagged for comments like this, especially when you're posting the exact same thing. Don't beg for Upvotes or follows. It is spam!
yelaiah.... behave yourself woman. Christs sakes.
Your page is rubbish. All plagarised.
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A brave man still does his work in a crossfire - but not this kind of work.
yes i m agree with you whatup
Welcome to steemit. I hope you have a good day. I give you my vote I hope yours, go through my channel when you can ... may God enlighten you
Its really good..
.
Nice
yes i'm agree with y whatup
FWIW @postpromoter is now using your blacklist and now that you've shared it in the GitHub repo I'm going to be making it available via a public URL and adding it as the default for all new voting bots that use the Post Promoter software.
Is that you? lol
Nice comment
this brings a smile to my face...
U guys are awesome! Thanks for protecting the community!
But I spend many hours looking for the best things about Steemit and I try to reward them, even with little ... with what I can.Instead of fighting all this time that makes Steemit a bad platform, why do you powerful whales not help the many small projects that try to reward quality? These projects are very important for Steemit's growth but they do not have the right attention. I could give you many examples ...
Spend time and resources with the worst part of Steemit. Try, instead, to focus on the best part ...
First! Posting in an epic thread!
Damn you're good.
*you're
My friends and I earned $ 10,000 a month
https://steemit.com/money/@letienhai1991/my-friends-and-i-earned-usd-10-000-a-month
Hello sir ples give me upvote
Any chance you could outsource finding plagiarizm? Like at @utopian-io model: i found a spammer, prove he is a spammer beyond reasonal doubt. You (or other moderator) quickly check it, added into bloacklist and upvote the founder.
Ples....give me upvote?
what for?
You are doing the right thing. I have voted only for two witnesses, you're one of them. Keep going! You have our support we like the way you think.
Keep on fighting the good fight.
That guy is a joke.
It seems to me that all these problems started when they made it possible to delegate steem. When you couldn't delegate, the whales had to take responsibilty themselves for what was upvoted (so they followed curation streams or followed well known curators or did the curation themselves). Once you delegate it's out of your control what the steempower is used for.