At some point in the past, several Steemians were questioning why a certain whale was voting on the last day. The reply was: because the system allows it. I'd like to throw another question to the community (Steemit Inc. as well): why does spam exist on Steemit? The answer is the same: because the system allows it.
Spam is the most annoying invention ever. Advertisers, armed with their silly psychology, have determined that the more they throw an idea at people, the more chances some of them will answer the call and buy the product, even if it's a shitty one. That's the core of marketing.
Spam is more visible in our mail and email, but it also makes its way through advertising on websites. Don't you hate those flashy banners? That's spam too. It pollutes our reading experience and distracts from the core of the subject.
It's easy to get rid of spam in the real world. Delete it, report it, block it. Done. No more annoyance. However, on Steemit it's a different matter. Because it's a blockchain, every transaction is permanently recorded and there's no mechanism to prevent spam from happening.
Spam Wastes Energy
Despite the concerted efforts of projects like @spaminator, @steemcleaners, and various blacklists, abuse remains unmanageable; it cannot and will not be fully contained. It requires tremendous amount of time, energy and delegations to deal with spam, only to put a dent in its tracks. We are happy to see Steemit grow, but growth could hurt the platform if abuse is allowed to overtake it.
Can We Get Rid Of Abuse?
Of course we can. How hard is it to truly block someone? If I don't want to receive comments or memos from certain users, then I should be able to do so. That doesn't only apply to spam, but also to verbal abuse which is another big problem on Steemit that is seldom highlighted. Steemit has patched the problem by hiding muted or downvoted content in Condenser (the web UI), but the information is still on the blockchain and can be seen and accessed in other applications. Muting is useless because the other users can still read the abusive comments on a person's post. Obviously, hiding unwanted content is NOT the solution.
Blocking is Not Censoring
Steemit was built on full transparency and non-censorship (that's what a blockchain is). It's a utopian idea that doesn't work for social media because the real world is full of bad actors that don't give a shit about the system's ideals or its users, and will continue to abuse as long as the system allows it. For a social system to function properly, it must consider what happens elsewhere and what the users need. In fact, the system must protect its users from harm. So far, Steemit hasn't accomplished that, despite the numerous calls from different directions to do something. Spam and abuse are rampant, and they will continue as long as there's no cork to bottle them.
Consequences of Spam and Abuse
- Blockchain bloat
- Waste of time, energy and resources to chase abuse
- Waste of voting power to flag abuse
Solution
Muting or downvoting can only hide unwanted content in the web UI. We need a feature in the Steem code to literally reject any transaction from a blocked account by the user. In other words, each user can select who they want to block and create their own blacklist. It's that simple. No more spammy comments or memos, less bloat and a better cleaner experience. That's not all, once the abusers realize they can't pester us anymore, they would eventually give up and go away. This way, we can focus on curating and enjoying Steemit without the hassle of wasting our time on abuse.
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TBH (to be honest)...
Steemit can "hide" spam and abuse from being viewed. It cannot stop it from occurring or polluting the blockchain.
No more than Microsoft Hotmail or Outlook 365 can stop spam or abuse. It can only try to hide it from appearing in people's inboxes.
Spam and abuse will be prevalent on the blockchain because there is no way to code human ingenuity and greed from abusing things.
Unfortunately, not that simple. Let's say you have 100,000 users. Each user has 1,000 people on their blacklist. (which is quite small considering the number of spammy new accounts that can exist)
Now that becomes 1 million blacklisted user accounts for 100,000 users. At some point, the lag and resources needed to handle all the blacklists start to become a bottleneck for the 3 second blockchain timing to show new posts.
It's not scalable to create blacklists for each user, miles long.
You have the right idea. It's just not feasible.
Major free email providers will allow all incoming junk mail and sort them in the spam folder for you. However, there are many approaches to keep emails free from spam, such as IP block lists, grey listing, firewall rules, that prevent spam from reaching the users, therefore tackling the issue at the source. It's a riskier approach because there's a slim chance for false positives if the sending email server is misconfigured (e.g. lack of SPF, DKIM or DMARC records).
P.S. Indeed, concerning the scalability, that's easily circumvented by setting a limit on the blacklist size (say, max 50), just like voting for 30 witnesses. You can select the most spammy accounts you want to block.
Close, but not quite.
Spammers are hacking legitimate accounts behind SPF, DKIM, and DMARC just so their spam can get through from a legitimate email account with those semi-verified features infront of the domain name.
I'm quite skilled at mail servers and the way they operate, much like yourself, to fully understand SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
In your own words:
They are all approaches. None of them are 100% spam-proof. If they were, then the inventor of an 100% anti-spam internet would win a nobel prize.
However, that is not the case. Spam on the internet is more than a disease, it's a worldwide plague that eats bandwidth and traffic everyday and it is neverending.
Who pays for spam, the bandwidth it uses, and the resources it requires to try different "approaches" to block it?
The paying users do. Not the ones abusing the system.
This is a big problem, and having blacklists may mitigate the issue a bit.. but it is no where near solving it.
50 could be filled in a day, by each user on the system. No where near enough. :(
I'm skilled with mail servers too, I've been running my own for years 🤓
Luckily the majority of spammers are amateurs and never bother to configure and run their own servers; when they do, it's poorly configured. Often they use sendgrid or other big services. Indeed, we can't solve the spam problem at 100%, but if we can minimize it then it's a step forward.
Nice to meet a fellow postmaster. :)
A majority of the let's say 100.000 users will rather agree on who the spammers are. Not all those users will have different spammers on their blacklists.
They might agree roughly on the number of real spammers, and that's what the blockchain has to handle.
In the end it is quite a democratic process.
How to:
?
Start a different blockchain where only witnesses that have full nodes are rewarded, replace the FB based software with something that is scrollable, and integrate a functional javascript-free blockchain explorer in the interface.
New joiners are granted an equal amount of the currency to start to play with, similar, but not necessarily identical to how it was done here.
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Fighting spam is everyone's job, that annoys me too, and it is incredible that there are people who agree with spam, do not know the damage that cause the platform I think it is best to do educational campaigns to combat spam and report those abuses
I think the 7 day limit on being relevant and rewarded actually encourages a quick and rushed quantity of mediocre articles as opposed to fewer high quality articles. If new votes, even after a year, would also bring new rewards, then in the end, actual good posts, and concequently good authors, would float to the surface.
TLRD
What does it mean? No clue.
I modified the text and added this: In other words, each user can select who they want to block and create their own blacklist. So it's a personalized process that can be implemented in steem's blockchain code.
So you would be able to stop users from calling you out on your bullshit by commenting on your posts?
Why do you have to be mean all the time? We're discussing an problem and a potential solution. Where's the bullshit in that?
If it's trolls with abusive responses then no, I don't want their comments, and I don't want my audience to experience their crap.
In my example replace "YOU" by any accounts and once you're at implementing troll detector on the blockchain let me know how that scales.
Read the other comments, we discussed scaling.
Although I too hate spam, I am not sure blocking users is the way to go. I agree that Steemit was built on full transparency and non-censorship because all postings are forever "available" on the blockchain. But, there is still a great deal of censorship taking place on the visible layer.
Flagging is just one such vehicle. Although it does not completely remove a user or their post from the visible layer and certainly doesn't from the blockchain itself, it does put them in a state, if enough flags are received to make it less obvious they are there to most users. I do consider that censorship.
The biggest type of censorship is censorship via bullying. I see that all the time on steemit. I would say that 90% of the time I agree with what is happening but again, it is censorship.
I am not sure there can be a truly top layer censor-free steemit. I am not sure what that would look like. I do understand that whatever is written is on the blockchain and will be on the record forever but how many people do you know that are going out looking at the individual records for each post ever made. Very few.
I wish there was someone more akin to Basic Attention Token (BAT), where I can setup my settings to allow for spam and other types of advertisements based on a certain reward that I would receive from the publishers of such spam and advertisements. Publishers pay for my attention to their content. I think that is a more effective way to deal with it. Anyway, just my thoughts.
This is one of the reasons why I'm not telling my underage sister to join even though her art and crafts are really incredible. Much better work than my stuff was when I was 18. However her confidence is still a bit fragile and Steemit is very rough for new Steemians. So it's simply not worth the risk. I wonder how many shy artists chose to not join or left, because of abuse or ignorance on Steemit.
I am so grateful for people like you and systems like @spaminator, @steemcleaners for working so hard making this platform a safer and better place and I really appreciate it.
You definitely will have my support and my vote.
Thank you @drakos
Who would decide who gets rejected? And how do you protect against malicious use of tools that are designed to prevent spam? There seem to be lots of negative issues on steemit arising from its economic model and rules around voting and rewards, but from what I've read it may also be very difficult to find a way to change the rules to get the desired outcomes. And that is assuming that everyone even agrees on those outcomes (which is highly unlikely). I keep of Hayek's view that "the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." Perhaps one approach is take a kind of Nasim Taleb approach to minimizing overall risk by spawning sub-steemits that experiment with different rules. This is happening in some sense already with organically organized groups on steemit, however those groups are limited because they cannot change the fundamental rules.
I modified the text to make it clearer: each user can select who they want to block and create their own blacklist.
I'm afraid this would totally go against the "zero cenceorship" slogan from Steemit.
It's personal blocking of spam, not generalized blocking. What's wrong with wanting to keep my own account clean from spam? Are you censoring spammers when you block them in your emails? Should spammers/abusers be allowed to abuse in the name of freedom of speech and zero censorship? I think we should rethink how this social media platform would fit in the context of a blockchain. If every crappy thing is allowed to thrive then I'm afraid it might jeopardize Steem's progress.
Ah, I see what you were suggesting was implementation at user level not at the blockchain instead. Then this is making sense very much. Sorry for the wrong interpretation.
Definitely a lovely feature to have but I'm afraid the team has so much more shits to get done before this one. So far muting is the only I can do to save me some time from spam messages and use the Steemplus plugin to clean my wallet.
Thank you for sharing of this information!
I would be happy if you could take a look at your my latest drawing:)
Any system that provides you monetary value for content will ALWAYS have spam. Simply dont vote for it as soon as you start voting for it on your comments etc you encourage it to happen more.
We all need to start voting on real quality content and only that. However that wont ever happen. It is just one of those pitfalls with really no solution other then you control what you vote on your posts you have that control.
The problem with spam is not the voting, it's their insidious nature. For example, as soon as you post with popular tags you will get spammed. Look at #photography or #introduceyourself. Even when using bidbots, spammers will target you with memos.
We should have a reputation system based on how many users have muted that other user. This will require oracles and 1 person = 1 vote, but would in my opinion counter a lot of the spam on the chain.
Good idea.
That's a great idea! I would personally love to see this on steemit and I think it's high time something like this is introduced.
Where there are humans, there will always be human behavior. Steemit is no different unfortunately but I agree with you that it has the potential to change and stand out. "It can not be done" is a false statement, yes it can, it just needs the will to be done.
Memos in our wallets and those follow, unfollow junkies who hit those buttons a million times per minute just to get your attention would be history.
The system does allow it and sometimes I ask myself WHY. Is it because it can not be fixed? Nope. People are programming robots to walk, talk and dance. Rejecting any transaction from a blocked account seems simple when compared to that. Is it because people do not want to fix it for any reason? I would bet on this one. Wheater it is the lack of will, interest or just plain support for the spam behavior, when there will be people who can fix it and want to fix it, it will be fixed.
No censorship comes with a price. Its just the way it is. I mean realistically of we were to be honest steemit is already too big if you want quality content. I believe steemit wants to go the social media route and that comes with spam. Otherwise the top investors/whales can leave and only people who want quality content will stay. Steemit would then become niche and I am sure many would be unhappy with the lower price and volume of steem.
...just voted witness for you, I love pirates!
And thanks for your feedback on my work.
For a moment i have been thinking about that also, if this issue isn't traeted appropriately it will scare aware investors and thereby turn the community into a joke. Resteeming right away!
Yes, spam is fundamental issue of this platform and its nothing related to platform we just need some more upgradation of options as you said Blocking System and if it gets introduced then implementation of actions can be done through individual, this means, if people receive any spammy comment they can take the real time action and this way they will not allow that particular spammer in their account and this way we can see clean section of comments.
I've spent 8 months on this platform and as per my analysis every comment which reflects as spam possibly the user is not spammer, they are just holding wrong ideology towards the platform or some lack of communication so it's not mandatory but in my opinion if we see any spam comments let's reply with some guidance or write them as how Steemit works and what actions they should do, this may sound waste of time and energy but who knows possibly that spammer can turn into effective blogger. I am saying this with experience because when I've joined Steemit Platform initially people considered my work as spam and one day i received the guiding comment from that point of time I've changed my work and became professional in my work. It's an collective action to make Steemit Platform productive.
Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
being able to make a blacklist for spam is a good idea.
Being able to
Make a blacklist for spam is
A good idea.
- fictionalfacts
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
Nice!
I am new here but can see that it is very difficult. Many spammers and abusers out of control 😑
AHAHAH I'm such an idiot that when I saw the "camon do something about the abuse" picture, at the beginning I thought it was a big penis and I got excited.
LOL
@steemflagrewards is another initiative to help addressing the overwhelming abuse on this platform. We are community driven and community powered; however, our current level of delegation allows for up to $0.1 ish STU upvote bounties on abuse flagged. Often we notice voting abuse exceeding $10 which requires coordinated flag campaigns.
As for the code level solution, I had been thinking about something of a signature based packet filtering software or device for witnesses. The question is what kind of overhead would this require on already taxed witness servers.
Rejecting transactions from known blacklist users is a good start but perhaps I there were a means to analyze patterns in these transactions would be a step up considering these abusers will often pick up operations on a new account. Rinse and repeat. Etc.