What is “comment-spam”? It is multiple short posts by the same user across multiple blogs with words like “Great post” , or “interesting”, or “awesome” or “Very useful information, I upvoted and followed you. Please follow back”
These kinds of posts add nothing to the debate on the topic, don’t demontrate the the person read the blog, and are irritating, because users have to sift through all the garbage to get tothe ineresting comments and discussion.
What is the motive for this kind of behaviour? The main motivation is to milk the steemit reward pool, by hoping for upvotes, and curation power.
Who is targeted? Some spammers focus on newbies, because newbies get little attention, are inexperienced, and likely to upvote any comment. Other spammers focus on the most popular bloggers with high steem power, hoping that an upvote could be worth several dollars. Of course, the whales can see the game being played, and rarely upvote spammers and sometimes flag them.
If you have read my post so far, and want to comment intelligently, please include the magic word “hodl”, and I will be sure to upvote you. Meaningful comments only please.
Am I alone in warning people about comment spam? Please join me in helping keep Steemit clean of rubbish comments, by warning suspected spammers.
Here is an example of the warning I give:
Often I will get a favourable reaction to my warning (and a follower!). Here is an example of a reaction I received today:
“Thank you so much @swissclive, I really sorry for this. This is a valuable lesson for me, In the future I promise to will not make a mistake like this again.
Forgive me and i'm so sorry. Thank you”
Sometimes, the spammer ignores my comment. Then more drastic action is needed. If he repeats his bad behaviour, I will flag him. Only then do I sometimes get a reaction and apology. When flagging, I usually explain why I am doing it as follows:
Retaliation
When you flag someone, there is always a risk of tit-for-tat retaliation. However it has never happened. The spammers know they are in the wrong, and that I could easily rally others to flag them down.
Questions to all bloggers
- What do you think of comment-spam?
- Is a comment like “Awesome post” acceptable on your own blog, even if the commentator wrote the same thing to everyone?
- Do you warn comment-spammers? If not, why not?
- Do you think flagging is the correct way to deal with a spammer who ignores a warning about it?
- Is there any point in warning?
- Should new users receive guidance before they screw up?
I've noticed that you are upvoting all of your notification to substantial amount, it almost had me flag all of them.
(@sadkitten)
I get that you are providing a service, but maybe at least use 10% of that upvote strength on yourself to flag and hide the BS you're complaining about.
Hi @transisto, Happy to listen your views, but I don’t really understand what you mean here. It sounds like disapprove of something I do, but I am not sure what you mean.
Why do you call on sadkitten which is a down-voting bot? Why have you decided to use a bot to downvote this post? Sadkitten is for those who have been wrongly abused. It’s not for downvoting those you disagree with.
I saw dozens of your notification being self-upvoted on the last day.
I guess that's not "abuse" since you are providing a "valuable" service. But there is no limit to how many of these notificaitons you can send while the most efficient way to curb spam abuse it to use the downvote.
I'm letting you know that you've been in the radar of @sadkitten,
Hint: https://steemd.com/tx/283a182f331d3f7f91359dce779b47fd6ad4e941
Ok, I see the point. (You think it was wrong to upvote my own post?).
Since I am not good at Steemd, it would be helpful if you can identify who or what caused sadkitten to be interested in me. I noticed it downvoted a number of my posts for no particular reason. Thanks in advance for your help.
The problem with downvoting is A. it starts flag wars and B. it punishes people that YOU disagree with (opinion) and C. when good/committed/interested steemit users get downvoted (hurting their reputations and earnings) it turns them away from using steemit and that's a deal killer for mass adoption.
Oh, I get so annoyed by those thoughtless comments. I don't appreciate them because the person isn't writing to engage with me--they probably didn't even read my post--they just want me to follow them and, probably, make a buck or two off of my vote. If it's something as inane as "awesome post" I usually just give as mindless a "thanks." But if they tell me to follow them, then they get a longer comment telling them that I don't do follow begging, and I often flag it if I find that they're doing the same comment to lots of other folks. I have no idea if my warnings mean anything, but I really value authenticity, and can't stand the fakeness of those comments!
My reply is this. I do not follow you. I will not follow you. Please stay away from me. If I could keep people from Resteeming you into my stream I would.
Your attitude in your post is ungrateful and egotistical, and you are uninformed.
The upvote is not a like button. Some people actually have nothing more to say when they see a post. (I'm obviously not one of them) And every post is not a debate.
Because you have a tit for tat attitude, your life will be very limited.
And I am surely wasting my time. But please stay away from me. And I'll return the favor by staying away from you.
And I'm angry because insipid behavior over little comments that is also greedy and demanding is not what I want new and timid users to encounter. Well aside from the fact that greedy, demanding behavior alone makes me see red.
I agree with you regarding that spam with short comments because most do not read the article, thanks for sharing good information friend @swissclive. "hold". Saludos
hodl!! lol for me I see most of them trying to gain more followers, as for comment spam they dont bother me much because they always go to the bottom of the pile as I vote on real comments, if they say the exact same on every post its definitely not exceptable. In my opinion there is definitely a point to warning as some people generally dont understand the mistakes they are doing and need to be told, so I think guidance first @swissclive
When I started at Steemit I did not use that method of saying follow me, it seems ridiculous and of little benefit. it has happened to me that they have sent me messages of those but I have failed to correct that user. I'll put into practice.
I find this interesting...especially because I've seen other posters complain when people just up vote without leaving a comment...I admit though that I have typed "great post" or "interesting post" on a few posts in the first couple weeks after I joined steemit, but that's in the past, and it was only when I didn't understand the subject matter enough to be part of the conversation...like cryptocurrency...that stuff just flies right over my head.
Not everyone is comfortable commenting on subjects they aren't well versed in and they may not mean to spam, so I'm glad you give them a little educational warning before you down vote them. :D
I've got a question for you though...what is “hodl”? I've never heard that term before. :D
Hodl = Hold on for Dear Life. It's a term which means you shouldn't sell because the price is going higher. You find it mostly applied to bitcoin. There are plenty of people who are trying not to sell because they know that demand for bitcoin is increasing all the time, but its very hard not to sell when you already have such a large profit.
Cool, thanks for taking the time to answer. :D I can honestly say that that's the first time I've heard of Hodl, but it seems so obvious, now that you told me what it stands for, LOL. :D I try to learn something new every day, no matter how big or small it is, so this another wonderful day because I just learned something new. :D Have an awesome day! :D
So bad that now you will have to search for the hold in each comment you receive... I understand your frustration, if I could say so. I also tend to post a lot of comments, but I always do so after reading the post, and making sure I understand it, not to look stupid, or annoy the people who are reading my comments. I guess that the spammers should be ignored if they are not so intrusive, this will discourage them, and if they are pretty persistent then you could think about flagging
I get annoyed with such comments.
I comment when I believe I have a good and thought-filled reply. I like open-ended comments that bring others into the conversation. I usually refer to these "spammers' comments" as a drive-by. Not worthy of even recognizing.
When I receive "spam" comments I tend to veer on the side of ignoring them.
..i prefer to comment on question #6,the newbies should have a proper guidance on how to post comments and we should read the content carefully for us to really express our points of view about the authors blog @swissclive
The comment spam is fairly annoying and usually I don't warn them or flag it because I don't want it to cause a flagging war or something.
I just don't upvote it and don't respond usually.
Understood. A warning as per my example seems to often work. Even when I flag, I haven’t had flag wars yet. If you have a high score (67), their flag could not harm you.
" If you have a high score (67), their flag could not harm you."
That is incorrect. If they have enough SP and a rock bottom Rep, they can still rape your account.
Thanks very much for that! I did not know. I thought it was all about the score. That’s another reason to try and build up steem power.
If you come across a link which covers the point let me know. I would like to read more detail.
In the meantime, I and others would do well to double check steempower if we are contemplating a flag.
Yeah, that's part of the system functionality I don't like. "I better make sure this guy I'm going to downvote can't harm my account in retaliation. But if he can't I'll totally downvote him!"