What is @broombot?
The community needs a free and anonymous way to give feedback to bot owners who have comment bots. What better feedback than downvotes?
@broombot is a joint @steemcleaners and @spaminator project with the help of @nnnarvaez.
I've had this idea percolating in the back of my mind for a while. It's one of those things that I keep turning over and over and contemplating the logical process along with the possible abuse.
I enlisted the help of @nnnarvaez who is a fellow witness and a great guy who is passionate about helping those in his native country of Venezuela, educating them on the use of steemit.com, and stopping abuse.
It's been a rough couple of months getting @broombot in to production for both of us as 'Real Life' has a habit of putting up roadblocks but @broombot is ready to start sweeping!
How do I use @broombot?
@broombot is ready for limited testing by members of the community. If you'd like to register to use @broombot please contact a member of @steemcleaners on Discord.
Registration is required to prevent abuse of @broombot. After speaking to a member of @steemcleaners you will be granted access to the registration channel if you are approved for this beta.
Type ;reg <steemit username> and @broombot will DM you instructions. 0.003 SBD is required to register but it will be returned to you.
After you have successfully registered you can DM broombot links to bot comments you perceive as spam for downvoting! To prevent accidental downvoting by those who think this is an upvote bot the format for your DM should be ;downvote <link>.
Anti-abuse Measures
Registration
Users are required to register with the bot. After @broombot is released into the wild, users will be monitored for abuse. Anyone caught abusing @broombot will be banned. What is abuse? Other than targeting specific bots maliciously we haven’t defined that yet. I’m sure we’ll have more to add in the coming days.
Bot list
There is a predefined list of bots that can be downvoted to prevent it from being used to flag other users. The list excludes opt-in bots for curation groups such as @shadow3scalpel and @utopian-io.
There has been some discussion about opt-out bots. For the time being they will remain on the list.
If you find a bot that is not on the list you can submit me a request to add it. Right now the list is short but in the next 24 hours it will be populated with a number of known bots.
General information about @broombot
Commenting/Posting
Because the @broombot account will be doing the flagging it will not post or comment, ever. This will keep its reputation locked in at 25. The idea is to give feedback - not kill account reputations.
All posts and comments related will be done by @raguel. The next phase of development is to provide bot owners with a weekly report in the form of a comment on their latest post.
@botowner X members of the community have requested @broombot to flag X number of comments as spam. You were flagged by @broombot x number of times in the last 7 days.
Multiple members of the community can request the same comment to be flagged. Currently there is only one flag account - @broombot.
Flag Weight
Currently the account has 780 SP and the flag weight is set to 1%. This will be adjusted in the future. My goal is to have the weight just heavy enough to remove payout and hide the comment.
Delegations
Anyone wishing to help sweep up the bot spam comments can delegate to @broombot! @broombot will never upvote.
Wonderful, yet another bot running around wild.
This is a great move! Is delegation to the bot a thing you are interested in? Or would too big of a flag be detrimental?
The account @broombot will not post or comment to keep the reputation at 25, unless the bot already has a poor reputation in the community flagging shouldn't do anything but remove payout and hide the comment. I'm sure discovery of new bots will take a bit so they won't be added when they are new 25 rep accounts.
Hello Patrice,
Great project. We have not crossed paths quite yet but I have seen much of your work and have been involved in some "environmental engineering" on steemit.
I have always felt that the comment bots were spammers. YEA!
Who is @raguel? Is @raguel just a secondary acct for @broombot?
Thanks for all the great work you do on steemit.
@raguel is just a secondary account I repurposed. I have too many already and figured that an account named after the Angel of Justice wasn't too far off the mark.
There are useful bot comments and I think that novelty bots can be fun. The sheer amount of resteem, vote, and other bots is just crazy. Most bot owners should put in an "opt-out".
Thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately I don't get "out" much. Abuse keeps me pretty busy.
I just appreciate you <3
I didn't even have to read this to know I was going to upvote it. Plus it was resteemed on my feed by @sircork, and he's got his strong opinions about what's good and what isn't. He wouldn't resteem for nuthin'.
That being said, I read it, and it's fabulous! I'm excited to see what you guys come up with and how this pans out!
Thank you! I remember you from when I first started. I'm glad to see you are still here.
Aww. How nostalgic! I actually took a break for like 6 months. I was overwhelmed with stuff and studying for the LSAT, and...excuses excuses. I'm back for good. No leaving again! Good to see you still going at it too! Did you hear about the new comment "broombot"?
Kenapa anjingmu downvote akun @munawirawin
sounds cool and another way to clean up the crap on the comment string of automated bs :)
What if a double-owner account is found, will the broombot take action? And, if there is an account that insults skin color, insults a particular religion, will it take action by broombot?
@broombot is for the community to flag bot comments currently considered "service" or "advertising" comments by @steemcleaners & spaminator.
I don't have the time or the SP to get involved with insults or disputes. None of which is part of @spaminator, steemcleaners, or @mack-bots scope.
By "double-owner" account you mean a single person that signs up or gains control of 50 or so accounts delegated to by the @steem faucet, then that is something for @spaminator.
Thanks for the explanation @patrice
Welcome back @patrice, where were you been these days?
I've actually been busy. Phishing, spammers, &scammers never seems to stop. I haven't made time to post as often as I should! I will have some new posts coming soon though. That are not about abuse for once!
Yeah
Lol.. Great work you doing @patrice
Is the list of bots that can be downvoted available publicly anywhere?
Not currently and I hesitate to make that available as it may result in targeting specific bots or people that just start going down the list. I want users to organically find comments and submit them. If the bot isn't on the list then the person will get feedback and asked to contact @steemcleaners. We can look and add the bot.
Do you have a whitelist?
A whitelist, a black one... the works...
My current whitelist so far is very short and I'm still working on discovery and adding to the bot.
We're also working on guidelines for whitelisting. Currently the only whitelisted bots will be curation or project opt-in bots.
Great announcement and much needed thing on the platform!
do you have a whitelist.
upvote resteem done
No, @patrice does not have whitelist. She only whitelists people that she personally likes. If you are not a personal friend of her, tough luck.
Great project! Good luck with it, I do hope that it will have a positive impact!
I've recently seen a few well-intentioned bots that have run into some embarrassing real-world bugs. I like that this will give us a respected channel for giving feedback.
Wonderful idea . it's a valuable information sir .awesome post
Thank you for sharing your post.
Sir you should work in newspapers and magazines.such a good writer you are.i really like your posts.reading the post feel me amazing sir.
Good information.....
Well job......
This seems like a great initiative; I'm impressed that you can find the time for this, on top of running a witness and all the other things you do!
All the best to you, and thanks for what you do to help keep the community "clean!"
Thanks a lot a for valuable news sharing
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Standard update
sounds good, some bots are annoying
That is a very good idea. I hope it's working well and people are using it.
I got a message from you. What's up @patrice ?
Kenapa anjingmu downvote akun @munawirawin
Hello, my blog, stepped on by your robot mack-bot, see my reply, please help deal with it, thank you very much.
just remove @maahes from your fascist @mack-bot list you fucking nazi
you're messing with my fucking money i put into it AND a year of programming , take your filth elsewhere
over all my accounts, the time and shit put into it can be wrecked by one fascist fuck like you
you're also wrecking the people who vote on it to win some small amount
THIS IS BUSINESS YOU RETARD, THEYRE GONNA START ADVERTISING AND YOU RUN AROUND LIKE YOU OWN THE PLACE
downvote me to censor me until my rep is back to 25 I DONT GIVE A SHIT
i'll never give in to fascist enforcement like your little protection racket
YOU ARE THE FUCKING FILTH OF STEEM
STAY AWAY FROM ME all my posts are published under the steemcleaners are not allowed to touch it license go fuck yourself, and if other people apologize because you smack them im afraid thats not how the world works
@patrice please help me your bot @spaminator is downvoting my id and ruin all my pending money may b i broken rule of steem spaminator already eaten my 260$ right now please please help me i am so worried
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why do you like my account? Please explain?
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