The demise of the Spam Army

I know that there have been a significant number of people missing from the comments sections the last couple of days due to the issues on platform with RCs but, so has all of the spam comments also. Pretty nice really as whatever comments I received were almost guaranteed to be related to the topic and well thought out. Since people had to think a little more about their resources, they were more discerning about what they actually posted as a comment. I am not sure how this will change with the 10x RC multiplier but, let's see.

When people talk about poor engagement and quote the 'statistics like average comments per post, they never factor in other aspects. For example, did you know that there is a group of 10 spam accounts that produce about 10% of all posts each day? 240 posts each and they are not the only ones. Out of ~24,000 posts daily under normal conditions, it is a significant amount and means that it changes the average comments per post.

What about the bidbot comments? Most bidbots send an automated comment to the voted post but they only vote on ~0.7% of all posts on the platform. That is a lot of comments though that land on very few posts as many buyers buy more than one and stack them. By the way, they are now operational again which means the organic Trending page is going to again turn into the promoted tab. yay.

What is interesting is that while the spammers were unable to post and the bidbots weren't voting, those couple days meant that a lot of the engagement on the platform was organic engagement. Yes, many redfish and those with low active SP are missing however, it is still an opportunity that hasn't existed for a while where we could potentially see some interesting things on the platform through the way people were able to engage if some of the blockchain divers wants to take the time.

We can make some assumptions that all posts during that time were organic and all comments too. Although this might not be strictly true, it is close enough. We could see the average count of comments per post during this time and how it compared to others and, the averagecharacter count of those comments which could indicate more thoughtful engagements and 'space saving' due to RC depletion.

What will this tell us? I don't really know exactly but I do think those 2 or 3 days while the bots were down and people were recharging could give some clues to some rules of engagement and what kinds of accounts are interacting well and which aren't.

At least what I noticed on my own blog was that those with some access but who had to think about how they used it wrote more than normal, so did those who had freedom to do what they wanted. There were a lot less 5 word comments. Not that size matters but in general, every comment I got I would be more than happy to upvote as they all were on point and added to the conversations at hand. There was so little irrelevancy in what people spoke about it was amazing. This was observational of course and I tend to get decent comments on my posts but the last days, no spam. none.

Without the automated noise of the system we could get a different view of the platform and despite the circumstances that it was achieved, we might be able to learn some lessons other than, how not to do a hardfork. Perhaps seeing this more organic view would help people better understand what is necessary to be successful on the platform considering, the ones that could comment are also likely the ones who have been able to get to a point they don't have as much resource problems. It could also tell about what kind of engagement levels are required to really be part of the community as the people who were commenting are the ones who are also the most active across the platform on any given day.

I don't know if it will be useful at all, but it seems like an opportunity too good to waste. Especially, considering the unintentional suffering that ran alongside it. I have some other things I find interesting that might come up over the next days but, I will wait to see if they pan out the way I think they might. I have mentioned to some people in chats though to keep my predictions somewhat accountable.

Before I go though, hhere is a shoutout to @nonameslefttouse who ran his own experiment on a spammer which you can read the results of here. Engagement on the platform can work in mysterious ways :)

I don't know about you, but for those who could engage and post over the last few days, did you miss the spam?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

Now, my daughter has finished dinner so it is time to sing. Back later.