Will bots take over Steemit?
I'm going to keep this post short and to the point!
I'm starting to get quite concerned about some of the trends I'm seeing on Steemit. While daily post growth is not a bad thing, the growth of bots blanket bombing the commentary section of posts is a very bad development for Steemit. However, it is one I see as inevitable and getting worse.
Bots can serve a very valuable purpose such as combating plagiarism but they can also be used to spread spam like a virus across the Platform.
Every second spent looking at spam is air time being taken away from others who have spent time, skill and effort writing posts.
Spam is poison for Steemit but what can we do?
What is to stop bots creating spam posts every minute and flooding this great platform with even more poison.
Is the answer limiting the number of posts and comments per user account.
I don't think downvoting will solve this problem. People will always come up with creative ways of abusing the system. We need to anticipate the next move and take corrective action.
I admit I don't have a clear solution but I would like to support line of discussion around this potentially huge problem.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Yeah, this is a tough solution, because like you said, bots can be a good thing until people abuse it for spam. Maybe there needs to be a different verification/signup process for bots going forward. Or, if there are the same comments being posted by a certain account that has been flagged by spam, that account needs to be suspended for 3 days. If the same account has multiple offenses, it will be suspended indefinitely.
@bitgeek I agree 100%, though I think that there needs to be some strong signals from devs/mgmt team to assure that Steemit isnt becoming SkyNet.
Until then, curating the good ol' fashioned way will save the day.
This is a real problem and difficult to solve. But somehow we are responsible for this? Why just can't we support each other? Why do some people think that spamming is so "cool"? I mean do they not feel bored? Or is it just a computer that's spamming all the time? And somehow I personally feel that each blogger should have kind of the control on what other people are writing as a comment like "mark as Spam", yes I know that it's not fair and everyone should have an opinion, yes I get that, that's not the point! but how can you stop it?
I agree with your sentiment that we should support each other, but how to know who is a bot and who isn't if they are newbies/minnows? Maybe we have to start following bot-complaint threads to find real people to follow (not in a stalky way, don't worry) :P.
haha :D yeah, maybe... it's so hard to tell who's behind the profile if you don't know them...
I agree x100000000000 @bitgeek. Content creation is going to be stymied by this. I have had maybe 3 comments actually reference work in my corresponding blog post. There is so much potential in this platform. There needs to be a fix and soon. Godspeed brother.
I also just re-steemed this. Let's get the conversation started.
@bitgeek @rossknows Same here. I think it´s a huge problem. I like to share my knowledge with you guys and try to create some awesome content, but it´s getting really worse here on Steemit. Somebody should or let´s say must do something otherwise it will be just SPAM after a while...
Is there something that we could do as content creators?
I got similar concern bro, alot of botty messages on most posts.
Skynet is coming.....
That's a real problemm wish they solve it
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Bot rocks
Interesting. I do utilize various bots here, they definitely have their uses. A lot of the ones since the latest hard fork are designed to give some of the reward back the community without all the whales upvoting certain posts. It gives everyone a shot at getting more exposure, etc . . .
But . . I see what you mean. It must be coded in to auto-comment on every post that uses the bot. I'm talking in particular about randowhale, booster, minnowsupport, minnowbooster etc . .
I do agree that the bots that scour for copy/paste stuff are useful in their commenting . . but I'm guessing that the auto-comments by the booster type bots are there for a kind of advertisement. And they can get a little crowded in the comments section . .
I'm still pretty new here, so I really don't have a historical context to go on. Were bots used this much in the past? I just don't know. I think that a bunch of things are being tried out right now, and hf19 caused some changes to the system, so the bots (I think) are designed with that in mind.