[Content Cop] How to Tackle the Abusers

This is a follow-up to a post from yesterday, so if you missed that you can catch up here.

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What’s happened?

If you read my last post, you’ll know that a certain user is well, let’s be honest, being a big baby about the fact that they’ve been called out on their crap. If I had my way, they’d be stripped of their accounts and perma-banned from the platform, but I do tend to overreact sometimes.

This post is going to detail the exact behaviour and patterns of this one bad apple in the barrel, but as we all know it only takes one apple to ruin the whole crop. I’m also going to talk about what we can all do to help keep Steemit usable and respectable.

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What started this?

I’ve been looking into the copy-and-paste posts and straight up plagiarism that appears to becoming more prevalent here on Steemit. I was surprised to find out that many of those who are posting these less-than-quality posts are just new users who need a little guidance, and I don’t think anyone here can judge them for that.

There are however, a few who know exactly what they are doing and lash out when other users call them out on their bullshit. This all began a month ago, when I spotted a user claiming to be under attack from @abusereports. I was prepared to assist them if they were being unfairly targeted, but they were just employing one of many crappy tactics to try and get around these invaluable services that safeguard Steemit from the waves of scammers and plagiarists.

I left them a comment explaining why they had been blacklisted, that they couldn’t claim others work as their own, and certainly couldn’t get paid for it. They’ve never responded to me with words, but they have set up four dummy accounts since then aimed at attacking @abusereports and any who oppose them. I say attack, it’s really nothing more than a child throwing a tantrum, as they have no Steem Power to speak of.

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Who’s responsible?

The user responsible for this hissy fit uses two accounts for spamming Steemit with their stolen crap, @camillesteemer and @mybestnews. They also have four other accounts that they have since set up to flag other users, which are all listed below. I’m sure they think they’re being very clever, but sadly they’ve left a bit of an obvious trail behind them as they’ve gone around flagging. All of the “anti-troll” accounts use the same justpaste document that outlines their righteous mission. Their main account, @camillesteemer, uses a similar but slightly altered version of this same document, and the link used on their @mybestnews account possibly has some malware embedded as Metamask refused to let me view it, so it’s probably best not to open that particular link unless proper precautions have been taken. It’s so painfully obvious that all six accounts are one and the same really, from the writing style to the infantile use of gifs. Their dummy accounts also resteem their posts from the two main accounts, usually with other resteemed posts either side to try to camouflage their own.

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What can be done?

For this one example, nothing needs to be done as they are already blacklisted and unable to make any money from Steemit now thanks to the efforts of a few services and individual users. While watching the behaviour of this user however, I noticed a few other things which I think could be ripe for abuse or just plain troublesome.

Buying Accounts

The biggest issue here, in my eyes anyway, is the way this person has been able to just keep setting up new dummy accounts. If someone with enough Steem Power did this, they could delegate to each of the new accounts and genuinely cause financial or reputation hits.

You can buy a new account from Blocktrades for as little as 8SBD, which seems too cheap to me. There are legitimate cases for people wanting to buy extra accounts, for example when starting up a new curation or anti-plagiarism service. If I was that way inclined, right now I could create three dummy accounts and delegate 50SP to each of them, giving them enough SP to start false flagging smaller accounts. As far as I can tell, there is little way of preventing or combating this kind of abuse on Steemit, although please let me know in the comments if I’ve just missed something.

With @camillesteemer, my guess would be that they are just setting up new accounts with throwaway email and phone numbers as they just don’t have the funds to buy this number of accounts. All you need to do that is a temp email which are easily available, and it turns out there are sites offering throwaway numbers for verifying accounts and so on. With these two tools, anyone can just create endless accounts potentially flooding Steemit with them, and that could genuinely bring about the downfall of this experiment. I’d hate to see that happen. This is another area where, in my opinion, Steemit need to get involved.

The Use of Chatbots

Another characteristic of these crap posts is the use of chatbots to make it appear that their posts have active discussions. Thanks to the dust rule, these accounts hopefully aren’t earning much from spamming the blockchain, but I think more needs to be done to stop these accounts from dragging Steemit down. They have a real potential for misuse, and I don’t really see any need or use for them. I understand and appreciate the original creators intent with these projects, but with the nature of blockchain technology in mind, there’s no place for them on Steemit in my view.

Going forward, I’ll be viewing the use of these chatbots by content creators as a warning sign that they are potentially abusing the system. Below are the main bots used by @camillesteemer.

Inertia

https://steemit.com/@catfacts
https://steemit.com/@banjo

Stefan

https://steemit.com/@witzbot

Anti-Plagiarism Services

I was contemplating starting my own anti-plagiarism service, but upon review there are already so many good and forever improving services available such as the thunderous @thundercurator, who I recommend you look into if you aren’t using them already. It’s a service I completely agree with, and they have recently announced that they are stepping up their anti-plagiarism efforts to help combat this trend.

Content Cops Communities

I think there’s a simple solution to this apparent problem, and that is that we all start actively engaging with the users posting these copy-and-paste or potentially plagiarised content, and pointing them in the right direction so that they don’t make the same mistakes again. It’s not that we need to police content, but band together as a community and help each other.

I think we can all agree that Steemit Inc. aren’t an awful lot of help right now, but there are so many amazing users on this platform who put together guides and tutorials, as well as just creating some amazing original content. If we guide the newer users towards the wealth of knowledge that already exists, that just sometimes it’s a bit fragmented across the platform and can be hard to find for a newbie.

@jerrybanfield has an amazing guide which he updates regularly, but I have seen some new users complain that it’s just too much information to take in, and so I’ll be finishing my Beginner’s Guide over the next day or two, as well as revising the parts that are already up, to try and make the learning process a little bit easier. If you speak a language other than English, feel free to translate it into your own language (just make sure to tag me at the bottom!).

There are many communities on Steemit already, but they can come across as very much like the high-school cliques at times. As side from more clearer guidelines from Steemit themselves, we can all look after our own little neighbourhoods on Steemit, and encourage new users to be creative. Part of that involves the more experienced users setting good examples too, which most do. My first few posts were lacking to say the least, but over time I got the hang of things thanks to a few amazing users, so I can’t forget that and need to make sure I do the same for others. That’s what a community is.

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In Conclusion

I guess the most important thing is just keep posting your own original content, and quality is far more important than quantity. This is something I’ve needed to remind myself, so I’ll be posting less frequently, but hopefully what I do post will be better and more enjoyable for you guys. I'm also going to stop using bid bots with the exception of @thundercurator (for the above reasons), and @treeplanter because they are both services that I can feel good about endorsing and using.

I almost admire the dedication and commitment that @camillesteemer is showing in their ongoing temper tantrum. If only they took the time and effort and created something new, instead of just lashing out like a spoilt kid who isn’t getting their own way.

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What do you think about all this? Do you have any ideas on how to help the waves of new users coming in? I really would like to hear your thoughts about any of the points raised in this post, especially regarding post quality here on Steemit and how to better deal with it. As always, make sure to follow me for the latest Cryptocurrency, Technology, Internet and Pop Culture updates. If you're a fan of strange YouTube videos, you might want to follow me on Twitter. Thank you so much for reading this, seriously. Take it easy!

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