Is this spam? - Excessive duplicate posts funded with upvote bots
Just Two Posts - A Few Dozen Times
I recently stumbled upon the @jordan1219444 account and had some questions.
The obvious thing about this account is that it makes the exact same two posts over and over.
One post asks you to follow and a reply with a link to one of your posts that this account would resteem, and as far as I can tell these really are being resteemed.
And then I'll just quote the second post.
I'm helping my friend jesse who got me into tree planting about 6 years ago he cant afford the gear and bus ticket he needs to get there this year.
Now, I understand the value of using Steem as a platform for fundraising like this and I think it could be very effective. Yet, posting the exact same message again and again certainly dilutes your appeal. And frankly, makes this look more like a scam than a legitimate way to earn money for a friend.
Here's Some Cash
This account was soon funded with some STEEM and SBD.
| date | from | to | amount | type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2/22/2018 | blocktrades | jordan1219444 | 1.768 | SBD |
| 2/24/2018 | blocktrades | jordan1219444 | 3.646 | SBD |
| 3/2/2018 | blocktrades | jordan1219444 | 0.895 | SBD |
| 3/2/2018 | blocktrades | jordan1219444 | 14.108 | SBD |
| 3/7/2018 | blocktrades | jordan1219444 | 1.006 | STEEM |
| 3/14/2018 | blocktrades | jordan1219444 | 1.027 | STEEM |
A little more than 20 SBD and just a couple STEEM. For what purpose?
Upvote Bots Get on Board
This account quickly began using a variety of upvote bots on these posts. It appears this account was carefully testing the ROI of the many upvote bots and found some results. Today, @jordan1219444 exclusively uses @minnowbooster and @smartmarket / @smartsteem for promoting these posts.
This looks like a purely profit driven scheme leveraging the upvote bots not only for ROI, but to get more exposure to this fundraising message, which has certainly earned many additional upvotes to support the obvious message of need.
How Much Money?
Quite a bit. Here's the current outstanding posts that have not yet paid out, oldest first.
| post | rewards | |
|---|---|---|
| crowdfund | $1.65 | |
| resteem | $22.32 | |
| crowdfund | $6.16 | |
| crowdfund | $10.79 | |
| resteem | $17.19 | |
| crowdfund | $8.40 | |
| resteem | $10.27 | |
| crowdfund | $18.86 | |
| $95.64 | Total |
Is it Real?
The strange part is I think the story being told may all be true. This account only posts these duplicates, but there is a fair amount of 'human' comments. Even if this account is real, this is abuse of the blockchain simply by virtue of posting the exact same stuff.
@jordan1219444 if you see this post, please reply with your thoughts. More than anything, if you really are running a tree planting service at the scale you're talking about, there has to be at least one news article or something talking about your work, so please point us in that direction to validate your claims. Or beyond that, offer more pictures, including recent updates and basically evidence that supports the things you are saying. Short of that, I must admit this appears far closer to the realm of spam or scam than a legitimate fund raising effort.
Community Feedback
Real or not, is this sort of behavior okay? I'm all for fundraising and supporting causes just like these duplicate posts describe, but be real about it. Make a post, get some votes, then write a new post with updates and pictures of your friend. It's all pretty simple and this is either laziness or perhaps even deceit.
I'm curious to know your thoughts on this account. Giving the benefit of the doubt, if this is all true, do you still support this approach? And if not, what's an appropriate response from the community?
Some spam is blatant and obvious and this is unfortunately neither. I'm curious to hear your thoughts and understand how the community feels about this behavior.
got a job so got busy and was the same people upvoting so stopped changing the pictures and yes i use upvote bots this entire accounts sole purpose was to fund the tree planting as you can see i just powered down if you go wayyyyy back you can see alot more pictures i was changing the posts alot at first then lost the time
Letting the community know that @jordan1219444 has downvoted all of my unpaid posts!
If you want to raise money, connect with the community, find a curation guild that believes in your work, write legitimate posts, and actually try.
It is your job to do the work to prove you're not a scam.
Please start trying, I'm not just going to disappear.
i dont care whether you dissapear or not your doing the same thing i am doing do you know how easy it is to call out a spammer or someone 80% of steem does it you just find sum1 to target then go after upvotes or pay upvote bots to do it for you
not to mention you do about 100 comments an hour eating up the bandwidth for minnows
I have talked about bandwidth and that is always at the forefront of my mind. This account already stopped posting and I did not plan to continue commenting at this rate indefinitely.
And you've downvoted seven of my posts/comments at this point. Why?
Just today, another account was downvoting and speaking out against me) and I asked the community for validation and their support was enough that this account not only removed the downvote, but even shared an upvote.
Would you consider removing your downvotes? To make it easy here are the posts.
If you look to the blockchain you'll see countless examples of me responding directly to criticism and working to find a path toward peace. I hope that is an option with you as well. If you have any lingering doubts, criticisms, or other thoughts please share them with me as I would rather work toward finding common ground.
you also comment this on the tamole guys comments Click the flag to downvote this @tomole444 comment and I will upvote your last unpaid post and then never upvote people who flag him
False, here's the most recent downvote and my upvote following right behind.
My script does miss some, but I check for those and manually vote once a day.
You were very nice to him. I suggest you connect with others, maybe @patrice, to further encourage him.
If anyone would know, it would be @sdr-7. (Thankfully they've divested that SP otherwise I'd be down voted into oblivion by now.)
This was a painful reminder of that account. False charity projects may be a new spam area to pursue.
I don't see much interaction, if any. It screams scam. I guess we are allowing people to post the same article over and over now? I don't care how it started out, it is a flagger now.
It's hard to see these posts any other way.
Interesting initiative... but I believe we have a much worse problem to solve: the spammers who are also scammers.
These guys are not only spamming, but also phishing for passwords... and stealing new users' accounts:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@trincowski/new-steemians-beware-scams-are-everywhere-don-t-fall-for-this-one
Next to these criminals, those "follow me" spammers you are wasting your time with... are mostly harmless.
There really is too much of this stuff on the blockchain so I'm hoping to make a real impact.
Yes, there is... and I hate to see new users losing their accounts to these scammers. Then they need to start all over again... and we all know how difficult this site is for beginners.