As Steemit grows we are seeing more 'junk' posts and comments. I understand people are desperate to earn something, but if they are annoying then they will not get much support. Begging for follows may gain you some, but then those people may never vote on or even look at your posts. The way forward is to really engage with people so they want to keep on coming back to have conversations.
We're now seeing spam messages in memos on transfers. They send you 0.001 Steem with a link or something. Those I can ignore and I'll take their money. You cannot flag those anyway.
Steemit has no central moderation to deal with this. It's up to users to take action. You could just mute them, but that doesn't help anyone else. I know some people hate any flagging, but it's a form of moderation like voting. You can move comments to the bottom of the page with a 1% flag or use more to undo anything they earn on it, which may be from self-voting anyway.
There's also a lot of plagiarism going on. Just copying an article or post is not adding value to Steemit. Even if you include a link you are still copying. It's better to post the link and add your own commentary on why it is interesting.
So, for Follow Friday I want to highlght some of those who are helping to deal with these issues.
- @sherlockholmes is a new account that is investigating various abuse including impersonation. The Steemit blockchain lets you track where any rewards are being transferred, so it's possible to work out links between accounts. There's a whole new field of forensics there.
- @stellabelle has been here from the beginning and is also fed up with the abuse of the system. She has declared war on spam and I'll fight alongside here.
- @playfulfoodie is also fed up with plagiarism. Those who take a stand may get some abuse in return, but we have to stand up for what we want Steemit to be.
- @cheetah is a bot that detects and highlights plagiarism. If I see a post with a cheetah comment I will do my own checks to see if the account looks legitimate. Some are complaining about such bots getting rewards, but they perform a valuable service.
- @steemcleaners also works to deal with abuse
- @spaminator recently joined the cause
I know there are many others involved in efforts to make Steemit a better place to be. It's still relatively small, so we have a chance to establish a tradition of good behaviour so that new users will quickly learn what is acceptable. Of course we want freedom here, but things like spam should be no more acceptable than vandalism.
Please let us know of others who are helping to deal with these issues.
Steem on and Steem free!
I'll buy guitar picks for Steem Dollars
If this post is over seven days old you can vote up one of my newer posts to reward me.