Helping To Combat abuse of the BOTS!
One thing I'm learning on Steem, as a new user, is the whole "bot" thing. Having some computer background, I soon realized once I got signed up that some users would attempt to take full advantage of this privilege.
The way bots work, in general, are you sign up for one (or a few) of the different bot services that are offered on the site. Then, you get an upvote every 12 hours or once a day depending on the stipulations of the bot. Well, it appears a few people can't live with just one upvote and are attempting to circumvent the system by creating multiple accounts.
Totally unfair right!??
Well, fear no more!
Our own guardian Steem angel @discordiant has created the Anti Abuse Team as of August 28th. In the first post, it is detailed what exactly "abuse" is:
- Any method that may allow an individual steemit account to repeatedly receive more than a single @minnowsupport upvote inside the 12 hour cool-down.
- Any use of multiple accounts, all receiving their own upvote, but owned by a single individual.
- Repeated use of the bots to upvote spam, plagiarism, or copy/paste content.
@discordiant goes on to also outline how you as a user can help identify this type of abuse by submitting information via the Discord app in the 'msp-abuse' channel. A sort of "tip" line, if you will.
The article explains further what the punishment is for getting caught. Punishment includes bans and being put on a blacklist.
This isn't a tyranical group of Steem moderators though. It is made clear that an investigation will be conducted and the user(s) in question will have a chance to explain. Having conducted thousands of investigations myself and working as a police officer for nearly decade, this seems very fair and reasonable. I'm glad to see this is a thought out and careful process whereby the culprit will have a chance at a defense.
For a full introduction to the Anti-Abuse Team by @discordiant check it out here:
On September 1st, the Anti-Abuse Team hit the ground running by conducting the following "prune".
- 4686 Members before this week's prune was run.
- 30 Day Prune has removed 324 dead accounts.
- This leaves our count at 4362 Members after the prune.
~400 Concurrent users online at 10:30 EST (We believe this will be a better metric for our community going forward.)
@discordiant also found and removed a repeat user who was in the midst of creating a bot army of 19 accounts!
To see the entire list of stats and what to expect in the future head on over to the article written by @discordiant.
Week two was also a busy week as the Anti-Abuse Team judging by the stats they released on September 8th.
- 4604 Members before this week's prune was run. (242 new accounts since last week)
- 30 Day Prune has removed 231 dead accounts. (93 less were removed this Prune)
- This leaves our count at 4373 Members after the prune.
~485 Concurrent users online at 13:30 EST (+21% from previous)
Also reported are 508 Discord bans and 261 Blacklisted. Apparently, the Blacklist is mostly a group of about 70 people who have multiple accounts.
For a complete report see:
Hats off to @discordiant and @steemcleaners for working behind the scenes to keep Steem spick and span!! This group highlights just how valuable the Minnow Support Group (MSP) is to the overall Steem community.
If you'd like more information on the Minnow Support Project or the Peace, Abundance, Liberty network please see this article I wrote a few days ago.
References
"This team of sorts, being led by me, is intended to help return the value to the free upvote available to all members of the Minnow Support Project. We watch for abuse of the bots that might lower the value of the upvotes this service offers for free."
"Starting today, I will be doing a weekly prune of accounts on Discord that have not logged on in 30 days or more, and have not received a Role of any sort. This will help us to keep a better eye on the level of activity the community is seeing. I ran the initial prune last week, removing 888 accounts from the server that were simple dead weight. We will now set a mark in the sand this week with the current stats, and track from there."
"We now have some data to look at in regards to the efforts of the Anti-Abuse Team this past week. We are going to be looking for even more ways to streamline our process and make it easier for all of the Moderators to help with this initiative."
"...dont be afraid to analyse the data and question what is happening on steemit. we need to work together to keep this platform clean and free from scams and rubbish" - @paulag
Thanks for reading. From "The Inquiring Times" #newsteem
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