I'am only on Steemit for a very short period of time but I already have a feeling that there are bots are getting out of control on posts. Let's stop the spam and make Steemit great (again).
If you look at the following screenshot you will see your average /introduceyourself post. There is up to 5 different bots posting random spam comments on the fresh posts.
You see the users @wang , @calva , @steemster3 & @weenis commented on the post. When i wrote my introducton I was happy about people welcoming me. But I was wondering how they can reply almost instantly. Did they even read my post? The only helpful user/bot seems to be @wang his post did actually help me getting started here. But the others are pure spam and you see them on other posts as well. I also saw other bots that I didnt mention like @xem for example who also tried spamming comments.
How can we stop this from happening? Here are a few suggestions:
bots need to be approved by the team or community, not everyone should be allowed to spam the community as they wish
restrict the amount of posts / upvotes a certain user can give in a certain time - this can be based on reputation so that helpful users like @wang can stay on board and we dont end up censoring users
may enable a way to mute a certain user globally for a period of time after he received enough downvotes from too many users
But it doesn't stop there, we also have real users that are spamming. On every other good post you see people promoting their own content. I get it. It is hard to get noticed due to the amount of people using this platform - and it is just at its beginning. But this should better be fixed now then when it is too late. You find a lot of posts like this:
People are promoting themself on unrelevant topics. Hunting for the profit. I get it. People want money, who doesn't. But that is not how it works. THE CONTENT PROMOTES ITSELF There is no need for excessive spam. Look at other Steemers like @piedpiper. If you check his history of posts you will see that he made a lot of posts that didn't earn any money. And ALL of his latest posts made money in the range of 30-6000 USD. What I'am saying is: don't try too hard. Deliver content for the content and not for the money in the first place. And eventually things will become alright. Here are a few suggestions of limitations that would prevent this kind of spam from taking overhand:
don't let people refer to their own posts on external posts more than.. say 3 times a day
don't let people post the same link multiple times if it has been upvoted beforehand on another blog
mute certain people globally for a period of time if the behaviour of spam continues
I love new content and I think bots can be really helpful. But this shouldn't get out of control - and it might if we don't start fixing it now. #makesteemitgreatagain
