I'm trying to test different methods people are using to grow in steemit and one of the more frequent methods I've seen is starting to beg for follows and upvotes under other peoples posts.
It is very annoying for both sides and specially sounds like a torture on the spammer side but since I've seen it many times, it should yield some result otherwise they would stop after few days.
Now I'm planning to go around and throw the same kind of comments at people to collect some data and calculate and publish the result...
for science...
I commented a meaningful comment on 50 posts with additional begging signature under each comment:
took around 4 hours (minus 15 minutes for eating a piece of cake),
More than a day past and it seems the total attraction through the 50 comments is 9 possibly 10 people.
After waiting a day I commented a meaningful comment on 50 post without any begging. took around 4 hours, we will wait a day or so to see what happens.
More than a day past and the interaction was minimal, visit and comment or upvote on this post from those whom I've left a comment for. and the post views where less.
It seems that asking people to visit our blog actually works, to test it future I'm going to copy/paste the same comment for everyone in the next phase of the test. apologies in advance.
It took me around 40 minutes to copy paste the came comment under 50 posts and record the names.
now let's wait another two days and see if that works any better than the previous method.
the results are in: Despite yesterdays attack, spam + begging directed more attention to this post than the first two method. I got flagged once for spamming but my overall reputation have grown. this shows not enough of people flag the spam comments to create any concern for the spammers.
The sample size was small but it seems that not asking for visit didn't direct any real attention to this post and sadly between a "meaningful comment + begging" and a "spam + begging" the winner was the spam.
Next time you wonder why people spam the answer is: Because spam works.
My suggestion: Flag every spam you come across and when people leave a meaningful comment under your posts check their account and give them some love back.
