Now. I love Steemit. I love the block chain, social-media-platform that it brings to the cryptocurrency world. I love that it's built on support for others opinions, stories, going's on, interests, hobbies, etc. I love that other's support for you, or agreement with your opinion rewards you and I love that it's a civilians way into the cryptocurrency world.
What I absolutely loathe... are bots. Now, not all bots are bad.
Take Baymax, for example.
He's caring and kind and lovely. And his actions come from a good place.
But, it seems to me that there's BAD BOTS on Steemit.
These buggers look like good bots, giving you UPVOTES and shit. But they're bad.
As much as you think that's fantastic, woo, you got an "upvote", it really isn't.
Some people's naivety can think this spam, and yes it's spam, is coming from a good place; the creator of the bot wants to reward the minnow of steemit, to help you all become dolphins and then whales, in time (if you don't know what a minnow is on steemit then look it up). This seems all good and dandy, but I hate to break it to you, one bot isn't going to make your post automatically the next big thing. That's dependent on REAL people, the curators, creators, users who like your content, based on originality, honesty, interest and information. One bot, as he is still a minnow himself, will not make you become the next whale. The dolphins, whales, and the support from a larger amount of minnow is what will make you succeed on this site.
What's more is that, the more you upvote their comments for you to be 'put on the trending page' etc, the more steem power and steem they're earning, and instead of YOU becoming the dolphin or the whale. They are, slowly but surely through manipulative abuse of steemit's ultimate ability, power. It is greedy, selfish and jeopardising the honesty and team community built on steemit at the moment.
Do we need to introduce a way for comments to be monitored more closely, and in fact each user. Will there be a way to monitor the bots on steemit? If so how is it done at the moment?
Now, growing up, I was told not to bring up a problem if you don't have a solution, so I've got one, as simple as it is...
In some way, shape or form, comments and user's who comment must go through a check to see whether what they're posting is spam, such as - comparing the previous comments string of letters to the future comment's string of letters. If they are both exactly the same, then the comment is classed as 'spam' and not allowed to be posted - or, it goes to another check, with people on the other side. Or your current comment is compared to your most previous comment to see if you've posted annoying and what can be classed as 'spammy material'.
The steemit economy and the way it functions is also being effected by this. There is no rewards, nor room, for bots in our community.
I don't know, just thoughts.