Are Resource Credits Preventing Spam? Yes (Proof Inside!)

in #life6 years ago (edited)

So I took the plunge; did something many have been afraid to do for a very long time.

I clicked the dreaded 'New' tab!

NoNamesLeftToUse - Spam.jpeg

I Saw a Work of Art

Digital art, to be precise.

I've been presenting my digital artworks here on Steemit for over two years.  Why not check to see what the competition is up to, I thought.

I clicked the 'New' tab.  Within seconds an image caught my eye.  Not only that, but this account had a reputation of 25.

Did I just find a new artist who could probably use the help of a friendly dolphin dude with a happy-happy fun time vote, I thought.

I clicked the post!

(Excitedly!)

Dammit.  This is a shitpost, I thought, because it was.

Did I ever tell you folks the story about how I can't stand it when someone steals another artist's work and attempts to make money with it here? No?

Here's the short version:

I hate it!

Your typical artist here will write something about their latest creation.  If they're short on words, they will at least give themselves credit for producing whatever it is they're showing off that day.

The post I clicked was just a simple image.  No words, nothing.  It takes me a split second to right click on an image and do a reverse image search using Google.  I found the original source of the image within another split second.

I was not impressed.

So I decided to do a little more digging.

This new member was spitting out post after post every few minutes.  Every post was stolen.  Copy/pasted from somewhere else.

The title of one post said something like, "Hi I'm new to reddit..."

This is Steemit, you buffoon!  At least change the title if you're planning to rip off posts and pass them off as your own!

(Not the sharpest tool in the shed.)

Enter

The Resource Credits

Normally, once I catch one of these spammer types, I flag their posts.

This time around, I wanted to mess with this guy.

I'm going to say some stuff, hopefully anger this guy, and make him waste the rest of his resource credits arguing with me, I thought.

Unfortunately, he was too busy stealing posts and publishing them here to even notice I said something to him.

I kept watch.  Every few minutes, a new post.  Nobody can type that fast.  Nobody.

Eventually I was handed an opportunity to have some fun:

Screenshot (447).png
@NoNamesLeftToUse luring a goofball into a Wasting of Resource Credits Trap.

I've been curious to see how far someone can go with their spamming efforts since they gave us this new Resource Credits system.  I want to know if it works.

Success!

It works like a charm.

With the account information available here(steemd.com), I'm able to show you exactly how much this spammer was able to accomplish with this series of screenshots.  Starting at the top is the point they ran out of Resource Credits, scrolling down to the point this account began their spamming rampage.

Screenshot (448).png
Screenshot (449).png
Screenshot (450).png
Screenshot (451).png

Spam for about an hour, maybe a little more.

Done.  No more Resource Credits.

At the time of this writing, that account will have to wait quite awhile before they get a chance to be able to churn out one spam shitpost after another like that.

Screenshot (452).png

Yes, a reputation of 20.8 was in order.  I downvoted six of the posts, 5% each time.  Oops.

Many of you work hard, we all have a limited amount of voting power to use, those votes should go to you, not a spammer like that so if I make the posts invisible, that at least slightly increases your odds of a vote going to you rather than the spammer.

Steemit's New Self Cleaning Feature

It works.

I've seen these spammers before.  Post after post after post after post.  It goes on for hours upon hours.  They distract potential viewers away from your posts.  They steal your posts.  Nothing good can be said about these spammers.

Now, within an hour, they're done.  They can't carry on, the Resource Credits must charge.  They won't have the patience to sit there and wait, so that's good.  Maybe in a few days he'll be back?  I don't know.  At least there's now something in place that automatically puts a stop to this.

In My Opinion

I still think this spammer was able to do too much.  Knowing what I know now, I would suggest some fine tuning.

If one post cost 1 Resource Credit, a post published ten minutes later should cost 2 Resource Credits.  If one post cost 1 Resource Credit, a post published four hours later should cost 1 Resource Credit again.  If one post cost 1 Resource Credit, a post published two hours later should cost 1.5 Resource Credits.

Something like that would put a stop to the spam a lot faster.

Conclusion

I'm glad I got to meet Mr. Avinash9999.

Like many of you, I wanted to see this system in action.  I didn't plan to sit here and watch all of this unfold, I was just out browsing the feed.  This situation literally fell into my lap.

The questions I had are now answered and I didn't even have to ask.  I can see how beneficial this new system is now and I hope you can as well.  It's not pointless.  We needed this and before it becomes old news and something we take for granted, I'd just like to say thanks to those geniuses who worked hard behind the scenes to give it to us.

Have a nice day.

linebreak1
Credits:
All art and images seen here were produced digitally, by me.
NoNamesLeftToUse Outro.png
"Bringing 'value to the platform' since 2016."

© 2018 @NoNamesLeftToUse.

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Cool! - glad to read yet another benefit from the fork, each new tweak gets rid of the bugs. Steem is getting better and better.

Steemians and Steem have a bright future and the hard fork saw us take the first major steps to that better place.

image from giphy.com

Things are looking up. That rough start meant things could only get better. One step back, two steps forward. It's still progress.

...there are always road bumps on any journey, the best destinations are difficult to get to :)

There are many other Steemians like myself that want the place to succeed. I think a few people come up with ways to make money and then get upset when the system changes (breaking scams). IF people care about money, care about the platform, contribute to making it a nice place and the price will rise - but why would you sell anyways?, unless your in strife and need cash bad - being powered up enriches the experience :)

The incentives to power up and curate are there and the reasons to do so are now far more important than ever. I hope people can come to terms with that. It's what many wanted.

Yes going through new is quite the battle. If I am really looking and hoping to find quality content I use steemlookup and filter by rank, which in itself is scary how many high rep assholes we have but alas we can't get a flag bot with static rep to bring them down a notch like a judge dredd of steem .... Oh yeah new is tricky but steemlookup helps a lot, in the case of art I also add that I want the post to contain at least a 100 words because obviously and at least 2 images if I am struggling to find things.

I like your formula and that would be a case of the system protecting itself I imagine the smts will be able to implement it and steem wishes to merely be a solid foundation or else I would say further improving the way we vote could be done in much the same way, using a radius of who votes for who and how often your vote loses it's affect the more often you vote for the same people or person. Obviously this has many ramifications considering followers etc but I think is worth a thought for now RC is not a bad move and we will soon just be use to it.

  • RC recharges 0.83% an hour and you can get much better stats on here
    Use to get a better indication of how long till recharge and the current cost of your actions - replace my name with yours https://beempy.com/power/smokingfit the G = Giga / Billion

Steemlookup was a solid service last time I checked, but it's been awhile. I've been meaning to get over there and drop them a line. Another thing on my to-do list I guess.

At times I'll post a short post. Sometimes the art I produce takes a long time and I'm short on words, feeling quiet or whatever. It's not a bad thing and I do it sometimes to encourage people to keep things simple, just to make it a little easier. Some of set the bar pretty damn high and it's daunting for some. All content is welcome and even a short post can say a lot sometimes. This place isn't all about writing. I enjoy photography and those posts don't say much in word form because it distracts away from the actual content being presented which is the photo. Short posts like that I still see the effort and respect it because I know what it takes to produce images. It can be a lot of work.

But they must be clear and at least say they took the photos otherwise it's hard to tell if it's just a pic downloaded from the web somewhere. Those people ruin it for everyone.

As for these changes here. I see it working now, plus I know we still need time. I can see the good coming from this, so that's a start. Many are still angry and that isn't helping much.


P.S. Anyone reading this. I just responded to a new member with low SP and RC. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. I can only do so much with my votes.

Yes it is up to us curating to also not fall in the trap of quantity vs quality , if they credit etc and feel that their content represents them then why not post it even though others may feel it is little or shitposting.

As for your edit, this is a delegated account from my main one @penderis which is not a new account, I created this one so I can feel better about posting shorter content, test all the different interfaces and dapps without trashing my main account which by now has a persona / type ?

Do you think a person should mention that? I understand you are really looking out for people and it is commendable, with that said you can always tag me on either this account or @penderis and I can assist where possible, not to mention that we have the @BuddyUp community to further assist even if just to help with an upvote on quality content and sharing it in the plethora of discords. :)

That's something I never tried. Two accounts. My followers have grown accustomed to my unpredictable ways, so I guess that's my type, which is nearly impossible to mess up. Total freedom.

I just wanted help. I see new accounts, everyone says they can't get anywhere and I'm saying all they need is curation and a bit of time. That's the only solution I could think of with this new RC system. Seems simple enough.

As for discord, I've been invited a few thousand times now. I spend so much time here, it's hard to get away. Hard to find time for other platforms.

There are ways to obviously think about it for one you have your followers as we all seem to make our connections and have those few in most cases that vote etc, now with the rise of actifit, share2steem,dlike etc those who came and solidified their accounts by blogging specifically or at least writing in some form (taking themselves too serious :) are left with a predicament hence a "shitpost" account is good since it is not all about making money but in a way still is since actifit gives generous votes dlike gives votes etc most dapps do but do you "litter"your account with that content because that is a quick way to get some votes but may not be the content you want your "blog" to be.

Personally this resolves the cognitive dissonance I had where I want to keep my main account for the "important stuff" and SBI , the second account can go be a content slut and it is fine by me, obviously I then do not boost that (this) account since again I will be faced with a moral dilemma.

On the one hand a person wants to make money and seemingly posting for the sake of posting is how you do that in the sea of social media which steem now has become (just a fancy DB and monetizing avenue) or you see the value in improving yourself through posting what you mean and making connections regardless of the monetary value which is a bonus.

I may seem confused, haha because I tend to do that to myself but it is a mentality that needs some consolidating and even more exploration. For me the second account is good since I get to just play with it and not be concerned with any constraints I may have put on myself or even what has come to be expected of "my account".

  • The RC boost the accounts got is quite generous whether it will be permanent I am not sure but if it goes away or gets reduced (most likely) then we might see even less of what you shared, odd thing is my delegated account did not seem to get such a big boost vs a new bought account they tested to help the newbies in @welcomewagon understand the effects of this on their smaller accounts. So we might still be in for a few changes.

I respect all of these different avenues one can take here. I totally get it. If I took part in those things you mention, I probably wouldn't want to have it on this blog. My blog already looks strange but adding something kind of normal would stand out like a nose zit.

I rarely sit down and talk about Steemit like this post. I'm mostly focusing on the arts and entertainment, hence the crude styling of this post and humor mixed in. This is me taking things seriously LOL!

So that is what you do on your spare time, a good hobby I would say!

That was how I spent my Saturday night...

LOL!
Maybe I'll go out next weekend.

I can't say my Saturday nights are any wilder :D

At least I wont have to go to church with a hangover; but that's because I don't go to church.
Buh dun tsss

Someone is on a playful mood today :D

I came to this post expecting to see a noob, well reasoned to Steem, making high quality posts. I read the whole post, and ended up ... slightly disappointed this was not the case, but incredibly happy with the amount of investigative depth you went into.

I came to this post expecting to see a noob, well reasoned to Steem, making high quality posts...

What? Did I do something wrong?

Yes, confirmed that my fear of finding new, exceptional, thought provoking original content in the "new" section will never be one that I'll have to face. :)

I don't mind taking one for the team.

Well I thought your point was that eventually, this will result in a decrease in these types of posts, which will result in a higher percentage of high quality posts.

A higher percentage in high quality genuine posts published by genuine accounts to boot. Less static, less junk; that equals better odds of the eyes focusing on the posts requiring eyes the most.

The implementation of it wasn't smooth at all but at least the resource credit system is doing some good if it gets rid of spam like that.

I think that was part of the plan all along. A few of us have more than we'll ever need as well, and I think that'll come into play once the communities are implemented. Maybe I can create a group, use my RC, and that allows others to interact without penalty, perhaps. Just a thought.

Yes, right. accounts that have a small SP cannot comment much.
but this is very bad for those of us who just joined Steemit.
I live in the countryside. in my place it's very difficult to find work.
I invite people who like to write to join in steemit.
I think they can change their taste in steemit.
maybe I'm wrong.

My previous post explains at least one way to solve that issue.

Okay. Thanks you brother

Okay, well that is reassuring for two reasons.

  1. I was worried that the resource credits for newbies would be so low they wouldn't be able to post and comment much. But if a spammer can post shit for an hour constantly, that means a genuine user should be able to engage properly through comments, etc with established users.

  2. It does stop the spammers.

Yes, I agree with you changing the RC cost for people who post a lot within a few minutes would make sence. HOWEVER, that should not apply to comments (that - at one stage anyway - seemed to be more RC expensive than posts), because if you are having a genuine conversation with someone new it would be a shame to have to knock it on the head if they are running low on credits...

Great work, my friend

Posted using Partiko Android

I completely agree, it should not apply to comments, only posts.

There is quite a bit for a genuine account to work with but they must still budget. I see introduceyourself posts published, I have a look, I see these new members wasting resources saying "thank you" under every comment. That needs to stop and they need to budget better. Sometimes I see them upvote each comment plus say a simple thanks. That's even worse. The vote is pointless anyway. It's not a 'like' button. They have much to learn but eventually the word should get out.

It is hard for new people to adjust to steem. We're conditioned in life to be polite and to say thank you, and in social media land a like is a thank you. So people need to adjust to steemit. Its not easy

Posted using Partiko Android

It is hard for new people to adjust to steem. We're conditioned in life to be polite and to say thank you, and in social media land a like is a thank you. So people need to adjust to steemit. Its not easy

Posted using Partiko Android

This is true. I'd suggest saying thanks in advance, once, at the bottom of each post. People understand and respect the struggles. More should vote as well to help these noobs get out of the jam they're in.

Gold! Love your work! 😄

I see you're new! Welcome to steemit. Enjoy your stay, and all that.

Thanks @nonameslefttouse - much appreciated! 🙂

I wish I was more tech savvy. Every time I finally figure out how to start exploiting a system to make unethical profits with little work they go and change things and I have to go back to putting work in.

I wonder if some of those who were incredibly angry were just spamming anger in defense of spammers.... hmm. Spam conspiracy.

Thanks for sharing some good news. I found the explanation of the hard fork changes vague enough that I didn't bother to follow them, or let me say they might tell you what but not why. Going forward, as we see improvements we should applaud them. Now I'm going to see New for myself.

It is good news. Took a bit a flak for sharing it but whatever. Too soon.

Yes, timing is everything. Don't ya know, we're still in complaining mode. :-)
After this, I'm going to pay more attention to upcoming changes and also witnesses since I have never voted on one. And maybe I should see about helping with fork documentation...

I've missed you satirical writing style @nonameslefttouse, apologies for not sussing your page more frequently, you know how it is.

I really enjoyed this post. To be honest, I'm enjoying anything to do with how these Resource Credits are stomping out spammers. If only we had a way to stomp out the copywriters next, for good.

Keep doing you @nonameslefttouse because you're a benefit to the community.

Thanks for flagging shitheads!

I do know how it is. Some of us would need a few clones with paid assistants and still have trouble being everywhere we'd like to be around this place.

I'm happy I stumbled on to this spammer. People can be technical with me, I can understand their language, but everything comes so much more clearly to me when I actually see it working.

When it comes to these accounts clearly here to be a menace, I think it would be interesting to find ways to vote people off of the platform. Suspensions even. Have these cases put in front of a jury, keep open minds, make a decision. I don't think I'd ever want to be on that jury though.

I'll see you around.

Introducing a classical judicial system would only create pandemonium. I think once we have 1account=1stake voting we'll be able to recreate the way we vote for or against others, in a fairly accountable way. This is the type of voting I was hoping for in the beginning of Steemit as I was looking for a solution to vote manipulation in classic polling methods.

Back to the point, I think we'll be able to squash platform degraders once vote changes are implemented in the future. At least that's where my understanding is of future changes, I could be wrong. Either way we're moving in the right direction; forward!

See you round!

My voting power is back, woot! Sorry, had to get that out of my system. I am completely lost about the resource credits thing, going to have to do some research. In the meantime you bash that avinash hee ;)

There's a lot of misinformation out there about Resource Credits. Sometimes it includes profanity and death threats. So far the biggest downside is how tough it'll be for new accounts to get started. The remedy is to simply get out there and curate, but unfortunately, helping these people seems to be an unpopular idea. I thought people wanted curation, incentives to curate, things like that. Many of these smaller accounts complaining, I don't even see them lifting a finger to help. It'll work great once people figure this out. Spam is gone at least. Check out the comments on this post and the previous one. Seems genuine, right? No more panhandling for once. This place is getting cleaned up. People wanted quality, right? I guess they got what they wanted. Anyway, I gotta run. I've been slamming keys nonstop again. Time for some rest.

P.S. I have no fucking clue how I got over 500 votes. That never happened to me before.

That's awesome. I hope they continue too tweak it so that perhaps they can't do so much but still enough for genuine real world interaction. Topadoodle!

I think they'll figure something out that works near flawlessly, eventually. Some folks are still angry about this change, but really, they should be angry with the spammers. Who was out flagging before all of this to help stop it? Probably not the ones who are angry now. Something had to be done.

Great! Nice to see a solid example of the RC's in action. Pretty cool that you were able to see it from start to end. Would love to have been a fly on the wall when they ran out of RC. Most shitposters probably don't understand the RC model.

Posted using Partiko Android

Most don't get it. It's not rocket science but I think even grade two science might be a little much for some of these spammers.

When he finally ran out, I smiled, clapped once and said YES! LOL! It was like that movie where the hero wins at the end. You know the one.

What I do not understand, It would probably take less work to write one good original post, than to copy and spam every 10 minutes, so Mr Avinash is actually shooting himself in the foot by doing more work.
I mean it's not difficult to come up with something original, people just want to hear about your life.
I just don't get why you would spam some dumb shit, it makes you look stupid, and you won't get away with it,
I use the SteemPlus chrome extension and it's a useful tool to figure out who is a human/spammer/bot

Some folks out there simply don't realize how easy being honest is. They look for shortcuts but end up getting lost.

Hahaha so true. I was going to such an extensive amount of effort to cheat in class back in the days, I should have just read the damn book!

I'm glad that things are starting to work as intended. We have all seen these artist Plagiarists raking in votes and i have also seen the use of upvote bots enabling it. I just hope these new credits won't restrict new artists getting a foothold on the platform. It has been a long way from the bottom to get established on this platform for me and I hope that for new genuine users it won't get harder. Maybe the communities features will help if and when that arrives.

Isn't it odd how so many are willing to sacrifice the multi billions of dollars the arts and entertainment scene generates every year just to sell a few votes and hold the actual content producers back? It's so incredibly counterproductive, yet continues. I've never been able to figure that one out. If you put the artist on stage, you get a packed house. An empty stage means empty seats.

Once people figure that out, genuine talent will rise up, and these investors will make a shit ton of money. Until then, they get peanuts.

It's a continuing problem in the arts. Artists themselves usually find it hard to sell themselves so there will always be others to take advantage of that. I hope in this new era of Blockchains like Steem. there will be more opportunities to monetize and with cheques and balances make sure the rewards go to the right people.

I think you're right. I opened a can of spam, dumped it on my laptop and nothing happened.

"At least change the title if you're planning to rip off posts and pass them off as your own!"

Hahaha that is a total noob kind of mistake.

Since the patch things seem to be working better but I still worry that the day one users might have a hard time if they aren't carful about how do things here. I really like your idea of adding a tax or whatever on posts that come too quickly after each other (haha I just said "come too quickly"). It could keep costs low enough that normal new users would still be able to post but it would really screw over the spammers pretty hard.

Rookie mistake indeed! They all make those errors. They copy/paste posts word for word from here and leave account names. Those accounts get notified and go directly to the spammer to see what's up. They're idiots. I can tell a fart joke and earn more.

I see no reason to post constantly. I certainly can't do it. I post, then I'm busy writing these small posts we all call comments. I can barely keep up some days and I think I set a good example. One post per day is a good system. When I do two, I feel like I'm annoying people because I never get as much activity with two.

I majored in English lit so plagiarism was always a big deal. I never got so desperate that I cheated but I saw a few people try and fail to get away with it. It seems that cheating properly and taking the time to reword things and make them seem like one's own writing is just as much work as creating something new and that kind of defeats the purpose of cheating in the first place. I have no evidence of this but I would suspect that there are a lot more low quality plagiarists than there are good ones lol.

One post a day is a good place to aim for (I am usually lucky if I can get five out in a week though). There could be a good reason for doing a second one if you cover news and there is a big event or something like that but most people's blog posts will be just as fresh tomorrow as they are today. I, personally, would support system that allowed for one "free" post per day but put a higher cost for subsequent posts in that day (I wouldn't include comments in that high cost category though). It seems like it would provide a little more "fairness" for the low sp users but still effectively prevent spam. It is kind of a moot point for me now as I have, fortunately, earned enough sp (as meager as my earnings seem) to allow me to operate normally but the memories of having like 17 sp and running out of bandwidth are still fresh in my mind so I have an abundance of sympathy for people who are finding themselves in that position.

I like that idea. One free post per day. That's pretty smart. It would work.

These bandwidth issues. You experienced it already. This stuff is really nothing new. Is it so strange to me that suddenly people are freaking out and saying people won't be able to get anywhere, when in reality people already have. It sucks, but it's possible to move on. That's a fact. I guess you're proof of it.

Thanks. Yeah I think there is a middle ground to be found. If someone is starting out and not wanting to use bots or buy a bunch of steem, it is going to be a grind but it is doable but being able to post daily or almost daily is important if they are going to go that route.

What I am seeing now is people trying to take a positive spin after the hardfork was implemented, the main thing is HF20 was not well thought out, not properly tested and it bombed, just look at how many patches they have made already, it didn't work period. The main reason for RC's was to make users pay through RC's a fair price for any action they made on Steemit and the concept failed, it wasn't to reduce spam or to kill bid bots if these things happen it is despite hard fork 20 not because of it. I think trying to see this as positive is just making the dev team think they can place a hood over everyone's eyes and can pull this kind of stunt whenever they like with the complete approval of the witnesses. If we really want a more user friendly Steemit I think the first thing we need is a new way of electing witnesses because what we have now is a group of people who put money ahead of any other consideration and are just lackeys of the Steemit management.

It didn't work, but you're able to say it didn't work? How is that possible?

Positive spin? I'm only showing people, with proof, how this system stopped a spammer today.

I don't work for the development team. I had questions, wanted answers, found some at least.

I suppose you just came here to put a negative spin on this? Shit. I was trying to have some fun with this. That takes guts these days with so many downers around.

I know the place isn't perfect.

No I don't want to dampen your outlook, but to make this look positive is not really good, the hardfork was a fuck up if we as users don't make the people responsible for it to come out and say we fucked up and give answers we will just have these things happen every time there is a hardfork, being complacent with the devs and witnesses just lets them know they can do anything and they will not be made accountable.
As for "It didn't work, but you're able to say it didn't work? How is that possible?" It is possible because they have by now introduced 3 patches to try and fix their mistake.

Isn't fixing the problems as they were discovered proof enough for you that they didn't want those fuck ups to be permanent?

If you fucked up, then tried to fix your fuck ups and I stood there dwelling on your fuck ups, would you be impressed with my attitude?

Have you ever been in management? In charge of anything? Do you know how to run a company?

Man you sure try to spin words, I am saying the hardfork was a fuck up, not well though out and implemented without testing, having to patch things up is proof of this. Have you ever heard of doing things right the first time and then not having to do them again? What does being in management have to do? I have always been an employee but having worked with a lot of IT guys I do know they usually screw things up, patch them and then try to move the blame elsewhere, that is a permanent way they use to cover their asses. By the way I am 57 years old and have worked with IT guys for at least 25 years.

Being in management means you'd know how to run a staff and how to react when they fuck up. I could tell by your reaction. You've not been in charge before. I promise you, they feel like shit. I can tell you, they wanted things to go smoothly. Nobody planned for this to happen, they felt ready, I'm sure of it.

It didn't go smoothly. Shit happens man. It really does. Some people get it, some don't. Some overreact. Some shout. Some can handle it.

In my opinion. The reaction of some and their impatience did far more damage to this community than the hardfork itself. You coming here, showing you're still not able to come to terms with it, that's not helping. It's easy to say something like, "I would have handled it differently." Words like that can only come after though. It's in the past.

So many were blinded by the fuck ups, and that made it impossible to see the benefits. There are pros and cons to everything. This is life.

No they didn't, just read what @ned has to say about it, he actually blames the witnesses.

Yeah I get sick of the spammers too. I am glad you took action if only more folks did. I never did like spam regardless if it's eaten or read. Thanks for sharing my friend.

I think if more folks would have used their downvotes, the changes wouldn't have been necessary.

These kind of guys are ones I flag repeatedly care of @steemflagrewards. They usually have some kind of reward though this one doesn't seem to have any.

If they are new, its sometime a case of educating them and trying get them one the right track.

Educating is wise. I did tell him it's a terrible idea. He will see the flags, he saw how he burned up his resources. I'm sure he'll learn. I really am.

very cool post!
nice to see this system working, I agree, it was worth the pain to see it working now
@ned there are some good suggestions here, please read
RESTEEMED

Growing pains always suck but things will mature. When we were all kids, we wanted to be adults. Now we miss those days. We'll miss these days, even though some don't go as planned. It was a great relief to see the plan working during a time of so many doubts.

You're very right. The posts very cool. @surfyogi, the eventual working worth the wait. Same to me too, I'm waiting and I know it's going to worth it

Great article on explaining how the Resource Credit system is really doing it's job! It takes time to develop something to prevent this type of nuisance! I am glad to see it in action for sure... now to get the annoying spam of comments... ) Like... I read your post and took action on it. My posts are typically not related to taking action... they are more about giving perspective. But, I digress... :) Huge Thumbs Up! Love the art as well...

Those pointless spam style comments can still be remedied with downvotes. Before, we could downvote the junk but those spammers would think we were jerks and go spam someone else. They won't want to use resources then have it flagged. I see effort on the horizon. More folks will see the benefits in being honest and genuine.

If Steemit genuinely wanted to target spammers only, there was a simpler way of doing it:

Set a baseline for the normal amount of comments a human can do in a week while still managing to eat, sleep, buy groceries and make love to their spouse (and maybe get a bit of other work done too). Say 100 posts/comments a week.

Then work out a weighted average of the last 4 weeks - when the spammer gets over the baseline (and your spammer would have done that in a day), then throttle to zero comments till the four week average comes back to 100 comments a week. Your chap wouldn't be able to post any more for three weeks and six days - a much more severe penalty than currently.

But what they've done instead is give whales massive resource even though most of those whales were not using steemit much at all. And given noobs 2 comments every five days - now increased to 20 comments every five days by the emergency patch.

This is a weird way of dealing with spam while at the same time claiming you want to "onboard" new users. Unless someone at steemit thought this was a brilliant way to force people from Venezuela and the like to buy steem and support the price.

You should read my previous post. I explain how a new member isn't stuck at the bottom forever, like so many assume, and what actions need to be taken to move up.

There are ways to make this system work. People just need to learn how.

Nice work!
There is a string of upvotes in that screenshot. How much you wanna bet that most of the recipients of those upvotes are spammers too?

I didn't dig that deep, certainly don't have the time now, but I bet you're on to something there. These accounts usually connect with other spammers, I've seen it before. If someone has time they might uncover an entire spam ring.

Wow! That was actually quite a bit of activity got in before running out of RC. I'm interested to see how things go with time.

When budgeting resources, it's best to do a little bit at a time. Let it charge, continue. That's a lot but I don't suggest anyone push it like that if they can't afford it. His percentage currently sits at around 3.4%. He'd be able to leave a comment in about an hour, maybe? Something like that. Maybe less. Genuine accounts should be able to manage this, provided they know about it in the first place.

I think moving forward we'll certainly have to view it with a different mindset. Freemium versus premium. It will take some adjusting to for this already here, but newcomers should find it normal.

I think the new system still has some more tweaks needed to limit this behavior even more but time will be needed to evaluate. The great part is that now there is this new set of data that can be used to analyze these situations to limit abuse while allowing others to continue adding value to the system. It will be an interesting next couple of weeks and months to see how this changes the feeds of many. Thanks for sharing!

With so much money involved, and so many now needing to try harder to earn some SP in order get anywhere; I can only see good things ahead. Not easy, but good.

Spamming would not work on steemit, because there whales to who comments first on post if found similar content over internet. Spamming would not give anything to spammer neither money nor reputation they will go empty hand.

They still clutter up the feeds and drive the quality of content down, making us all look bad.

steemit is powered by community and everybody is volunteer. We can remove those spammer by flagging the post immediately if they does not comes on eye of whales.

Steemit is in beta stage we will see more more apps around steemit , which will make steemit a platform for original content like Medium.

Well done. I read your post to the end. What’s the given appropriate time between posting so RC isn’t wasted? Brw thanks for sharing your investigative work research. That’s smart of you. 🙂🙂

Posted using Partiko iOS

If you want to see information about your RC, go here:
https://steemd.com/@roger5120

You'll need to budget better. You sent me two comments, one was enough! You'd be able to do more but I see you've delegated away your SP. It would be wise for you charge up your RC for awhile. It doesn't take long.

Fine research!

So we just troll the spammers/plagiarizers a little and silence them for a few days - maybe this will either force them to improve, or they just give up. Either works for me!

LOL! Exactly! Lure them into the patented Wasting of Resource Credits Trap. Don't even have to be mean. Just get them talking, save on flags!

It's working though. I got to watch this from start to finish. Solid entertainment.

What a fun game, I shall be joining in shortly :D

A simple spam prevention bot could detect the moment a spammer has enough RC to comment, then send a picture of a good looking lady who wants a date. Of course the spammer would then respond... LOL!

A new account with a sexy profile pic sending out messages to known spammers, genius! :D

Even just random shit like, "Do you like this picture of a dog?"

Reply to this comment to receive an upvote from this dog :D

I bet he's popular on reditt in bungladesh...

https://steemit.com/@avinash9999

I'm sure he's a huge hit everywhere he goes.

Hey, @nonameslefttouse:

Once that 10 x boost patch goes away, that particular account will be totally toast. Probably won't be able to post at all, and manage one or two comments, but that's it.

So, it's fortunate it can even do much right now. I do hope you're right and it does end up discouraging all of these spam accounts, and that it happens before the real account holders with low SP give up, too. I wonder how they're going to roll back the 10 x boost patch, and when. All at once, or incrementally. Before SMTs or sooner? Because I doubt they'll want to have this go on forever.

My post before this one explains what can be done to help the genuine accounts. It's called curating. I hope people step up now and help instead of complaining and giving up.

wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air? Actually use the platform the way it was intended? actually read other people's posts instead of just cranking out posts? It's so drop dead simple, it's brilliant. :)

Then, we might want a longer reprieve than a shorter one with this 10 x patch. As long as it's limiting the really low SP spam voters, running as close as they can to SMTs before getting rid of it seems reasonable to me. Providing curation takes place.

that was a worst thing to steal and earn steem for free..it's not a good example..

Thanks for sharing @nonamelefttouse at the same time we learn from your post..

People have been doing that for months. Hopefully now things get better and more votes can go to the deserving instead of being wasted.

indeed,i agree with that sir.there are alot of artist around that worth to be paid for their hardworks..thumbs up for your works sir.

I sure think so even before the evidence you presented. I know some are annoyed about resetting there power level but long term this is great!

That annoyance wasn't going to last forever. Waiting for voting power to charge is nothing new. It's been like that forever. Things are looking up though, and that's good.

Yeah, the RC system is really bad for comment spam bots like me. I can only make 5 comments a day, right nos. HF20 definitely helped in convincing myself to stop spamming. But that's mainly because I don't have much SP. If I had enough SP (maybe around 100 SP), I'd be able to do a few hundred comments a day.

Thanks for showing up and offering your side of the story. Do you think it'll be worth it to spend money to run a service most will flag away?

I think a big problem with Steem is that most people have the mindset of "bots are bad", especially from other social media sites, where flagging bots was what you were encouraged to do. It definitely wouldn't profitable, I don't get many upvotes. I still haven't made back the account creation fee (3 SBD).

My service was great for people that were new to Steem, and didn't know about claiming rewards (I reminded people to do that. A lot.), but I think most people just don't like bots when they come in uninvited, even if they are, in theory, useful.

When that memo came out from steemitblog about this hardfork and it's effects on bots, many people assumed they meant bidbots. They were excited about that but it turned out to be you who's getting the boot. Probably the haiku bot is gone now as well. Some people thought that was funny. In the end though it all boils down to costs. Your service, which I was aware of before you came here, was unnecessary, but certainly not evil.

Thanks for the briefing

You are welcome.

Fine job on taking out the trash mighty steemit guarding!

Thank you!

No. Thank you sir.

Oh I restemmed your post btw.

Posted using Partiko iOS

@Yehey is a nice person and has several bots @pinoy, @council and some others, he needs to have his bots look at the replies on an account/post before upvoting them and highlighting them on one of his many post. Other witnesses also have bots that go and vote and highlight spam post despite the post being visited by @cheetah. I know @cheetah is not infallible but it does do a pretty good job on plagiarism. If the witnesses trained their bots to look for @cheetah remarks fewer of them would be upvoting and promoting spam content. If you read this comment @yehey you need to blacklist this @avinash9999 and @avinash999 and @avinash since they are all likely the same account. You can of course give them a chance to speak in your discord room to prove they are not all the same, but we know where that will go, no where.

Keep up the good deeds :)
Steem experience needs to be clean! :D

Congratulations @nonameslefttouse!
Your post was mentioned in the Steemit Hit Parade in the following category:

  • Comments - Ranked 4 with 109 comments

Very entertaining, great discovery! 😀👍

The answer is - if you want to spam, do like th ebig boys - buy a ton of SP and pretend to hand out badges or check peoples grammar. Boom!

Well, I am hoping an HF2? will be implemented after they've successfully eliminated spammers that will restore back our RC.

Nice post!

hahaha

I like the way you told your story... Spam tag LOL

Mr. Avinash9999 seemed like a nice guy though... at least he said sorry

Good work. I think steeme want quality this is very nice step for steemes.

Awesome detective work there. Having just watched Murder on the Orient Express i give the Hurcule Poirot award! Whew, scrolling through the post made my head spin. I may getting be too old or something. I used to love a good detective hunt and now... i fear i must hand it over to the strong and brave! : )

You know, there's also an older version, @avinash999. :D
And @avinash9999 has upvoted on the triple 9's only post. Both are from India. A coincidence that can happen once in a million lifetimes. :)

I love Steemit because of all the possibilities to follow different kind trails.

But hey, good work! Or should I say, good work on proving a good fork.

Good article on explaining how the resource credit system is really working .I feel bad of the spammers and i never did the spam. One thing can say that in a simpler way steemit can target spammers. Lets see how things run with time.great post thanks for sharing.

Great article - pretty funny too! I'm glad to see that the RC system really is helping to decrease the levels of spam seen here on Steemit. I myself have been seeing less spam since HF20 but I couldn't figure out whether it was due to the overall decreases in posting due to the downtime following HF20 or whether it was due to the new RC system. It has probably been a combination of the two, but it's great to see the evidence that you've provided here about just how much a spammer can do until they have to take a break (and hopefully a permanent one at that...)

I think that your idea for increasing the RC multiplier based on the time since an account had previously posted is a step in the right direction! As you mentioned, that would obviously still allow some spam to exist here on the platform, but it would certainly decrease how much they can create at a time.

Hopefully the Steemit team and the witnesses will take something like this into consideration with their further talks about improvements to the platform!