So this was an exciting and troubling week for me on the ol' blockchain. A few months ago, I started following the @insteem trail on Steemauto. At the time, I was more of an active participant in that community.
As time passed, and I got busy and depressed, I stopped being an active participant. I would still hashtag certain posts with their hashtag, but that was more a matter of habit than anything else. It's been a long time since I got an upvote from them. But I stayed on the trail.
Image credit: Free-Photos on Pixabay
That turned out to have been a mistake.
On Wednesday, I got flaggedInsteem trail to what is termed a "comment farm." I don't know why the Insteem account voted for those comments, more than 15 votes over 7 days. I reached out to the site's founder on discord, but have not gotten a reply. by @mack-bot. I had no idea why at the time. Turns out, it was for one of several upvotes I sent with the
Fortunately, a friend interceded on my behalf and got it straightened out. But I will say I found the process both intimidating and confusing. On @mack-bot's profile, it says to contact the bot's creator, @patrice, if you feel you've been flagged in error. It does not say where. Apparently, the answer is Discord. But I had no idea. I sent a memo with my question. I never got a reply. I also never got the downvotes cancelled.
As I wrote in my original post about the flagging, I have tremendous respect for the work @patrice does in cleaning up the blockchain. And I realize than in dealing with the volume of output we have here, you're gonna have false positives. I made a mistake a few months ago, which led to a flag this week. That's on me. But I do think the process of having a recourse should be clearer.
My friend who helped me get the issue sorted is much more active in the community than I am. She knew how to take care of the issue. I am grateful to her. But I feel it should have been simpler for me to take care of it myself. Getting downvoted for every post and every comment is scary. It was the first time I ever considered quitting the blockchain.
If you've been similarly affected, I would suggest turning to the relevant channel on the Steemcleaners discord server. There are channels there for appeals for Cheetah, Mack-bot, and spaminator.
Yes, it can be intimidating, and for those who are less active in the communities or are not as well connected as you are will feel even more helpless and lost. Glad it got sorted out, you're the last person I expected to get on a SPAM list ever :-)
I'm glad to hear you got it all sorted out. I, for one, would hate to see your posts disappear from my feed. Please keep them coming.
Clearly a mistake - like censoring and blocking Ghandi or a Dalai Llama figure! Who could mistake our didic for someone in need of a come-uppance or a silencing? Crazy! Glad you're back!!
Thank you so much, @carolkean! Also, HI! Long time!
That is what is happening to me also. Except why do you have to go to discord? There are comment abilities on the chain for a reason. Its annoying and does make people want to quit.