A couple of months ago there was a large number of old Hive accounts that started copying old posts from legit users and reposting it as their own trying to get some rewards.
I remember reading about it in many different Discord channels.
A lot of these accounts have been put on the blacklist downvoted so their low reputation hides their posts.
AI Comments
But recently I've discovered a new form of abuse; AI generated comment. I wonder if there are more people that have noticed the same.
It might be that I've noticed these comments since I'm reading a lot of comments for my @topcomment curation service. And it might be just the upvotes from this (and other comment curation services) they are after...
The cases I've seen have a lot in common. The comments are often made on very old blogs. As you can see in the screenshot below the original blog was from January 2020 (it even received Steem 😂), but the comment is from two days ago. It looks like a genuine comment that engages with the content of the blog. Something I would typically curate with the @topcomment account.
But besides the strange 'delay' of the comment, all these comments also have a link to a website.
At first I thought it would be phishing links, but it seem to be links to legitimate websites that correspond with the subject of the blog. In the example below it goes to totalatticstorage.com.au which seems a normal company. Other blogs refer to Miami Cleaning Services.
It doesn't seem like an add either since it's not a referral link and they are not actively promoting the companies. It really seems the AI chatbot has just added a link that seems to match the subject.
I discovered another one today. I was triggered by a comment that was in Dutch, my native language. As not many people post in Dutch on Hive the comment had my attention immediately. The comment is one from a low reputation account that interacts with a blog from 2018 that was written in Dutch.
The link leads to a horoscope website.
As I mentioned before; I don't know the exact reason why they are creating this AI generated comments. They will probably hardly get upvotes from the authors they vote on. I guess most of them aren't even active anymore on Hive.
So it might be to catch some votes from comment curation services.
If anyone has another idea why they do this, please let me know. I'm curious 😀
Tagging @hivewatchers as I don't know if they are aware of this trend (they probably do).
Topcomment
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