Once upon a time there was Steem platform and I was hyperactive during my stay over there. It was great fun to write and at the same time get paid to do that. I met many learned people on that platform. Because it was my first experience with Web 3.0, if it was still called that in 2017-18, I allowed as many as possible permissions to different subsets of Steem (busy, utopian et al.)
Six years down the line, steemit had gone tits up and I too had forgotten about it. Then my friend @himalayanwomb cajoled me to join Hive, which he told me faster and better version of Steemit. I got on the moving train and it was a great fun until one day I met my good friend @spaminator.
Once a while it would appear on my blog and downvote me as if we were sworn enemies. It would appear almost on a weekly basis and then disappear.
Until yesterday. I got 10 downvotes in 10 seconds. Then another 10 in next five seconds. It was a fiery shitstorm and I could not understand what and why hit me.
Strike 1
Strike 2
I looked up resources on hive, contacted friends on hive, sought the wise counsel of @himalayanwomb and @idea-make-rich. They directed me towards @hivewatcher discord channel wherein I was supposed to contact queries and appeals section.
And why you should do it immediately?
Because downvotes will affect your reputation. And a low rep score means you are invisible, living under a rock buried in the ocean. Now, you do not want that.
It wasn’t prompt but the reply I got was effective and worked.
So here is what I learned and would like to share with you
- Steemit was a long long time ago and it was a common thing for us to hop on from one part of steemit to busy to utopian. You need permsions, here have it. You need my active key, go ajead take it, all yours, just make my account rich. And just like that we had given permissions to multiple associated apps. It would not be unwise to revoke those permissions.
I was told to login into Hivesigner (using my active/private posting key) and revoke permissions of apps that were no longer being used. Screenshots attached..
- Guilt by association: I may have inferred it wrong but i will share it with you nonetheless. A downvoted account can not be your friend. A spammer/abuser/imoression farmer should not be associated with you in any way. If he is your relative, the time to cut your ties off was yesterday. Spaminator and @hivewatcher are backed by solid engineers and hard working teams who do not allow the system to be abused, so do not. Report if you find someone abusing and guide them to discord if you think a genuine mistake has been made.
In my case, I got impatient when I got no response on discord. However going by the number of users on this app, one should act patient and wait for the mods to reply.
I got this message and then I revoked my permissions swiftly.
One can check their names on blacklist or watchlist here on this link: https://spaminator.me/api/bl/all.txt
If you think you do not deserve to be on this list, contact them on discord (screenshot attached)
May you rise and shine on Hive and never come across spaminator 😁