It's clear that Steem, as any growing platform, is dealing with some serious growing pains. It's making some of us rightfully annoyed and frustrated. As of this writing @masteryoda is ready to throw in the towel for being flagged for sharing photograph content. You can read his post here: https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@masteryoda/why-i-removed-all-my-posts
On the other spectrum @anyx feels overwhelmed and beaten down by the amount of spam his @cheetah bot has been dealing with, and the abuse he receives due to the existence of his bot. You can read more of his story here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@anyx/an-open-letter-to-the-steemit-community-on-content-plagiarism-and-the-cheetah-bot
It would seem to any outsider that Steem is falling apart. Sadly, some people would be happy if that happened. But most of us that believe in the power of this platform aren't here to watch it fall apart. We want to do better, we want to see better, and we want spam measures even if just a band-aid temporary solution.
I admit, I haven't been doing my part to make things better on that end. Instead, I've probably had more negative things to say about Steem than positive ones, but that's natural aspect of most humans. We tend to focus on the things that cause failure and not enough time dedicating our time to fixing them. However, after having read technical insights from @jl777 (which I suggest you follow if you don't) and getting replies to my questions and concerns about Steem's future, I have come to accept that Steem needs help. Steem is just a baby, and some of us don't want that responsibility.
I understand that aspect, dealing with a baby can be quite difficult if you haven't had to before. If you come to platforms after they have reached full maturity, you never get a glimpse at the massive efforts it takes to grow a platform into maturity. So I want to help this community with the resources I have available, while at the same time exploring my area of interest.
I'd like for us to create a network of anti-Spam bots. Bots that are all aware of each other and work in unison to filter through content. The problem is, I'm not necessarily a programmer, and I'm willing to bet most new commers aren't either. I know how to build HTML and CSS templates and can make some use of available JavaScript plugins. But when it comes to writing code from scratch, be it Python, Java, or otherwise, I have little experience.
So I'm asking help from the community for someone (I can contribute what I can) to create a guide that will enable us to create our own anti-spam bots. Perhaps, we could develop a system whereby we "donate" our account to a larger anti-spam system. This system would maintain a list of all possible spam posts and the bots would be deligate the responsibility of flagging the posts. I believe this was why @anyx wanted the community to flag posts with #doyourpart. I imagine @anyx intended to watch the list and train his anti-spam system.
Unfortunately, I think this kind of spam filtering is too time costly for humans. Let's be honest, we are more entertained by reading good posts than diving into a pile of shit and leaving the good posts unharmed.
In addition to my proposal above, here are some other proposals for helping control the spam issue. These are mostly platform development oriented suggestions:
- "Spammer" button on profile page. Currently, there's "Follow" and "Mute." I'm proposing a third button that is marked "Spammer." This button will cause the account to be flagged and causing the offending account to re-authenticate using captcha. Why you ask? Because I believe most of the spammers are bot accounts that are automized. Forcing re-authenticate with captcha would slow these bots to a crawl.
- Post throttling. I'm sure this already exists at some level, but if an account had been marked as a "Spammer," even after re-authentication the account must wait something like 5-10 minutes before posting again.
- Rewards for properly identifying spam. This one could get really tricky, but I think the key would be to get help from a whale to make this happen.
I realize, that perhaps, this all may be farfetched or maybe even usless for me to suggest. My experience is limited and my understanding of the full Steem platform also has gaps. I'm only trying to help as much as I can, even if it's just words and ideas on a screen.
Please comment and offer any advice or help! We need it Steemians!!!