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RE: Should I become a comment spammer?
I'm sure you'll get those kinds of people on any platform people contribute to. I mean, I guess you could flag those people, but really I can't imagine it even being worth spending the time to copy/paste the same comment into each post. I've only been here like 3 weeks, but seeing how my computer is a bit slow, I am happier clicking and loading up the article that seem most interesting to me. Sure, making money is a nice feature, but I'd also like to spend my time learning things that might actually benefit me. People who comment in volume just to get a penny or two need to find a better outlet for their time.
"Good post, man!" :-)
Yes, you get spammers everywhere, and every site either needs to fight them or suffer. The problem is if you're leaving 100 comments an hour, or over 500 comments a day, you will make some money, and since you only need to make a few hundred dollars a month to live in some countries.... viola. The comment spammers are here, in full force, and they are stealing STEEM and selling, putting a downward pressure on the price. It's a very serious issue and people are going to get it sooner or later, and probably the hard way, which is unfortunate but...
I see, I didn't really see the big picture that way. As more people join the platform, more and more spammers will come to make their pennies at a time and the price of STEEM will continually be depressed. I wonder if there will be a way to address this issue when they close out the beta version? I can only think of flagging for spam at this point. Maybe after x number of flags, the account get suspended for awhile, then booted off the network after a few infractions? Just a thought.
That is sort of what happens if I understand it correctly. If you get flagged enough you lose reputation points and when your account goes low or even negative you pretty much can't do anything on the site. It takes a time to get the rep points back, etc.
I think the better way will be for everyone to be educated not to upvote generic comments. Stop the rewards and the spam should stop - but the problem with that are bots. Bots will just keep spamming and spamming so those accounts need to be flagged at the very least.
It's tough- I guess a combo of flagging and education is going to be what works in the end...I hope! :)
Yep. As users choose more and more to ignore spam comments, and downvote them when necessary, the spammers will end up simply recycling Steem amongst themselves.
As you said, the rep scores also take a hit when small accounts are flagged. I just had "sexy girl" leave a spam post on my blog in the comments section. I downvoted the post and their rep score is now not so sexy at all, dropping from 25 to 15 with one flag.
I never thought about folks making enough to basically live on in impoverished countries via spam comments. This is really sad. This platform could help people like this in other ways, and so much more effectively if used in a non-abusive fashion.
Upvoting spam comments out of pity would only serve make the platform less and less attractive, successful, and quality-content-oriented, crashing the price, and ultimately shooting all of these people in the foot even more, erasing any opportunity to really pull themselves up out of poverty via Steem.
Easy for me to say, I suppose, but that's how I see it.
Well, hopefully if folks keep writing articles to address it, maybe the issue will be brought up to the surface a little and be recognized for what it is. I never thought of those folks as opportunistic, I just thought of them as lazy. But now I get a better sense of what they really are. Thanks for bringing it to light!