@badcontent Isn't a "Spambot" - So What is It?

While using the Hive account@buildawhale service (I'll probably be posting about my experience after a little more use of Hive account@buildawhale) I've also learned about Hive account@badcontent. It's a bot that posts this reply to users that have been identified as steemians acting badly.

Photo Source: Steemit

The one thing you don't want to do is turn going down the Hive account@badcontent replies page into a drinking game. If you take a drink every time the words "where's your proof?" are posted by someone you will quickly die of alcohol poisoning and your body will become as well preserved as a dissection frog in a middle school biology class.

Many of the users who have been identified as having engaged in bad behavior insist that they have done nothing wrong and that they are being attacked by a "spambot". Is Hive account@badcontent a spambot? Technically no. The classic definition of a spambot is a program meant to gather e-mail addresses in order to send out unsolicited e-mails (a.k.a. "spam"). As far as I can tell Hive account@badcontent isn't doing that. There is a more modern "forum spambot" but that definition doesn't seem to fit either with what Hive account@badcontent does.

Photo Source: Steemit

Spam is not spam just because the receiving person doesn't want to get what is being sent. A certain element of intent must be involved in order for something to be classified as spam. If Hive account@badcontent was targeting desirable steemians who post original content and kept replying over and over again, "Hey! Use Hive account@buildawhale!" that would fall under the definition of spam. Hive account@badcontent seems to do the opposite and targets steemians that Hive account@buildawhale doesn't want business with. In my opinion the intent of Hive account@badcontent is to socially shame bad steemians and act as a deterrent to anybody who wants to start using steemit and not get those replies. It also quasi-promotes Hive account@buildawhale but their service is steemit promotion so why shouldn't it? In my opinion the  service to the steemit community Hive account@badcontent performs outweighs a little shameless promotion. How effective would Batman be if Batman had some rule that he could only fight crime as long as nobody could attribute Batman to his crimefighting activities?

But what about the users who insist that they get those replies for no reason? Well, let's find an example and see if by gathering facts a hypothesis can be formed as to why someone who insists he or she is wrongfully on the Hive account@buildawhale blacklist would be on it. From that hypothesis we can judge whether or not being on this list is warranted if the hypothesis is true.

Searching the term "Hive account@badcontent" in the search bar on the top right corner of steemit some results come up. The first blog against Hive account@badcontent is by Hive account@killerteesuk who is blacklisted. Hive account@killerteesuk will be the case study then as nominated by a search result and not chosen by any human bias.

Photo Source: Steemit

Going to the profile of Hive account@killerteesuk it states Hive account@killerteesuk joined in February 2018 and currently has 3315 posts. It's a little past the middle of June 2018 at the time of this writing so it seems like spam might be an issue. In order to judge that I need to find the average number of posts per day. That means finding the day Hive account@killerteesuk joined but the profile only says February 2018. In order to find the first post as far as I know that means scrolling through all 3315 posts to find what day in February the first post was made.

Scrolling through the posts by Hive account@killerteesuk I began to see a pattern. The majority of posts by Hive account@killerteesuk were made via dMania. In other words pretty much all Hive account@killerteesuk has probably been posting since February has been memes. It looks like perceived lack of quality may have also played a role in blacklisting Hive account@killerteesuk.

I never finished scrolling through all of the 3315 posts made by Hive account@killerteesuk. This isn't a research paper that is going to be published in a professional journal with APA formatting. I am just going to ballpark a range for the average number of posts per day 3315 posts makes. I am posting this before midnight PST on June 19, 2018. February 01, 2018 was 139 days ago. 2018 isn't a leap year so February 28, 2018 was 112 days ago. Rounding to three significant digits that shows Hive account@killerteesuk has a mean average of anywhere between 23.8-29.6 posts per day. Let's just say for simplicity that Hive account@killerteesuk has been posting on average one post per hour every day since February. That's quite a bit in my opinion.

While scrolling it appears Hive account@killerteesuk was blacklisted by Hive account@buildawhale around 22 days ago from the time of this writing. That means from the date Hive account@killerteesuk joined steemit in February all the way through March, April and almost all of May Hive account@killerteesuk was posting around an average of once an hour day and night and not on the Hive account@buildawhale blacklist for spam.

This post is not to argue whether or not someone like Hive account@killerteesuk is blacklisted because they are a fountain of ideas or they're doing it for a quick steem buck. The point of this exercise was to use an example of a user who insists that the user was unfairly blacklisted and try to come up with a hypothesis for a possible reason. I don't know whether or not my hypothesis is right about spam being the reason Hive account@killerteesuk was blacklisted. That's only the conclusion I am drawing from all available circumstantial evidence.

One final note: If anybody joins steemit and makes many posts every day hoping to get rich quick in my opinion that is also fraud. It is my understanding based on this linked post that the 15 STEEM power delegated to each account created by steemit is a loan. If you sign up to steemit only to get rich quick or under some false pretense you are theoretically taking that delegated 15 SP away from someone who honestly wants to share ideas and use that delegated 15 SP in meaningful ways.

If you want to believe that this post is biased because I have used Hive account@buildawhale to promote my posts several times then you are free to do so. Please don't complain to me about any blacklistings. As a customer of Hive account@buildawhale I have as much influence over them as I do over my local McDonald's. No, you are not sorry you no longer offer the McRib. People who are sorry don't smile like that while saying sorry. Sorry people don't call security after they realize that I am not leaving without a McRib. Sorry people don't tell security I fled into McPlayland which forced me to improvise the use of innocent kids as speed bumps trying to evade capture. Sorry people don't...

Sorry. I got off-topic for a moment. I'll save McDonald's for a future post. I'll probably promote it using Hive account@buildawhale.

 

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