I Saw a Work of Art
Digital art, to be precise.
I've been presenting my digital artworks here on Steemit for over two years. Why not check to see what the competition is up to, I thought.
I clicked the 'New' tab. Within seconds an image caught my eye. Not only that, but this account had a reputation of 25.
Did I just find a new artist who could probably use the help of a friendly dolphin dude with a happy-happy fun time vote, I thought.
I clicked the post!
(Excitedly!)
Dammit. This is a shitpost, I thought, because it was.
Did I ever tell you folks the story about how I can't stand it when someone steals another artist's work and attempts to make money with it here? No?
Here's the short version:
I hate it!
Your typical artist here will write something about their latest creation. If they're short on words, they will at least give themselves credit for producing whatever it is they're showing off that day.
The post I clicked was just a simple image. No words, nothing. It takes me a split second to right click on an image and do a reverse image search using Google. I found the original source of the image within another split second.
I was not impressed.
So I decided to do a little more digging.
This new member was spitting out post after post every few minutes. Every post was stolen. Copy/pasted from somewhere else.
The title of one post said something like, "Hi I'm new to reddit..."
This is Steemit, you buffoon! At least change the title if you're planning to rip off posts and pass them off as your own!
(Not the sharpest tool in the shed.)
Enter
The Resource Credits
Normally, once I catch one of these spammer types, I flag their posts.
This time around, I wanted to mess with this guy.
I'm going to say some stuff, hopefully anger this guy, and make him waste the rest of his resource credits arguing with me, I thought.
Unfortunately, he was too busy stealing posts and publishing them here to even notice I said something to him.
I kept watch. Every few minutes, a new post. Nobody can type that fast. Nobody.
Eventually I was handed an opportunity to have some fun:
I've been curious to see how far someone can go with their spamming efforts since they gave us this new Resource Credits system. I want to know if it works.
Success!
It works like a charm.
With the account information available here(steemd.com), I'm able to show you exactly how much this spammer was able to accomplish with this series of screenshots. Starting at the top is the point they ran out of Resource Credits, scrolling down to the point this account began their spamming rampage.
Spam for about an hour, maybe a little more.
Done. No more Resource Credits.
At the time of this writing, that account will have to wait quite awhile before they get a chance to be able to churn out one spam shitpost after another like that.
Yes, a reputation of 20.8 was in order. I downvoted six of the posts, 5% each time. Oops.
Many of you work hard, we all have a limited amount of voting power to use, those votes should go to you, not a spammer like that so if I make the posts invisible, that at least slightly increases your odds of a vote going to you rather than the spammer.
Steemit's New Self Cleaning Feature
It works.
I've seen these spammers before. Post after post after post after post. It goes on for hours upon hours. They distract potential viewers away from your posts. They steal your posts. Nothing good can be said about these spammers.
Now, within an hour, they're done. They can't carry on, the Resource Credits must charge. They won't have the patience to sit there and wait, so that's good. Maybe in a few days he'll be back? I don't know. At least there's now something in place that automatically puts a stop to this.
In My Opinion
I still think this spammer was able to do too much. Knowing what I know now, I would suggest some fine tuning.
If one post cost 1 Resource Credit, a post published ten minutes later should cost 2 Resource Credits. If one post cost 1 Resource Credit, a post published four hours later should cost 1 Resource Credit again. If one post cost 1 Resource Credit, a post published two hours later should cost 1.5 Resource Credits.
Something like that would put a stop to the spam a lot faster.
Conclusion
I'm glad I got to meet Mr. Avinash9999.
Like many of you, I wanted to see this system in action. I didn't plan to sit here and watch all of this unfold, I was just out browsing the feed. This situation literally fell into my lap.
The questions I had are now answered and I didn't even have to ask. I can see how beneficial this new system is now and I hope you can as well. It's not pointless. We needed this and before it becomes old news and something we take for granted, I'd just like to say thanks to those geniuses who worked hard behind the scenes to give it to us.