The growth of Steemit has been a good thing, but it has brought in a plague of quick-buck spam-locusts.

I see conscientious Steemers putting up posts explaining to the spammers why it is a bad idea to spam when they should Steem instead, but spammers being spammers, they do not listen.

Delicious teriyaki spam comes in a tangy sweet and salty flavor. Steemit spammers have no such yummy flavor

As much as I hate the use of the flag, the deluge of these stinging insects has not abided with calls to reason.

There is only one solution

Flag ruthlessly. Get over your courtesy and natural inclination to be nice. These spammers degenerate the value of our system.

I have spam comments on my posts a second after I publish...what is more annoying is that I don't even get an upvote from these leeches LOL.

How to flag honestly

• You should check out at least the first two comments that sound like spam on your posts
• Go to the commentor's page
• Check out his comments tab
• If all you see in his comments are the same phrase over and over...at least flag that comment on your post!
• How soon was the comment posted? Was there enough time for the commenter to actually read the post? (thanks to Hive account@unspeakableme for bringing this up)

This sucks, but it is necessary

Personally, I have a habit of upvoting my commenters; not all the time, and not those that snark or issue a blanket denial of my points w/o argumentation, but usually anyone who takes the time to make a comment.

It becomes hard to do that fairly when my comments are filled with "great post" lies, and begging posts (which are spam as well).

But if we don't start taking the personal time to slap these spammers in their naughty little typing fingers, they are going to continue to swamp our platform with useless, time-wasting drivel.

You don't have to go spam-hunting, or to go down and flag every spam post one of these leeches make, but please take the time to punish on or two of those that crap on your posts!

Thanks for reading!

[Edit: Hive account@freedomengineer reminded me of a post I wrote last month that may help new Steemers that might get caught in a spamhunt crossfire:
How to comment on a post past "Great Post!"

Make sure that you check out Hive account@sc-steemit's comment on that post, as it is a great addition to my own post]