Threat Level - Red
No new posts but the accounts still have not been recovered. I've flagged most of them to near 0 reputation. If they post again I'll make sure they are -1.
The 'Threat Level' will remain at red for another 24 hours if we have no new reports of phishing.
Spoke too soon! It was reported that the account was stolen and has been used for memo transfers.
ACCOUNT BLOCKED: We have detected unauthorized activity in your account. Your account has been BLOCKED for your protection. Please Contact Account Security: https://security-steemit.com.mx/account-security-contact
Report Threats
If you discover a previously unknown threat or have new information on an existing threat please report it to #threat-reports on Discord. Before reporting take a minute to scroll up to see if it has already been reported. I created the channel for reporting only. Discussions can be held in #steemitabuse on Discord or steemit.chat.
It Is Officially Monday!
Ever have one of those days were you wanted to crawl back in bed and hide for 24 hours? My biggest mistake? Sitting down to check out chat before my first cup of coffee.
My Perspective
Believe it or not spam is a pretty subjective issue in the community. One that was highlighted recently when a former member of and a friend was found to be copying and pasting comments.
If you don't already know he was with
when it started and later found that trying to grow the community and support those in India took up most of his time.
For his own reasons he copied and pasted various comments on posts. Less than 200 a day. 200 is about 50 less than some of our most active commenter's reach at their peak.
Is it something I'd do on my personal account? No. It sets a bad example as a member of . But then again I copy/paste then edit comments all day for
some days.
IMO this type of behavior isn't front page headlines when it comes to abuse. It doesn't even show up as a blip on my radar. I've been questioned repeatedly today over that so I'll explain why.
Intent. I can't believe any member of the community that puts as much time and effort into growing it as has started copying & pasting comments that don't come close to being as high frequency as a bot nor has a voting trail has the intent to spam, scam, or harm steemit.
He's not the only one that does this. I've had complaints about other users who I've contacted that feel they don't have the time to support their followers or see some posts without comments and they drop a copy/paste comments. While they may not upvote the post they comment on they are active in upvoting others and not themselves. Is this acceptable? Ehh.. I'm on the fence. I leave it up to the user receiving the comment to decide.
If you don't like the behavior... Flag it! If they flag back then report it. I've spent too much time today justifying the lack of action on my part. It seems to be expected that I make an example out of . If I did that I'd have to track down the thousands of comments made by users everyday that could be copy/paste.
When an active and supportive member of the community is doing something you don't agree with track them down and talk about it. Calling them a spammer in public before trying more than a couple comments to have a conversation with them when they have worked hard to support the community isn't cool IMO. Now, if you confirmed they were plagiarizing, draining the reward pool with a voting trail on spam comments, or committing identity theft I might have a different view over a public confrontation.
There are too many users out there that post with the intent to do nothing but take as much money from the reward pool as they can and they do it the most expedient way possible which most of the time means posting something we consider abuse. That is where I believe my focus should be not running down errant users posting 'grey area' posts & comments who are otherwise active and supportive members of the community. If you disagree let me know.
If someone wants to have a discussion about how I classify spam and discuss what type of spam is harmful to the community I'll be happy too within reason.
Boosters
Seems someone has thought of another way to profit from boosters: Introducing MoneyDoubler! Double Your SBD In 48 Hours For Free...! (Update)
While this users seems to be honest about what he is doing I can see others hopping on the bandwagon. If that happens and users follow through then it should take care of itself when the value of the each upvote declines.
Witnesses & Account Creation
One thing you will rarely do is hear me speak badly about other members of ,
, witnesses or a member of other groups I work with. Today is one of those exceptions.
Alternatives to Steemit.com Signup!
When creating apps and services for the community as a witness I think we should do it responsibly. Charging $50 SBD for creating an account with 30 SBD delegation isn't what I'd call responsible.
One of the things I've considered and would love to do is offer to create accounts with around a 100 SP delegation and mentor a few new users at a time. Of course time is one thing I'm always short on.