Github Repo

https://github.com/themarkymark-steem/buildawhaleblacklist

Hive account@buildawhale blacklist

The Hive account@buildawhale blacklist is a project I started a while ago to prevent spammers, plagiarizers, scammers, and abusers from being able to use bid bots to boost posts. It also attempts to identify them via Hive account@badcontent so curation efforts will be able to easily identify bad actors before rewarding them.

The blacklist currently has 11,246 entries, all researched and verified by me.

How to use

The blacklist is currently hosted on Github and can be accessed via the raw file link. This link is a list of all blacklisted users updated in real time in a flat text file format. The Repo is licensed MIT so any project on Steemit is able to use it for free.

I do recommend caching it, as Github does not handle frequent requests in real time to raw files. So either pull the report every hour or so or cache the list in ram and update it every so often (hourly is what I recommend).

Who uses the blacklist?

I don't know all the projects who use the blacklist, as I am sure there are some that use it I am not aware of. A few I know of are:

BuildAWhale
SteemHunt
SteemPress
SteemCleaners
Minnow Booster
Post Promoter
brandonfrye
Steemflagrewards

I know other projects are going to be using the blacklist soon and some I don't even know about use it now. Let me know in the comments if you are using my blacklist and I can add you to the list.

Future plans

There are plans to release a public API to make integration easier and more standardized. There is additional functionality being added as well to allow consumers to identify what blacklist users are on and ultimately categories of abuse.

Difficulties

Maintaining a blacklist is not easy, it is extremely time consuming and it opens me up to a lot of harassment. I have been threatened, harassed, and flagged as the result of my efforts. I even have a bounty on my head for 100 SBD by one user to get my personal information so they can come to my house and film whatever they plan on attempting. Not a day goes by I question why I bother in the current state of things. Why care when so few others do? Why should I take profit loses and devote countless hours to fighting abuse when most of the 100+ bots are running on autopilot.

Many decisions to blacklist or not are very difficult as spam is subjective and does not have a consistent black and white definition or benchmark. I have guidelines I have developed to maintain focus and bearing to what I consider spam and abuse. Even with these, I frequently find it difficult to make a decision.

Many of the blacklist entries involve hours of research using custom tools and techniques to identify them. None of this time is rewarded and actually becomes a cost center to me on Steem. I do not have free delegation or sponsorship to maintain this project and I currently do this out of pocket.

I have frequently found large abuse networks consisting of hundreds of users. Some abusing faucet delegation, some market delegation, and some their own stake. There is no one clear rule of what the community allows and will tolerate, in fact almost every Steem user has their own opinion on the matter.

Contribution

The blacklist is updated multiple times a day and is a living list that is maintained on a regular basis.

Currently, I am the sole contributor and supporter of the blacklist project. I do work with SteemCleaners closely as well as a few other projects who focus on reducing abuse on the platform.

Witness

If you want to support a Steem platform free from spam and abuse, please consider voting Hive account@themarkymark as a witness. I am passionate, present, and active, something that severely lacking on this platform. I also administer multiple public and private full nodes and spend a lot of time helping and educating other users and preventing other types of abuse.