How to nail a lesser spotted bad actor in bulb

MXMp...HPV9

1 Jun 2024

140

As a relative newcomer to this web3 blogging platform that is called bulbapp hereafter referred to as Bulb, I have been watching from the sidelines.

I must admit I was disappointed after I signed up at the quality of the blogs I was reading. Many were just copy and pasted from elsewhere, there were blatant scams, there were identical blogs being posted by different users.

Would I stay and use bulb? ... For a while the answer was going to be a NO.

There is a green tick or check mark against some users. I have no idea what it means, but I did see that is was not that relevant as there was someone with a green tick who was blatantly a bad actor.

Not to be discouraged I did post two blogs on Bulb and this makes my third Bulb.
I even reported four blog from two different users (more about that in part 3)

Okay before I start blethering too much, let me say that this blog actually is an entry for a writing competition from @MBA ChitChat .

I refer you to Free $BULB giveaways for writing competition for all the details.

The subject for this Writing competition is...

How to find bad actors or/and moderation of reports correctly with fairness

In reality there are three parts to this writing prompt:
Part 1 How to find bad actors
Part 2 How to report them
Part 3 How to ensure that the reporting process is conducted fairly

Part 1 How to find bad actors

For some of our non native speakers amongst us they might be unsure what is meant by bad actors...

❌ It is not Bad Actors the Book by Mick Herron published on May 10th 2022!
❌ It is not movie or stage actors who can't act either!
✔️ It is (courtesy of Merriam-Webster dictionary definition).

bad actors
: a person, group, country, etc. who purposely and usually repeatedly engages in very bad behavior (such as committing crimes or causing harm to others)

You know whenever money is involved out comes people real characters. Recently I discovered someone whom I regarded highly and is a law student cheated in a vain attempt to win money on a platform. She was part of a gang of four, they did not win thankfully but were discovered after the event finished.

So people will game the system when money is involved. Bulb is no different, in fact it may well be easier as in theory we are all anonymous....

As you get rewarded for commenting, people who write nice job, great, nice , cool project etc are gaming the system. They are cheating they are spammers...

This is bad behaviour and you will be reported....

Now AI on bulb is okay, but personally it turns me off someone. Originality means so much to me. If you just post AL generated blogs then people will stop reading you pretty quick.

Far worse of course is theft... By theft I mean stealing images that are nor free to use for commercial purposes. Writing on bulb you are writing for profit, it is a commercial exercise...check the usage rights. If you can't use your own image get an image from a site like pixabay which has free to use pictures. If you do use that then source the picture.

It is amazing what Google lens can tell us nowadays.

(Gif source)

Likewise copying and stealing text that is not yours is theft, copyright laws are there for a reason..

I mentioned earlier I read a blatant AI generated post, yawn it was fluffing boring, but I read it anyway. Then next on my list was the same fluffing post from a different user.

Guess what, the next day, they repeated the process!

Do you know there are free to use plagiarism checkers? That is what it is called when you steal someone's work.... They are excellent too!

Part 2 How to report them

I shall use my profile to show you, I mean to say I don't want to accidentally report someone do I!

Step 1 Click the three dots to pull down the little menu
Step 2 Click on Report to bring up the screen below

Step 3 Choose the bullet point
Step 4 Complete and Additional details
Step 5 Submit

And that is that ... away it goes into the ether to be dealt with!

Part 3 How to ensure that the reporting process is conducted fairly

First of all let's have a quick look at the Governance process which is surprisingly transparent ...

The moderation team whoever they are have done a fanstastic job in getting all these reports resolved..

You can see the various tabs, there are only 23 active reports and most of them are spam..

One and two word comments are spam ... comment a meaningful original comment or don't bother!

Let's look at the newest Resolved report

Click on View Report and then this comes up...

Confirm it to see the crime!

He commented great ... so yes that is an open and shut case of spam!
His punishment, a 50 points reduction and 5 point energy reduction!

Well that was fair....

My only frievance would be what are the reasons and categories for reporting, could that be made clearer?

I failed miserably when I reported those two blogs...
I went to discord and mentioned it and was told to report it.
So I did...

Let's click on My Governance tab....
First thing I noticed was Moderate to earn ... If people can earn from moderated then fluff yes it needs to be fair!

My reporting stats ... now don't laugh!

I thought I made 4 reports not 5. However, I have been given a 20% report accuracy and am OFF TRACK....

Well I shall not be reporting any posts anymore that is for fluffing sure!

I guess it would help if things were more visible, I mean examples of the categories.

I do like those three Moderation principles and in the first one you can find the Code of Conduct for bulbapp web3 blogging platform!