Like all rewarding platforms, Torum was also hit by spams. How can it not be when Torum rewards all post, threads, and comments indiscriminately not matter how bad their qualities are. There was a time that Torum made lots and lots of warnings and finally Torum had to make a tough decision to wield the ban hammer.

The Usual Spams

The usual spams are usually comments that does not have anything to do with your contents and does not have any intention to form any connection with your contents but only cares about the spammers agenda. Imagine below this post, there is somebody commenting like this:

"If a poor widow can be rich after losing all she has, you too can be richer. My advice to you all is believe and pray. Mr. Fajar Purnama is my mentor, I call him widows trader and widows account manager. Reach him at https://www.torum.com/u/0fajarpurnama0."

This post has nothing to do with trading, has nothing to do with widow, and proposes for someone else to manage your money where even experience investors always says "not financial advice".

The Spam in Torum

Commenting "good" may not be a spam in mainstream social media but can be a spam in Torum. Why? Because we get rewarded for commenting.

This is true for all other rewarding platforms.

While spam comments are forgivable but posts or threads are unforgiveable. Why? Take a look at the image above. These people posted nice, good, hello, hi, or random unreadable posts got rewarded with 1 XTM. While Emerson made a quality post which took efforts was also rewarded with 1 XTM, was this fair!?

Naturally, those users are banned as announced in TORUM’s First Community Ban Hammer.

You may understand now that these kinds of XTM are not free but requires you to deliver quality contents in exchange. Therefore, the spam in Torum includes the act of having no intention in delivering quality to get the XTM reward which is the same as stealing XTM. Torum also stated about prohibiting spams in their terms of services but if Torum agrees with my definition and Alwin's comment that nice, good, hello, hi, or random unreadable posts are potential spams, then their terms of services needs update.

Can spam affects XTM's price?

Yes, in a negative way. Almost all spammers steals XTM to sell, so ofcourse the price appreciation will drop. For new users, Torum will lose opportunity as these users already lost interest to invest due to the spams. If things gets bad, old investors will sell doubting the future of Torum. The worst case, even the spammers will be in disadvantage because they stole XTMs that are worth nothing and wastes of efforts for them. However, do not worry for now as none of these can happen now. The reason is that Torum is still in beta and still holds and locks all of the XTM on their system. They have a chance to fix this until XTMs are distributable. For example, they can check for spams now and penalize users who misconduct and once everything are clean, then distribute the XTMs. It is after the distribution phase that we may start worrying.

How to reduce spams?

Here are ways that I know and please leave a comment if you have other ideas:

• Torum's Shard that may represent trust: Jayson said that one way is to have missions initially locked and once enough shards are accumulated then certains missions will unlock. Shards can only be received through tips from other users where logically if user tips then the contents contain qualities and the creators gains more trust.
• The traditional many and strong moderators: currently implemented by Uptrennd where you get massive downvotes even by commenting "what a nice post". Torum can implement this but ofcourse manpower is demanded.
• Public moderation: currently implemented by Steemit and Hive Blog where low quality contents and comments can be downvoted thus penalizing the malicious users. The downside of this system is that whales are the gods of the platform where they can elevate and destroy any post they wish.
• Automatic filter usually an AI: implemented by read.cash, they too got bombarded with spams after they implemented The Random Rewarder, and finally they implemented an artificial intelligence on it can detect and rewards worthy posts only.

I am writing this article as Torum ambassador @0fajarpurnama0. Even if I'm not an ambassador, I will still be writing these articles but with a different time frame, maybe once a month or three months? I hope to see you soon in Torum: https://www.torum.com/signup?referral_code=0fajarpurnama0.