With the increasing problem of 10 second tracks being botted to the top of lists on Audius, and users uploading tracks that they didn't make, the Audius team is suprisingly unhelpful sadly, with the task of weeding bad actors left to the community. The issue is, we don't quite have the tools to do so.
As it stands right now, Audius has a huge problem, and the team hasn't resolved it yet. With accounts that straight up infringe copyright by posting tracks they didnt make en masse (example 1 ; example 2 ; example 3 ; example 4) or stolen tracks getting into trending (example 1 ; example 2 ; example 3), and 10 second tracks that got botted to hell also being right here in trending (example 1 ; example 2 ; example 3 ; example 4 ; example 5 at 50% site scaling ; example 6 ; example 7 mind you, the examples have tracks from three different profiles) what can we even do as a community? We don't quite have the tools to do anything for that matter. Technically, Audius mods exist, but we don't quite feel their presence, otherwise we would see things being actually done.
So, in the name of the Audius community (especially those who have shown support for this proposal) I'd like to propose a few changes, and solutions to fix this issue.
1 - Getting more mods on the board. With the current number of mods, as we see things aren't being done, atleast in a visible way. An easy fix would be to get more mods on board, so there's a solid team that reacts to reports of such profiles or offending tracks. However...
1.A - If mods currently DO NOT have the power to remove tracks, giving them such power would be critical to have them help with the problem. Without it, we have to rely on the Audius team to actively remove bad actors.
1.B - Offering a monthly divident of 100 or 200 AUDIO tokens to the mods, as a sign of appreciation, if they aren't "paid" at the moment.
2 - Allowing for democratic "elections" of mods, once every quarter or half a year. This would ensure a set rotation of moderators, just so no one gets burned out. A number of Super Mods/Elder Mods would be chosen, from the pre-elections mod set that would always be mods, teaching those who just got elected how to moderate properly and they would supervise deletions, bans and such.
3 - Delegating a community contact from the Audius team, one whose job would be to basically listen to the issues or ideas the community has with/about Audius. This would ensure a smooth ride, where there's a person that is dedicated to helping and listening to the community, instead of devs having to both actually develop Audius and listen to the community.
3.A - A such contact would do a monthly report, where the topics that were talked about with the developers would get listed, and the result of such talks, to ensure that there's actual work done, and in turn, the community can feel that someone up there actually listens to them.
And this is the full proposal. Comment on it on whatever platform you've seen it shared, or here in the comments on the article itself. I want this to be a call to action, as the problem is real, and it could damage the reputation Audius has, and possibly create a lot of legal trouble for the Audius team.
#SaveAudiusFromBots
(image created by Sweeppah using copyright-free assets and the Audius logo)
If you wanna show support for this proposal, make sure to tweet about it with the tag above! Tweets in support will get included in the signatures section.
Instead of "signatures", I just want to thank for the support on reddit, discord and such. I do hope that we can all together push for meaningful change!
If you've liked this proposal and would want to support my work about Audius I accept ETH (and token) donations here: 0xe200fe1caa09ec38f5dc3c8b7b298a2e99e9268d
and BCH either here thru the platform or to: bitcoincash:qrw6973g4ynx2c8qqpfy8ljr3rfjup8gkym3e3slrd
