There is quite a bit of a learning curve to the Steem platform and there are many things the average or new user does not see that goes on behind the scenes.

Steem Guilds

Since it's a competition for the reward pool and the userbase has grown over the past year, there have been collaborations among early adopters and other large stakeholders to work together. There are many different ways they run their guilds but ultimately combine their stake to vote up content. Some may just do that to vote for only their little group of close friends and nothing really wrong with that. It's their stake and can use it how they want. There are even cases where a large stake holder will give the posting key to multiple people to do the voting to compete with others.

So this may make it challenging for new comers or those that aren't apart of these guilds to earn large rewards.

Since you can earn curation rewards as well by voting on other content, there are curation guilds where users join a trail of voting. It's strategy to earn the most amount of curation rewards with how the system is built. Trying to vote 30 minutes after a post is made, to maximize curation rewards or anticipating a large stakeholders vote on a post.

Voting Bots

A lot of people are aware of voting bots but not so much for the new comers on the platform. There are mixed views on having a software to automatically vote up content without being viewed but like any other social media platform, bots can be used in similar ways.

Whether you agree or disagree with bots, they around and will be used. When you see your post getting an upvote, it may not necessarily mean someone has read it and upvoted it themselves. It could just be a bot that voted on it. That doesn't mean the voter that was using a bot won't read it later to catch up on viewing content. There are only so many blog posts a person can read through a day and using a bot can help distributing rewards to more users rather than the amount a user is able to read in a day.

Bots can also be used to maximize curation rewards but using bots in this type of way is not for everyone. Some users frown upon it but in the end, there's nothing really to stop someone from using it just like how there is no real solution to stop self-upvoting. Bots can be developed and used in a good way. If there is a great blogger that is consistent with putting out quality content, then having a bot to automatically vote for their posts is a good way to show support and that way, you won't miss voting a post from your favorite blogger.

You can use voting services but I would recommend learning how to run one yourself instead of giving out your keys. That way your voting and can't be abused by a service that has your keys. There are trustworthy services out there, but running a bot yourself will ensure that you have total control of your voting.

Sock Puppet Accounts

A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term, a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock, originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an Internet community who spoke to, or about, themselves while pretending to be another person.

-Wikipedia

There are many users that have multiple accounts and all are not used for deception or in a negative way. Some are used for projects which, I wouldn't really consider those sock puppet accounts and for other use cases. However, there are many people that are using alternate accounts as sock puppets to deceive and/or manipulate to earn more rewards and mislead the community. There is nothing to stop another user from having multiple accounts since you can purchase an account through @anonsteem. Some of the early adopters were able to mine new accounts before that feature was removed so most likely, you have come across a sock puppet account.

This is not really dealing with sock puppet accounts but there is more good than bad to having multiple accounts. One good thing about having an alternate account is for security reasons. If one were to delegate SP to an alternate account and keeping the delegating account keys safe, one could use the alternate account and there would be no need to worry about losing funds if it was hacked as long as there are no liquid STEEM or SBD on the alternate account. A hacker can't power down delegated SP.

Ghost Writers

There are some users that hire writers for their accounts. Some don't state if their blog post was written by someone else and that is considered ghost writing. There is nothing to prevent this and I don't really see a bad thing with it as long as they are contributing good content on the platform. So there may be some accounts that you think are great bloggers but in actuality, it's someone else that writing the content.

Remember, it's a competition on here. We see businesses hire writers for their Facebook and other social media platforms to put out content for them. This is not much different when it comes to Steem.

There are a lot more that goes on behind the scenes but this is just a few for those of you that aren't aware of these things.




Image Sources:1,2,3,4,5

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