I Got Flagged Three Times Yesterday. Did You?
Earlier this week, I published my June monthly report on my progress here on Steemit. In the report, I cover various statistics, including the number of posts, comments, SP gained, etc. Among these topics can be found how many flags I have given or received in a month's time.
In May's report, I hinted that I might remove the flagging category. I don't really hand out flags, and I try not to give others a reason to flag me. At least not any obvious reason. However, when I wrote the June report I decided to consolidate them into one category. At the time, I didn't know why. It just seemed like the prudent thing to do. You know, just in case.
Well, I'm not claiming any inspiration here, but yesterday, around 4:35 AM Pacific Time, I got flagged. I found it a couple hours later when I came into my office and logged onto Steemworld. The flag was on my last installment of The Maya, a work in progress full-sized novel I had been serializing on the blockchain. What's more, it was a 100% downvote for $0.00.
I can't say that it made much sense to me, but stranger things happen on STEEM. So, I went to the account's homepage where I found this.
That really didn't make any sense. I don't know if they always do, but generally when there's a bot downvoting, you see an autocomment and a general explanation why. There was none. As you can see, the account was open in June and has a starter reputation rank.
I checked to see if it had any blog posts, comments, replies, or curation. More or less this was the answer for each tab:
No activity, other than flagging, apparently. Further investigation right now found this for yesterday:
Apparently, I'm not the only one they're after.
The idea crossed my mind to contact steemcleaners to see why they might be downvoting a post, but I got distracted, then busy doing other things.
I did wonder if there was a notification on GINAbot. When I went to look, I didn't find one. As it turns out, I didn't have that particular feature set to alert me, so I made sure downvotes were on. You know. Just in case.
I went back to work. A few hours, after another notifications about various things, GINAbot let me know something had happened. When I looked, I saw this:
Okay. Another flag, about five hours from the first, at 100% and for another $0.00. There was no immediate tie to the first, so I went looking it up, too. This is the homepage:
Didn't appear to be connected to steemcleaners this time, but it had a similar MO. Opened in July. No posts. No comments. No replies. No curation. But just like the other, flag after flag after flag and voting power running low.
At that point, I decided I'd better contact someone associated with steemcleaners to see what they could tell me. I didn't get an immediate answer (no biggie) and I continued on doing my thing.
Then, at 3:15 PM, another GINAbot alert, with yet another flag. It came from this account:
Another bot, hitting with 100% and yet $0.00 behind it. The profile image on the blog home page revealed this:
Look familar? Same basic design as the first one but with a different name and a different link, though it too was created in June. This one seemed to claim something to do with Abuse Reports.
Again, it was pretty much following the same pattern as the other two. The difference here was it downvoted a post I had just published.
Three downvotes in one day, after over six months of none. And nary an idea as to why.
Again I got busy and went to bed with the flags largely out of mind.
Today, I saw I had a notification from the individual familiar with how steemcleaners works. When I checked the reply, I found they had fallen victim to the same thing themselves. They added that there were "tons of accounts pretending to be" steemcleaners.
In my reply, among many other things, I asked, "So, what are they up to?"
A while later, I got this response:
It's a group/person (not entirely sure) called The Steemit Defense League. They just have it out for anyone that downvotes people. So their way to deal with it is to make a bunch of fake accounts and pretend to be the people they hate and downvote anyone at random. It's completely pointless and retarded. But nothing anyone can do about it. Best to just ignore it.
We have a list of 70 ish accounts. But feel free to tag me on anything that get flagged. We are trying to get the delegation removed as they are STEEMit created accounts.
Based on the numbers of flags I'm seeing coming from just these accounts, they're making the rounds. Thus far, this Steemit Defense League doesn't appear to be doing much damage, other than a general annoyance.
No doubt there are already similar posts floating out there as to this one, and potentially with one or more of the remaining 67 accounts. With this post, I thought I would make my small circle aware of them, if you all didn't know already.
About This Post
In a conversation with @crypto-econom1st, we were talking about the fact that I hadn't been flagged all. Well, now, that's no longer true. 😁 No small dogs were hurt in the making of this post. Or otherwise.
Images if not otherwise attributed come from steemworld.org, GINAbot on Discord, or Steemit.
If this keeps happening, what then? It's good that you saw it and it did not affect you but how about others? This is such nonsense and stupid.
I think as long as their rep is at 25 and they have no SP to speak of, they won't be doing damage to anyone. There's a long list of folks, though. Just within the last five days one account hit over 850.
Without juice behind the votes, and a means to increase their SP (posting, commenting, curating, investing), they can't really do much, as far as I know. It's smart not to post or comment, because that leaves them open to flags, but it hampers the SP growing abilities, obviously.
I'm not sure what will happen if they keep doing it at $0.00 downvotes at a time. I wouldn't think it would go anywhere, unless there's another part of the system that we don't know about that throws stuff into chaos. Otherwise, they're pretty much tilting at windmills. :)
I backtracked and saw that I have been downvoted twice by two different accounts. If this keeps on happening, then SP build up will be a lot more harder as it already is.
Well, at $0.00 downvotes, they're not doing anything to the rewards on your posts and comments, nor at reputation 25 are they able to do anything to your reputation. Basically, it's a nuisance, pure and simple.
If they manage to build up the accounts somehow (it won't be through downvoting because there are no rewards for that), then they become a problem. They've not even able to build up their reputations flagging, which means they become vulnerable the moment they post or comment. The best thing they could do is infuse the accounts with an investment. That's really the only option they have right now, since they're not bound to get much through curation with STEEM prices so low.
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Hey Glen. I also got flagged and it's basically just impersonated accounts acting as steemcleaners members, flagging random posts it seems. The steemcleaners discord server have taken note of what is happening and made an announcement acknowledging that they are aware of what is going on.
Hey @palikari123. Yeah. I got that they were tuned into it. Any idea whether or not they'll be making that announcement on chain, too? I went looking on their blog and it looks like the same reports they normally do. I know I'm missing out not being a part of a bunch of discord channels and hanging out there, but I can't be the only one who doesn't.
Also, did they say any more about what they can do? Or what Steemit Inc. can do? I can see the rank and file ignoring it and/or reporting occurrences, but someone somewhere should really be able and willing to do something.
Even if it's just listen to the SDL's grievances and maybe do something about them, too. :)
Delegation will be removed to these accounts by Steemit Inc in time. We at @steemcleaners know about them and will hopefully get a post out soon. These are obviously not our bots nor do they belong to anyone they impersonate. They all belong to the same jackass who does nothing but troll random people with flags.
Thanks for your hard work at combating these jackasses @guiltyparties.
Hey, @guiltyparties. Thanks for stopping by.
I've got the part that they're not affiliated with steemcleaners in any way, but I'm glad to know that they are a known entity and that eventually, whenever that is, their delegation will be removed. Any idea when that might be? Is there some kind of litmus test for this? I remember reading a post where removing the delegation of bad actors was a possibility. What I don't remember is if there were any timeframes or criteria for it.
Anyway, I appreciate you looping me in and those who might read your comment.
Even though I have discord, I personally don't engage heavily myself. It is quite handy for announcements like these though!
I'm sure it is being looked into more deeply by the right people, but apparently there are quite a few accounts involved. Here is the official response/ message left in the discord servers of steemcleaners with regards to the flagging.
Below is a post, with regards to the flagging that was posted by the account guiltyparties yesterday.
https://steemit.com/flag/@guiltyparties/the-flag-ring
If you are subject to any constant flag abuse you can report the accounts at the website below, which is the official steemcleaners reporting website...best of all you can do it anonymously!
http://steemcleaners.com/reports/new
Hope this helps!
This is a double edged blunt knife :-)
they flag the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
And thereby they do a perfect impersonation of how @cheatah (did i spell that correct) used to irritate people.
Another possibility as to what and why it is happening is that there has been some talk on some post of making the downvote a rewarded vote like an upvote. Those that are promoting the reward for downvotes, the opinions I have seen from them is that they are doing a service so they should be rewarded.
Perhaps this it to show people just how asinine rewarding down votes would be. I don't know if that is the reason, but people need to be wary of rewarding that kind of action. Can you imagine how bad the downvote cycle would be if down votes were rewarded?
A visible action that people can see and understand the consequences of. Kind of like how @grumpycat tried to show everyone the negative effects and gamification of the self votes on comments. His actions did lead to STINC looking into changing the reward system when it came to self votes, we will see if their solution has any real effect with HF20.
Interesting idea. Why do you think that, though? I've read some of those posts you refer to, but I haven't seen as much of it in the last little bit. Of course, that doesn't mean much. Still, I guess if they wanted to make such a point, this is the way to do, which means there needs to be a big reveal at some point.
I don't know. The more I see of this kind of tactic—do the exact same thing that you swear you abhor to draw attention to it—the less I like. And I didn't like it much to begin with, because inevitably, it's all collateral damage with folks who have the least capability of doing anything about it.
So, grumpycat's self voting on the comments on the other account was meant to make Steemit Inc do something about self-voting? If so, that's a long time coming, and as it is, it doesn't get rid of self-voting in HF 20, right? it just discourages it in the first 15 minutes, or whatever. Unless you really want your votes to go the reward pool.
Anyway, I'm not discounting what you're saying. It's a plausible reason as any. I am thinking out loud and working through it, though.
I am in agreement about flagging. Downvoting in my opinion does more damage than it does good. If the rewards allocated to the post are indeed being sent back to the reward pool where apparently, according to what we've been learning lately about self-voting and upvoting in general, it goes to the highest paid posts, then what good is that?
Stealing from one whale to give to another whale?
I don't know if that is the reason why either. The HF20 self vote issue fixes one small aspect of reward gaming, but as has been pointed out by people of higher intelligence than me about this matter, it is still going to be possible to get more than 100% return on a self vote if done right it will just not be as much percentage wise as it used to be.
The timing of the downvote parade is one of the reasons I think the way I do about it, because it seems to me it was about 2 weeks ago that there was a push for rewarding down votes.
As it was pointed out in other post and comments there seems to be someone (who's name no one knows), that got disgruntled over receiving some down votes a couple weeks ago also.
I do not know why the downvote parade, or if it is something completely apart from the above two thoughts. It could be an attempt to drive people away from steemit to a competing platform, if so they have not done a good job of advertising the competing platform yet. If we suddenly see a push out of a new platform to compete with steemit and part of the advertising is no downvote, then that could be a third thought.
I, like a lot of people, just like to speculate and see where thoughts will go. It is part of our Drama Psyche, where we just have to think of the "Why is this happening now" syndrome.
Ah. Okay. Gotcha. I know I don't see as much as I want to, so knowing it's at least partly trying to figure why someone would be doing this is good to know. As I said, I think the guesses have just as much potential as any. And even if that's not the intent, I suppose it can end up with the unintended consequences of some kind of action being taken, like you referred to with grumpycat. I was mainly fixated on his power grab in enforcing a 3.5 day bidbot vote limit. The other didn't seem nearly the focus, but it's true. He did exploit something that basically big SP would benefit from. And now he's basically all the way out. :)
Those definitely aren't connected with steemcleaners. The people running them probably don't care about the accounts, but they're going to get smacked. Sorry you had to deal with it.
If they keep going, eventually, everyone will deal with it, unless they're picking solely on small SP and moderate to low reps. When you say smacked, how do you mean? Short of closing their accounts, which is a big no-no, what can be done to them? They're not producing anything so they can't be flagged for it themselves.
I guess I'm missing how the smackdown occurs. Not that I wouldn't like to see it. Bashadow has an interesting theory about it, if you're inclined to read their comment here. :)
Steemcleaners will start flagging them. There are a lot of other accounts that use steemcleaners' blacklist, so if they get on there, they'll get flagged to oblivion fairly quickly if they start posting.
If they start posting. I haven't checked today, but I don't think that's in their plans. And in that regard, it's smart, so they don't get flagged into oblivion, but not so smart because they're voter power doesn't go as far as would otherwise. Although the hit to voting power must not be nearly as big when you flag as when you upvote, because they've hitting with 100% flags and been able to do it quite a bit each day.
VP decrease by 2% of your VP per 100% vote. So if you're at 100% VP and cast a 100 power vote, it decreases 2%.
If you're at 50% VP and cast a 100 power vote, your VP deceases only 1% because 2% of 50 is 1. Make sense? So when your VP gets lower, you can cast more votes of lesser value.
You still recharge 20% (of 100) per day.
Okay. So, yesterday from 12:45 pm to 1:14 pm one of the accounts that flagged me downvoted other people 178 times. I have no idea what their VP was when they started or when it ended, only that it's at 22.82% as I write this. Based on your numbers, does that sound feasible? I mean, I get that's how it works for upvotes. But it seems to me that's not happening here with downvotes. The first 2% would give you 25 100% upovtes, and the last 1% would give you 50 upvotes until all your voting power was gone, right? That's 75 upvotes according to my math. What's more, they did similarly for five straight days, so there's no way they were at 100% voting power during that period of time, so they've been flagging way below 100% over that period.
Sounds totally plausible. You can't actually get to 0% VP. Even if you were at 0.01% VP, if you voted again, it would only take 2% of that, so you'd probably have your VP recharging faster than you could use it at that point. They can just keep bouncing off the bottom and they'll recharge 20% (of 100, not if their current power level) every day. So if they got down to 4 or 5%, they would be back up to around 22% VP right now.
Remember, each vote (or flag) is based off the current VP. So if you cast a 50% power vote while you're at 50% VP, you'll only lose 0.5% of your total VP. At that level, you can cast 40 of those votes per day. That's assuming that you wait until the VP recharges to 50%. If you just cast them all at once, you could cast even more because the VP won't have recharged yet, so it will be based on the lower VP.
Okay, well, they haven't been throwing anything but 100% downvotes at anyone. But you're saying they could go on basically forever this way each day if they wanted to and never run out of VP. I mean, it's not going to affect anyone because they have $0.00 to start out with, apparently, but I guess when you have 0, there's nothing to lose, so you keep flagging.
Especially if they can manage to recuperate faster than they spend. What kind of infernal inversion is that?
Now if we can just get more people flagging the stupid haiku bot. That would be wonderful. I'm on it's "harass" list, so I get their comments all the time. I muted them on Steemit, but normally look at comments on Busy... which apparently doesn't honor the mutings.
Oh, the haiku bot.
Apparently I don't talk in haiku, because I've yet to be hit by the bot. I think I might have to start doing that so maybe I can wear the bot out. Do bots wear out? Probably not.
Anyway, I like it much more than I like the grammar nazi bot. That one just doesn't know what's good for it. :)
I don't speak in haiku either. It seems to think that just because my words have a certain pattern sometimes that it's a haiku. It's not. I've told it as much, but it doesn't respect that. I don't think bots wear out... unfortunately.
I don't like any bots that you can't opt out of. In my opinion, you should always be able to opt out.
Yeah, I suppose they don't wear out. It would be nice to be able to opt out, too. Haiku though is relatively harmless. Grammar Nazi is a little more intrusive because it's going around picking out one typing error and calling it a grammar or spelling mistake, when it could probably correct most of some people's posts on a regular basis.
The other bot showing up regularly is the Magic 8 Ball. Some people are irritated by it, too. It does get old after a while, but still rather benign I think.
I think that if someone creates a bot, they should create an opt-out for it. It's that simple. Or you should be able to block them from following you. They could still have access to your stuff, but they couldn't automatically see all your posts because they were blocked from following.
Another thing I would like to see is the ability of the post creator to hide content they don't approve of. It would still be there, but the post creator could hide it without having to use flags to get rid of it. As things stand now, someone can post a reply to your posts and put any kind of pornographic or whatever image, words, gif in it. There's nothing you can do about it other than flag or ask them to remove it. Normally the type of people who put that stuff up aren't eh kind to take it down. I actually saw an example of this on someone's blog. The author had asked and the person didn't remove it.... so I flagged it. And it disappeared because I had a delegation at the time and my vote was powerful enough. As it is, I don't think I could block something posted on my own post.
The way I see it, it's my post, I should be able to control the conversation. Yes, people should have freedom, but it's not freedom to permit anyone to walk into your house and start saying whatever they want without consequence. People get too ______ (fill in the blank) because it's online and they say things they shouldn't because of anonymity/lack of personal connection/don't see the other username as a person. It's complicated, but I think more control should be afforded to post owners. If someone has a thought they feel is getting "censored" on someone else's post... they can always just make their own post out of it. Then if someone wants to silence the idea, they'll have to flag it.
How about instead of an opt out, you actually have an opt in. I'm not sure how that works, but how is it fair to me, you or anyone else that we have to be the ones opting out of stuff all the time because someone thinks it's a cool idea to start running a bot around the STEEM blockchain. I mean, really. Why should I do any work at all? Why should it be set up that you automatically get it?
If you want to get down to it, there shouldn't be any kind of bots running any kind of auto-comments at all, with the possible exceptions of a steemcleaner bot or something else that is a warning or a notification of some kind with some kind of importance. I know it would be a hassle, but unless you make it all or nothing, people find ways around it.
So, maybe the bots should just have to be followed like everybody else, and then they can set up their little sayings in the posts or whatever.
I don't know.
howdy @glenalbrethsen! wow this is a strange duck place. no one ever knows what is going to happen next or why. lol. but if there is no money attached to the flag there is no harm done right? doesn't hurt your growth or reputation?
As far as I know, there is no harm in a $0.00 flag. And, as far as them being able to harm reputation, they can't. The system is designed to keep lower reps from being able to do any damage to higher reps. I'm not sure if that's always the best set up, but in this case, where it's a random abuse of the flag power, I guess it's working out for the best.
I'm not sure what happens, though, when reps are the same. There could be other newbie accounts they're hitting where it could do something to them.
oh ok well it's good that it would be hard for them to damage you rep. I've seen several people on here talk about getting flagged like you did so it's a thing. a bizarre thing!
you're making good steady progress climbing in rep aren't you? is it taking something like a week or 10 days to rise each point or number? like 55 to 56.
It feels painfully slow to me but at least it's moving.
do you think doing 2 posts a day speeds it up?
I'm sure they're making the rounds. Just saw another comment from wolfhart that sounds like it started at least last month with them. If you go to the flaggers' steemworld pages you will see all the flags they're doing. It's quite a few people.
Climbing in reputation gets harder the higher you climb. From 25-40 is relatively quick. From 40-49 takes a little longer, and then in the 50s things get a little steeper. I can't remember the breakdown because they're pretty large numbers, but the thresholds to reach keep getting larger.
I've been progressing through the 50s a little bit faster than I would normally just because I've received at least three curie during that period. I can't remember now when I got into the 50s, but I've been in it much longer than any other range.
Okay, just looked it up. I rose to rep 50 around March 10. That means from then until now has been four months, and I'm still not quite to 57. I went from 25 to 50 in two months and ten days.
So, it drags.
It's painfully slow unless larger SP and rank upvotes you with larger amounts of voting percentage. If they're doing 1 or 2% votes, so they're giving you pennies or nickels, it's pretty much similar to what a lower SP with lower rank voter would do. The idea is for the higher SP to vote at a higher percentage. Not only does that give you a good potential payout, it also ups your rank.
The largest upvote from the curie curation trail boosted my rep by at least 1.5 points. It was probably more than that but I wasn't paying attention to the fractions of a point. The one after that moved it just under 1.5, and the next one after that did it a point. This last one was quite a bit less, closer to .5.
So, I think it's taking much longer than a week to 10 days to change the rep amount now.
It's going to depend on how many upvotes you get, how much they are and who they're from as far as the posts go. In theory, the more posts you have, the more opportunity for votes, but as we discussed earlier, you still need to be seen.
ok, well dang I wish I could get in with Curie..well maybe he or she or it will find me someday! hahaha. you went from 25 to 50 in 2 months and 10 days, that sounds amazing.
Have you talked to any of the higher up ranks about what is used to be like 2 years ago? this one lady is almost to 70 and she was saying how outrageously easy it was for those early members.
she said everyone rose so fast in reputation because the Dolphins and Whales used to vote a great deal more than now, and she said they voted in much greater percentages, and there were few members relatively speaking with just a handful joining each day.
She said they all sky-rocketed in growth and rep numbers! ha! that explains why some of these high rep people have horrible posts and you wonder how in the world did they get where they are? now I know.
hey have you done a post today?
maybe you're slackin today?
Looks like we're chasing each other around our comments, because if you catch up to those, you'll know what I've been doing.
I don't have a post today. There wasn't time, regardless, since I was out for most of it, but I already got 11 posts out this week, which is more or less my goal. I've also been spending all the time replying to comments, which is a good thing.
The friend who introduced me to Steemit was here in July of 2016, so I have some idea from him. However, I have read about it from earlier posts and I've seen the astronomical numbers that were attached to them, too.
The thing is, though, many of those were folks that received the initial distribution, plus whatever they may have invested, so there was all kinds of SP versus people here. Then, the price of STEEM was so low, that even if there was $1000 on a post, it was the USD equivalent of $10, which now would be something close to $8 in rewards to get to the $10 USD. So, it's all relative.
Until STEEM went up in price, they were holding onto a whole lot of not much.
For a while it was looking like we might dip below $1, but it's been treading water mostly since then. Even so, $1 is 100 times $0.01, even though it doesn't seem like much. A factor of 100 puts a dollar at $100, and another puts it at $10,000. So, it may have been easier back then to get it for a while, but it wasn't worth much and you would need to persevere to reap the rewards now.
The other thing about that is, the pay curve was different. You might get nothing on a lot of posts, and then because of the curve, feel like you hit the lottery. Not everyone was so lucky, though, and it just got worse the more people came in.
And, it's predicted that it's only going to get worse as more people come in after us, unless they bring in a corresponding amount of SP. Meaning investing and powering up. Just having folks opening up a free account that they hope to build from there through just posting, commenting and curating won't help. We'll need to attract the investor type too that won't necessarily want to go to the trouble of the social media/blogging aspects of STEEM, but will want to see a return on their investment and potentially do that through more than just speculation. Such as curation, or delegation.
well sir, thanks for explaining all this to me, that makes a bunch more sense and makes me feel better. Now we just need people with money to come in, I wonder how many people are joining these days?
This is what it looks like as far as new accounts goes coming through Steemit:
You can find this if you like on @penguinpablo's blog.
Now, when I joined, the numbers a day were in the thousands, like 7-5 to 7-7 on the charts. For a while now, they've been mostly under a 1,000 with these upticks.
That's not a lot of people, relatively speaking. Now, of course, it's not necessarily where the investors are coming in. As far as I know, you don't necessarily have to open up an account in order to buy and sell it. I could be wrong on that, though, in which case, everyone would be included.
hey Glen, if you're around, what do you think about the 100% setting for newer members, the sp setting to build your sp faster? does that really work?
I think you're going to need to explain that a little more, because I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking.
We all can get to 100% SP, and if we vote at or near it, then we live the maximum amount of upvote that we can. The more we upvote within a 24 hour period, the farther and farther away from maximum we get.
Go and ahead clarify, but I will say there was something I read early on, and I think it's either in the STEEM FAQ or in the etiquette pages where it suggests voting at maximum power 10-11 times in a 24 hour period, especially at lower SP. I'm not sure exactly how that improves SP quicker, though, since you're only getting that back in smaller curation amounts than you would for author rewards.
ok well...evidently you've been slacking off on your mind-reading courses again..plus you didn't post anything today so I see indications of some serious mental deterioration going on.
yeah I do terrible at keeping my voting power, it's usually at around 50%.
what I was asking though, and I reread my question and I didn't even understand it, was on Busy there is a setting to get 100% sp reward and some people say when you are new that you should use that setting because it grows your sp faster.
so I was just wondering if you thought that was a good strategy until a person has some sp built up.
Okay. Now I understand.
You're talking about the payment options we have that were moved off the new post page and onto the settings page on Steemit a couple months back.
The answer to that question is, it depends. The thing about the 50/50 SBD/SP split is, SBD is always considered to be $1, no matter what SBD is. So, when SBD is higher than $1 USD, you get more SBD than you would get if it were being calculated the same as STEEM or SP. It's pretty convoluted math, and I still don't get it all, but essentially, there are fewer times when taking straight SP is going to get you farther than if you take the split, and I don't think we've hit that yet. Even with STEEM above the value of SBD, it's still close enough that you're getting more SBD, even though when you go to exchange it, you end up with less STEEM. I haven't paid much attention to where that point is, nor do I know if I could calculate it. I'm a writer not an algorithm. :)
And that wouldn't just apply to newer accounts, but all of us. And it would really depend on the amount of rewards being received, because incremental is still going to be incremental. Instead of taking, say, 200 days to get to 500 SP with the split, maybe you take 180 days. Faster, but not by a whole lot.
I've been waiting to see posts from folks who know how to do these calculations to more or less clue the rest of us in when all SP might be the better option, but I haven't seen them yet. At least not from the people I trust with such calls. People were doing it a couple of months ago when the prices first reversed and held, and that wasn't necessarily good because SBD was still valued well over $1 USD.
ok I got it. thanks so much Glen!
I also got randomly flagged this week @glenalbrethsen.
This is another example to me of one of the down falls of decentralisation.
Steemit lets a load of crap accounts get registered and then appears to do nothing about it or maybe it just takes time for the message to get through to them to remove their delegation. Let hope it's the latter.
At least the automatic following by 12 accounts every time I post seems to have stopped. 😁
Okay, well, I think it's just a matter of time, and not a very long one, before most of us here will have been downvoted by these accounts. I've also been auto-followed by multiple accounts at a time, which has since stopped.
I'm sure the decentralized nature of the blockchain and its authority has a great deal to do with it, but at the same time, there are measures that can be taken, including some form of know your customer, along with mandatory linking of all accounts to one main account, while limiting the number of accounts that can be opened. I see those as all reasonable steps.
I keep hearing about, oh, doing this or that will open the platform up to a Sybil attack, or some scenario where multiple accounts with malicious intent can be open. Okay, so what are we calling this? Whatever measures that are supposed to be stopping this kind of thing are not stopping it. Even with fewer accounts being approved a day than were coming in when we started, and even with the anti-Sybil attack safeguards supposedly in place.
I'd love to know how any people who have lived under any form of decentralization managed their criminal or lazy elements. I'm sure they didn't just let them run amok among them. I'm sure they must have dealt with them.
Even if it's some kind of tribunal only convened after certain provable criteria is met, so that it wasn't only up to Steemit Inc to deal with, I'm sure we could come up with something to take care of the spammers, the scammers, the plagiarists, the phishers and now the inane flaggers, without putting into jeopardy every other account on the blockchain because we somehow opened up Pandora's Box.
I totally agree with this but have no idea how. Wouldn't we need access to the code @glenalbrethsen?
Are there examples of this then. I didn't think anyone had ever lived under decentralisation. At least not in "modern" times. If there has been this I wonder when and where the last time was.
I'd have to go looking again (and that could take a while) but a while back on someone's post talking about how anarchy or decentralization didn't work, someone in the comments referenced one area somewhere in Asia (don't recall where or when) who have been working under a form of anarchy for quite a long time. Centuries maybe. It was a pretty isolated group of people, I think, and not nearly as diverse in thought, race, or need, so outside of the groups themselves (I think there were different tribes or clans or something), it would be difficult to say if it would work on larger scales.
However, the comment didn't really specify how they went about punishing those who might be deemed criminal. The post was more about general governance than it was about identifying and then dealing with bad actors.
Ha. ha, ha @glenalbrethsen. That first paragraph is exactly the sort of thing I might write. Most unusual for you not to have your finger on the pulse. 😂
Hope all is well in your world and you're not "working" too hard. 😍
Well, when I say a while back, it could have been up to three or four months ago, and I've crammed a lot more into my brain since then. :) As it is, I think I managed to give you the gist of things. The relevant part was how to take care of bad actors in a decentralized system, and that wasn't a part of the comment or the wikipedia entry that I went to look up. Hard to believe there weren't ever any bad people, unless painful death by fireants or something was the punishment.
At any rate, any finger I might have on the pulse would need to be more current and up to date, rather than three or four months ago, right? :)
So far so good this morning. Cranking out comments, and getting ready to do some posting in a bit. Whether I'm working hard, or hardly working, is left up for interpretation, I guess. :)
Thanks for the clarification @glenalbrethsen.
Sounds like working hard to me but in a good way, since you like writing so much! 😁
I got my first downvote the other day as well. I got on steemd and investigated and it was a brand new (day 0) account that appeared be expending all its VP downvoting, seemingly at random. When I got on their blog and saw their name was "Suck my Dick" I just chalked it up to inane and ineffective trolling. I've yet to flag/downvote anybody so it definitely wasn't in response to anything like that.
It seems rather inconsequential right now but it wouldn't take much for some of them to get some (more) delegated SP and make themselves a major nuisance. I don't know what can be done on a large scale to deal with this but this hillbilly is going indulge in a little retaliation if their account ever gets to the point it might be worth something.
When I looked at them, the gladiator one, I think, was actually upvoting some accounts, so it could be the intent of the owner(s) to build the accounts like that. The problem is, if they start posting or commenting, they can be flagged. As far as I know, before that happens, they can't be flagged. So, it would make sense to avoid any of that and try to grow by curation. Of course, that's going to take a while, but if there's some STEEM that can be purchased, or it somehow get delegated, problems would soon arise. Personally, I'd rather they be dealt with now, when they're small and only a nuisance, than try to take them down later when they're bigger.
Some people just love to wallow in the inanity. :)
That they do. Let's just hope this gets resolved before it becomes a serious issue.
Like someone else commented, it is a person using many new accounts to impersonate Steemcleaners. I have a friend on here who is quitting because of it, thinking it was Steemcleaners. I just gave them this link
https://steemit.com/flag/@guiltyparties/the-flag-ring
When they first started, I was initially hit by them ( I assume it is the same loser) and some of the witnesses created a bot to upvote behind those initial accounts. I laughed as neither the up or down votes were worth anything. Not really sure what the idiot doing this is thinking they are achieving, although with my friend he is quitting. Shrugs
Well, the main theory I thought I covered in my post for what they're doing is basically getting mad with folks that downvote them and trying to impersonate them. If it's steamcleaners and abuse reports that are flagging this group/individual, then they're probably not doing things they should do, either, to start with, which makes their retaliating against anyone and everyone more evidence of their bad behavior.
The other thought is, either on purpose or unintentionally, they are drawing attention to a good reason why there shouldn't be any incentives for flagging, like some people want, since right now you lose some voting power every time you do it.
Regardless, it's tough to do things like this without having some means to broadcast your grievances to the affected, because if you're hoping for some action, you're going to get ignored. It would be like terrorists doing something that mildly irritated people but it was so mild that those hit weren't that affected, and then the terrorists tried to announce their demands via fax. :)
OMG, what's next?
They send you comments to request Steem and start blackmailing you?
Again I think this is a big disadvantage of this decentralized blockchain. As steemcleaners is trying to remove the Steemit delegation. Trying? This should already be done by now!
And even better those accounts should just be wiped out!
As far as wiping out the accounts goes, I'd be surprised to see that unless there's some drastic change in policy. As it is, you'd probably have more people up in arms than you would of the behavior. And while I'd like to have something done about it, more than just warning each other and hoping the flagging doesn't continue and actually start taking something off, I can see the point of those who would balk at the idea. You open the door for account burning, you essentially open it for everything eventually. At the very least, I can see the slippery slope.
But if there's a way to make them inactive on the platform, while still maintaining an account, that might do it. As it is, bashadow has an interesting theory about what could be going on, and if so, maybe we don't want them shut down just yet. :)
Is bashed own they specifically about those flagging accounts?
I'm not sure exactly what you asked, guessing you're on your phone here, but bascially bashadow was hypothesizing that these accounts may be trying to make a point. There's been some previous talk about giving flaggers a portion of the reward pool to incentivize more flagging. In other words, you'd earn something akin to curation while flagging.
These accounts could be saying that rewarding flaggers for downvoting wouldn't be a good idea. Some of them need no incentive as it is, and if someone were to create accounts with the express purpose of going around and downvoting, like these guys have, then it wouldn't be very good. As it is, people would be inclined to downvote indiscriminately until their VP ran out completely.