Exposing the "Steemit Defense League" - Bought Accounts on Microworkers w/Screenshots
As many of you know, there is a guy who basically decided to rip Steemit apart by creating 70+ accounts and downvoting tons of, at times random, people. A lot of people have written articles exposing these accounts as connected to each other and basically just being a "Flagging Ring" designed to bring down accounts the creator either has a grudge against, or just randomly decides to screw over. This person, and their accounts, are known as the "Steemit Defense League".
Great articles on this include the following:
@mikepm74 https://steemit.com/abuse/@mikepm74/steemit-defence-league-you-have-my-attention-so-now-what
@themarkymark https://steemit.com/abuse/@themarkymark/steemit-defense-league-is-dead
@guiltyparties https://steemit.com/flag/@guiltyparties/the-flag-ring
and @berniesanders ' perhaps less in-depth, but short and sweet, "fuck you" to the Steemit Defense League https://steemit.com/steem/@berniesanders/steemit-defence-league-is-a-fucking-joke
However, I feel I have something to add that not many people know about. And that is evidence that all of these accounts were created by using a site called Microworkers to pay people to make accounts and turn over the password and username. I have been a Microworkers user for about a year now, and they are a mostly legitimate site that occasionally allows some gray-hat activities. However, this is black-hat and actually violated their terms of service, so the campaign was terminated. Before that could happen however, I remember that about 70-90 people had created accounts and turned them over through this assignment. See the screenshot below for what remains of it. My personal info is redacted.
Additionally, here is the URL to it, although you might need a Microworkers account to see it.: https://microworkers.com/hm_jobs_details_not_running.php?Id=15385d206047
When I contacted Microworkers to ask about that campaign being cancelled, here is what they said: 
Around this same time another, more innocuous, job was posted on Microworkers - one that I actually completed. This job was simply to submit the name of my Steemit account. I did this because it was quick, and nothing seemed that unusual about it since it was only asking for a username. I figured somebody might be looking to create a network of similarly minded people to write about similar topics, or something like that. You can see the whole description in this screenshot: 
As you can see "Member_198227" made this assignment. Microworkers doesn't give much information on users, and rightly so. However, it does give some basic information about what country the person is from, since some jobs might be specific to certain languages or countries. The "Steemit Defense League" accounts are known to resteem articles in several South Asian languages. Where is Member_198227 from? 
I admit this isn't definitive proof, but it would be a hell of a coincidence.
From what I have seen in the most recent articles on this issue, the so-called "Steemit Defense League" has about 70 accounts associated with it, which makes me almost certain that this Microworkers campaign is how those accounts were created. Again, it would be a hell of a coincidence otherwise. Interestingly, the Steemit "Defense" League accounts almost all seem to have been created between one and two months ago - the exact same time this campaign was active on Microworkers. If it is a coincidence, then who else out there is running around with 70+ accounts? Either way it is a problem, but this is exactly how a desperate, obsessive person would make accounts to flag people. The timing, number of accounts created, and the location of the Microworkers user all point to this being how the Steemit Defense League was created. Literally paying shills to gain bot accounts - it's just sad.
Now I ask for a few things. First off, I am a smaller account, so downvotes from Steemit "Defense" League, even if they are worth very little, are a real danger to me. Therefore, I ask that people upvote this post if you found it interesting or useful. That is more out of protection than anything else. I assume I will be targeted for this post. Second, it is great if people share this information, link, and screenshot, but please link to this article if you do.
Thank you, and I hope this goes some way toward exposing just how sad this effort to rip apart Steemit really is.
I have a few bots running to counter their votes. I wrote about them a while back. As a matter of fact, that image on @themarkymark's article was something I put together with @overkillcoin's help.
They even went so far as to use my identity with @fush.carbon which is annoying. Anyways, hopefully the counter votes from @randohealer and @neutralizer will help.
Would be nice if @ngc / @nextgencrypto/ @abusereports would help out as it's really lower SP accounts like mine that are delegating to countering these votes and a lot of us were targeted for supporting them. Now, they are targeting people that support me so it's definitely personal at this point.
We really need to get that pull request going. Here is the latest round of counter upvotes.
https://steemit.com/abuse/@randohealer/sdl-botnet-downvote-randohealer-report-2018-07-11
Thank You man for this amazing investigation. We gotta know more
No problem! I was at the right place at the right time to put this all together. I'm trying to think of how to find out any more information that might be out there. I'm just not sure how to get more information though. I suppose contacting Microworkers might work? Anyway, feel free to share any of this information!
You. Are. A. Godsend.
I appreciate finding this post, which I found as a re-steem via @soma909.
I was just hit by one of the flagbots in @admiralbot's list; aside from the annoyance of this seemingly random "drive-by," it's problematic when you're part of contests and challenges that frown on participants having been flagged... even if it was a "microdust" flag.
The other annoying thing is that this particular bot "insinuates" itself as being affiliated with a legitimate long term Steemian... which basically is a form of identity theft. Or fraud. Maybe some of the others do, too.
=^..^=
we have flags by new accounts
@demu and (following you already have in you list)
@kissmylips I am not sure if @vladimirtopiev belongs to them. Also a REP25 and new account flagging around (massive) but at least there is some (resteemed) - content.
Delegation not withdrawn yet from those accounts
Frankly, I think one of the guys you mention in your artice is far more destructive, vindicative and evil than all of these 76 accounts combined. That guy has single handely destroyed my account because of a single comment in which I disagreed with him. And he has done the same to a lot of other people, some of which I know personally. Their only crime was to disagree with him.
As such, I cannot upvote your post. It's against my principles to do anything that might help that guy... and since you're promoting him, I refuse to vote on this post.
I won't name him because I don't want to attrack that bully again. And, anyway, if you have been paying attention to the Trending Tab, you already know who I'm talking about. (If you don't, start opening your eyes and you'll see what a true kindergarten bully looks like.)
I believe I do, and if that's your experience with him I understand. I don't really try to get involved in that particular battle, just because at this point I know very little about it.
This is why I don't like him.
I agree. Funny thing is he think people care if they get downvoted. If I made money from this site then I would probably care.
I guess you are talking about @berniesanders?
Image source
Thanks for publishing this information... one of the really annoying things is the way some of these bots spoof themselves as "fighting spam on behalf of" and then some legit Steemit user... who actually has NO affiliation with the bots.
I started reading about this nonsense a few days ago after getting pinged by the first of these flag bots a couple of days ago. Yes, it was a tiny "dust flag," but still very annoying.
This whole thing is kinda depressing, actually. Do these people sincerely not have better things to do with their lives?
=^..^=
Thank you for sharing this information!
I just have one question about SP delegation to these accounts.
Some of my friends could not register on Steemit. After 3 weeks of waiting their applications were canceled. One of my friends was able to register at the second attempt, and my friend artist, even at the second attempt was not able to get an account here.
My mom wanted to register on the site, and her application also received no confirmation. I was forced to buy an account for her. I did this through https://anon.steem.network/ recommended in one of the posts as a reliable service.
After buying an account for my mom, she had not +15 SP delegated, I bought SP for her.
Everyone who downvoted my post has a delegated +15 SP. I don't know if this Microworkers add +15 SP to new registered accounts. If no, therefore, I suppose that these f***ing accounts were registered through the steemit website.
And maybe this was happening at a time when my friends were trying to create accounts. The friend who received the account on the second attempt concluded that there is a certain waiting limit for registration, and if the application queue was not registered before the time limit expired, the application is canceled. Perhaps at this time, many new applications were submitted simultaneously, which created a large waiting queue, and so many people did not receive their accounts, while these bastards got their accounts for their dirty business. This is definitely an attempt to discredit the Steemit site and make people stop writing posts.
I expect these accounts were all registered through Steemit, Inc... specifically with the intention of getting the automatic 15SP delegation.
The purpose of using microworkers was that you can only open one account per phone number.... so you pay hundreds of people a few cents to create ONE account each, and then transfer it to you. Bingo! You have hundreds of accounts with 15SP delegations each. Which — at current prices — amounts to flags/upvotes on the order of 0.001 Steem at 100% strength.... and a fraction of that, at 6% or 8% or whatever is left after leaving 1000 flags.
Meaningless, by itself... but 300 of those set loose with a singular focus... it becomes "something."
=^..^=
@curatorcat is exactly right. Rather than buying accounts, you get other people to each make a single account. So all of those real people who make accounts are technically not doing anything wrong, and probably none of them knew they were contributing to anything negative. I think you don't get the delegation when you pay for a second (or more) account, but you do when it is your first account. So, technically, all of those were the first accounts for those people, so they got the usual delegation.
Great detective work!
I still have two questions:
@naturicia
Thank you, and here are the answers I can give.
I am afraid I did not check the others. I never got my account approved for Mechanical Turk (although I know they have good standards, so they probably wouldn't allow this sort of campaign), and I haven't checked Clickworkers for like a year because I found that Microworkers is the only one where I can find decent paying jobs. I don't see anything on Clickworkers now, but I have no idea if anything was ever up on that site. Their standards are similar to Microworkers though, so they also might not allow such a campaign. As I mentioned in the article, this campaign did violate Microworkers rules, but it somehow slipped through temporarily.
On that note, because I did not do this job on Microworkers, I didn't keep a close eye on it. I remember seeing that at least 70 people had turned in the task. However, it was 12-24 hours after that when it was cancelled, so it would be more than 70 accounts if all workers did the job correctly. I think that the job was looking for 100 workers, but I don't remember for sure. Since the job was cancelled by Microworkers, rather than completed, that means he did not get to 100 people. People were taking it pretty slowly, so I doubt he got too close to 100. Therefore, I can say with a moderate degree of confidence that he got between 70-90 accounts. I've seen people say that about 76+ accounts are associated with the Defense League, so that sounds about right. Can't be 100% sure though.
Edit: As for the price you asked about, I'm really totally sure. The price depends a lot on what region he selected. For example, it is more expensive to get workers from the US and Europe since the cost of living is higher in those countries. Microworkers makes you pay more to specifically target Western workers. On the other hand, if he let people in Africa and Asia do it, it would be much cheaper. I think about the lowest it could get would be 11 cents a job. Or about 20 cents if Microworkers determined it was a "complex signup" - which they should have. If he got Americans it would be 40-50 cents per person, with a fee for starting the tasks. Here is what it looks like setting up a "complex signup" task with American Workers:
And here is a "complex signup" task without any country restrictions (includes the whole world):
It's amazing what you can do by throwing a couple quarters at people.