RE: Investigating the whale scam - Assumptions above knowledge.
This is a good post but let me add a few amplifications and one minor correction:
In addition to what @steve-walschot wrote, the system is carefully designed so that having multiple accounts does not give you any advatange. This is different from other systems like reddit where having a bunch of sock puppet accounts means you can manipulate the voting and with upvotes and downvotes. When you see someone voting with 100 accounts because he was or is a miner and has stake split up across accounts (which can't be combined for two years), realize that those votes have no more influence (and in some ways slightly less) then if the same SP were combined into a single account.
Authors are allowed (even encouraged!) to upvote their own posts. There is an option in the UI to automatically do it. One of the benefits to owning SP is influence over the posts (including your own) that get visibility and rewards, and this is supposed to be one of the reasons for people to buy SP! Do you (not you, @steve-walschot, the ones criticizing it) really want to advocate a position that means people have no reason to buy SP because it doesn't give them any influence they are allowed to use without being called manipulators or scammers or thieves? If so, what good is it? Why should it trade for more than zero? If you think it matters whether this is done with the same account or some number of different accounts, see #1 above.
Technically speaking the proxy voting feature works only for witness votes, but generally speaking the point is still valid and there is even a service that will do this trail voting for you. It doesn't indicate anything improper. People are allowed to use their votes as they see fit including copying how someone else votes. If you think the number of accounts you see voting matters, see #1 above.
@smooth
What is your take on accounts like @msgivings (or @mrron), where it was created and hit the trending page from day one, because of the influence of whales? Their votes created the popularity of that account, which was a sock puppet. The only reason it isn't active today is due to the fact that whoever ran that account screwed up and directly copy-pasted some content, which then drew over one hundred flags.
Now, what if this was happening across numerous sock puppet accounts, all being run by the same person/people, who happen to be a whale/whales? Would that not be a problem? Isn't that distinctly different from proxy votes? In that case, we're talking about both author and curation rewards going to the same person/people and the only reason they're getting those rewards is because the creators of the accounts are whales and can vote for them out of the gate. Multiple accounts, multiple rewards - all being influenced and paid out from the limited daily pool.
I haven't seen any evidence of that. I saw a bit of 'plagiarism' (one line, perhaps there was more) by @msgivings but to me that whole incident regarding that account, including the extreme effort people put into looking for even one line of possible plagiarism from an obscure source looked very much like a witch hunt fueled by jealousy.
Do you have actual evidence that whale votes 'created the popularity' and that the account was a 'sock puppet' because I strongly suspect you are making unsupportable claims based on your own bias (and more than likely a bit of jealousy). That is exactly what this post is about.
In the case of @mrron, I never saw any misconduct at all other than possibly reposting pictures without a source, which is hardly an unusual practice on this platform (though certainly not encouraged). Did you? Again, it looked very witch-hunt to me.
I personally rarely if ever voted for @msgivings posts, but I actually liked the content, a lot. (I didn't vote for it because usually by the time I saw it, it was already well-rewarded. I think I may have once or twice and then removed the vote once the reward got very high.) From my perspective, the posts were reasonably well-written and had the right balance of being provocative without being clearly offensive. They indeed provoked a large volume of comment and discussion, with a mix between agreement and disagreement, mostly on the substance of what she was writing (with some hate against her mixed in but that wasn't the bulk of it). I guess 'quality' is always subjective but to me that the ability to spark that sort of engagement and active discussion is exactly what we want, and it brings value to the platform.
Did you actually read my comment? 'Multiple accounts' is completely irrelevant. People are allowed to have multiple accounts and allowed to vote for themselves or their favored writers or content. That is absolutely part of the value of SP as an influence token. If others disagree about the content adding value they should downvote the posts and this results in the original voter having wasted their vote power.
This system operates on a consensus vote system. I could certainly have downvoted every single one of @msgivings posts if I thought they were poor quality and not bringing value, and they would have earned relatively little (or nothing if others did this as well). I didn't because I didn't think they were poor quality. What (some) SP holders give, others can take away. If people holding SP disagree strongly about the value of a post, it doesn't get paid.
Yes. Within the first 3 minutes of posting, @msgiving's very first post received three whale votes. After 23 minutes, it picked up another two. It snowballed from there and repeated on each of her follow-up posts. If you look at the main whale votes on her posts, there is a voting correlation around 98% - over the course of 16 posts. I'd say that's a pretty obvious sign that her popularity and payouts were whale-driven. Either that, or she just had some spectacular luck. But don't just take my word for it - see the votes for yourself:
https://steemd.com/love/@msgivings/my-ideal-proposal
Well, it's convenient to dismiss actual concerns about the credibility of the platform as "jealousy," but no - my claims are not unsupportable. The great thing about this platform is that everything is visible. You just have to know what to look for. And I not only know what to look for - I have found what I'm looking for. Those findings will likely be known to everyone soon enough...that is, if certain involved whales don't flag it into oblivion.
No, it really isn't. Not when these accounts are being created to purposely manipulate the daily rewards payouts and not when those payouts are being determined by the same whales who created the multiple puppet accounts. It is completely relevant to how the system is gamed by those who actually have the influence to game it with impunity. It's also completely relevant when the platform already has a credibility issue.
Sure. We'll just have a group of minnows downvote a post that has been upvoted by a group of whales. That will certainly even things out. Maybe you're not understanding that this is a problem with whales. Only other whales can actually do anything about it. So, if I see a sock puppet account making $1000 on their posts, I can downvote all I want. But then my vote isn't going to do anything except maybe draw attention from the whales that are profiting from the account and the rewards. I can risk my reputation by doing this, but I'd rather see other highly-influential investors/users actually care that it's happening.
See my previous response. It's the same situation. Only whales can counteract whales. If a group of them are behaving badly, then only another group of them can counteract it. Instead of calling everyone jealous, why not address the issue?
Okay that is interesting and I wasn't aware of it. Yesterday someone made the same claim to me about @mrron and I looked and there was no early whale voting (nor much early voting at all) on his first post. So forgive me for being skeptical about these sorts of accusations.
As for the rest of your post, you still aren't getting that 'SP holders' make the decisions in this system, and that may include voting in ways that you don't agree with. Whether that happens to be split up into different accounts or not makes no real difference. That is largely whales, yes. 95% of the SP is very concentrated with a few owners, and with that degree of concentration absolutely nothing you say or do is going to make a difference, except make this a less pleasant environment due to constant complaining. Maybe this system can succeed given that reality, maybe it can't. I'm not really decided on that point. But if you think that is unacceptable, you should just leave. Whining about it won't change anything. It is changing over time, due to selling in the market, but slowly.
Because there is no "addressing the issue" when 95% of the SP is owned by a few people. You either make the best of it, try to improve things around the edges given that reality, or you whine and complain and accuse all day long, making the platform worse and reducing whatever chance it has to succeed (constant bitterness and jealousy does not attract new users). I suggest their former, but I can't control what you do. I indeed would not blame anyone who started flagging you though, because voting is about what is bringing value to the platform, and your approach is not doing that.
To your response to me (thread limit)...
Except that's not accurate. There was early voting from silver and silversteem after only five minutes. After another 30 minutes or so, another three whale votes added to it. Again, this was his very first post and his subsequent posts garnered the same attention, only faster. Here's the link for his first post:
https://steemd.com/travel/@mrron/why-should-you-visit-pakistan
So, we have @mrron and @msgivings - two accounts that received early whale votes and received relatively large payouts over all of their posts. When they were challenged on their credibility, they just cashed out and left. They haven't been heard from since. It may be nothing - or it may be a serious abuse of the system that needs to be explored further. Either way, it's worth finding out for the credibility of the platform, isn't it?
As to the rest of your comment - it doesn't deserve a response. Coming from someone with your influence on this site, it's just disappointing and shameful.
It absolutely is accurate and I'm mildly flagging your post because you are lying and engaging in a continued witch hunt.
The claim that was made to me was "within seconds". I looked yesterday and I saw what you saw. The first major vote within 5 minutes, then nothing (major) for 30 minutes and then most other large votes hours later.
There is absolutely nothing whatsoever about this record indicating any form of abuse and you are misrepresenting it and are making false accusations based on it. Five minutes for the first major vote is hardly right away. This is exactly the sort of timeline that is consistent what I've done nearly every day for the past five months in curation. I look at New, see posts that are quite new, say 0-5 minutes, sometimes voting them up after giving them a look. I look in Hot, and see posts that are a bit older (say 30 minutes), but have been gaining votes (this gives them a high ranking in Hot), and finally I look in Trending and see posts that have gotten a lot of votes (say in the past few hours) but I still consider worth additional votes.
Yes most likely because you and people like you engaged in a witch hunt based on no real evidence, and they either quit or signed up under new accounts to escape the harassment (and I wouldn't blame them for doing either).
I'm sorry, but you are not adding value to the platform with this kind of abusive and hostile behavior toward new users, nor by constantly making false and misleading claims about some alleged abuse. It is more than anything a version of trolling and it has to stop.
@smooth
OK. How am I supposed to know what the claim to you was? I was responding to you when you said:
There was in fact "early" whale voting. I'm not aware of every discussion you have on this platform, so sure - go ahead and flag my comment for that.
Well, no, I'm actually not. It really isn't a "witch hunt" if it was demonstrated that there were in fact problems with those accounts. And, by the way, I didn't engage in anything of the sort while it was happening. I was aware of it, certainly, but it was not my doing.
Well, I'll just go ahead and let all of the other evidence do the talking once it's presented.
I'm sorry that you see it this way. There are a lot of others who do not, including some very big whales. You'd be surprised by the support and what has already been turned up. It's undeniable at this point, and I really don't know why you wouldn't want to know about these things. But it's fine. I'll be sure not to engage with you any longer. You seem to be far more "abusive" and "hostile" than I've ever been - especially to you.
Good day.
@ats-david
I do not consider 5 minutes, 30 minutes, and hours later to constitue "early voting" in any meaningful way. That is entirely typical voting for an active curator who closely follows New (which is hardly unusual) or for a voter who has delegated his voting to someone else (who follows New) and is mirroring their vote (common, but I didn't see obvious evidence of that here).
You are taking perfectly normal, common behavior, and spinning it into abuse, which it is not, selling it on the basis of jealousy and harassment of whales, and trying to impose your ideas of how others should vote. That is absolutely the definition of witch hunting.
That would be a good idea, but then why are these accusations being made and why has this harassment occurred and continues to occur place before, as you acknowledge, the evidence is presented?
When and if you do present this evidence, it better be more solid than someone voting after five minutes.
These sock puppet accounts (misgivings, hanai, mrron are only few exposed from at least a dozen). All these accounts have been instantly upvoted by the same 3 ultra whales within seconds of their very first post ever on Steemit. Then same pattern continued with their every next post. You can clearly see it in steemstats. That is self evident that these whales exactly knew in advance when these very first posts are going to be created. Also, it is obvious that they have not even read those first posts.
Now they try different technique since few days ago after we exposed this. They create sock puppet account and let it post 2-3 posts with no upvoting by them. Then they suddenly jump from 3-4th post and repeat similar pattern.
One of those whales even admitted to create some of these accounts in chatroom, defending that there is nothing suspicious behind them! We have screenshots of that conversation.
That's what I kept on trying to explain to Steve in conversation but he kept refusing to recognise this observation and kept talking about something else - changing subject to his defense of multiple accounts. There is nothing wrong with having multiple accounts. What matters is what you use them for.
This is an example of the kinds of lies that are being spread as harmful and ignorant trolls like you continue to engage in a witch hunt. I'm not going to overlook it any longer and you are being flagged. See my response to @ats-david, which breaks down precisely the timeline of @mrron's first post and clearly demonstrates with objective facts that you are lying and spreading FUD.
If you are going to spew this venom, you're not going to do it without consequences on a platform where I have a vote, and I have one here. Troll elsewhere.