It&#x27;s Time To Call a Spade a Spade: The @blocktrades Phenomenon

ats-david (74) 8 years ago

Just so we're clear - these were posts that were upvoted, then the abuse was identified, and then the upvotes were removed after @blocktrades was notified that abuse had been found?

$11.54

3 votes

svamiva (60) 8 years ago

I think so, at least I've seen one of such cases https://steemit.com/nature/@haster/the-most-beautiful-places-of-the-world
I think he's having some curation bot (just as many here do ) and this bot could need some improvement )

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nextgencrypto (65) 8 years ago

When I spoke to him he claims to spend a lot of time on his curation...obviously that's not the case. He's also said in the past that his wife does his curation so who knows what's really true at this point.

I'd be curious to know when he voted on this posts. I've got to assume it was near or after the 30 minute mark to ensure he gains all curation rewards without much going to the author.

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james-show (58) 8 years ago

With a pretty senseless bot of your own, aren't you concern you will sooner or later become subject to post with the same content just your handle? Or you do not consider yourself whale enough?

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nextgencrypto (65) 8 years ago

Again you're showing your ignorance. My bot follows specific accounts that curate for project Curie. Maybe you should understand how bots work and realize that if 2 follow the same curator, one will inevitably vote prior to the other.

If you see a downvote from me on your ignorant posts, don't be surprised since you're doing nothing but spreading FUD.

$4.51

nextgencrypto (65) 8 years ago (edited)

I'm going to assume you're not talking about me since the vast majority of my voting is handled by @curie.

If you are, maybe you should try doing some research before making ignorant comments.

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thecryptofiend (74) 8 years ago

@james-show I would suggest you look up Project Curie. It is a voting group designed to promote work by new writers.

Nextgen is using a bot for supporting it - it is a valuable cause which is helping to reduce the existing inequalities.

I used to be against bots too but I have come to realise that they are a tool that can benefit people too as in this case.

I suggest you read more about Curie in this post.

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james-show (58) 8 years ago (edited)

If you are, maybe you should try doing some research before making ignorant comments.

Sure!
... back from research!!!!

Which innocence do you claim?

nextgencrypto accounts are not yours?
or
You humanly vote 3 sec. after (almost/75% or so of the time) every wang's vote?

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svamiva (60) 8 years ago

Your assumption is quite correct, but I think it's just a standard nowadays )

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brianphobos (70) 8 years ago

The @blocktrades situation is so ridiculous. Thank you for posting this and calling it out. This is another reason why so many good content creators are leaving Steemit. Why would I stick around and spend 5 hours on a post that earns $0.36 when I look around and see @blocktrades upvoting this complete garbage all the time?

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ocrdu (71) 8 years ago (edited)

I have repeatedly seen him upvote content I liked also, so he's not necessarily upvoting complete garbage all the time. It could just as easily be a matter of taste rather than malice. I don't think yours is a fair comment, not without additional proof anyway.

$2.21

nextgencrypto (65) 8 years ago

Good work. Thank you for taking the time to compile this information and posting this for everyone to see the abuse being committed by @blocktrades.

I would expect him to downvote this anytime now trying to bury it...

$0.09

7 votes

timcliff (73) 8 years ago (edited)

I'm withholding judgment until I hear the other side. Is it possible that he just upvotes a lot of content that he thinks is good, without really knowing how to check for whether it is abuse of some kind. What is the percentage of 'abusive' content that he upvotes compared to the total number of votes he casts? Is it within a reasonable level to where he isn't deliberately doing something malicious?

If there is a real problem, I have no issue with people highlighting it, but opinion based witch-hunts can be really damaging to the person they are directed at, and the community as a whole. Generally it is not good to post things like this and imply wrongdoing unless you are 100% sure that what you are implying is true.

$0.02

demotruk (69) 8 years ago (edited)

45 incidents is 4% of his total vote count, or one in twenty five votes assuming this is an exhaustive list. Plausibly human error or carelessness, but if there's a pattern to it, or if this is a shorter sample period, it could be harder to defend.

Someone with the time could also investigate how often the average non-whale upvotes garbage/abuse by pure chance. That would show if @blocktrades is better or worse than the average user (one would expect/hope a whale to take more care with their vote than a minnow).

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ats-david (74) 8 years ago (edited)

In the last 24 hours, @blocktrades recorded 36 votes. If we extrapolate this number over a 60-day period, we're talking about 45 votes out of 2160. That's 2% of his votes that have gone to what turned out to be plagiarized posts over the last 60 days. When asked, those votes were removed. The other 98% of his votes are apparently acceptable curation. So why is this user being targeted for his "abusive" voting?

Again - I'm not seeing what the "abuse" is here. Unlike the posts where I have actually exposed sock puppet accounts created and upvoted by whales (which was admitted by those exposed), this is simply an attempt to throw mud at a whale who is not favored by other whales. Yes, he upvotes some plagiarized content. A lot of people do. Some even upvote sock puppets that plagiarize. Some of those people even upvoted this post. Is everyone guilty of malicious abuse? No, of course not. Prove the intent to deceive or harm the platform by scamming the system. If you cannot, then there is no "there" there.

$12.19

7 votes

demotruk (69) 8 years ago

There is no need to extrapolate one days data over the whole time period. When this post went up yesterday, @blocktrades had 1100 lifetime votes. 45/1100 =~ 4%. The argument that @walden and @nextgencrypto are making is that the errors he makes are remarkably frequent and so they are dealing with them every day. Perhaps the implicit argument is that @blocktrades is somehow also involved in the abuse, for an unknown reason or gain.

In principle there is some threshold where the frequency of votes for abuse is too much to be pure chance or carelessness. 45 incidents seems intuitively like a lot, especially if you see them every day in the chat. But ultimately nobody has established what the norm or null hypothesis we should expect is. It's entirely possible that 4% isn't unusual, just that when someone is the fourth largest whale on the platform, every little misstep you make turns into an 'incident'.

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walden (65) 8 years ago (edited)

Its not an exhaustive list, its just a sample, there is a part 2 to this post in the works.

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ats-david (74) 8 years ago

I hope part two actually proves what you're trying to claim here. I'm only seeing that upvotes were retracted once plagiarism was found. Please tell me you have more than this. If you don't, I'm not sure that it's worth the effort, regardless of who's asking you to do it.

$12.93

5 votes

nextgencrypto (65) 8 years ago (edited)

If this post was about anyone else you would be all over it throwing a whiny shit fit like you always do but for some reason you always stick up for @blocktrades. Since you are obviously biased, your opinion is worthless.

This is nothing other than abuse like you constantly claim to be fighting, you're just blind to it for some reason in this case. People should NOT have to be following his votes just to make sure he's not voting on shit. There are reports of his voting on plagiarism in steemit.chat EVERY DAY where you claim to be fighting this type of thing.

$5.12

6 votes

ocrdu (71) 8 years ago

Either that, or it is you who is biased and he has been fighting against that bias. His opinion could very well be worthwhile, I can't tell either way from what you just said.
And I am still confused; what exactly is @blocktrades doing wrong? How is he supposed to be abusing the system and how does he benefit? I don't ask that because I think he doesn't, I have no opinion either way, I would just like to know. I'm relatively new here, you see.

$0.12

logic (67) 8 years ago (edited)

There is a lot of garbage he upvotes which was not retracted because I'd did not qualify as plag. Such as junk content in the form of YT video copy pasta with one sentence.
Example:
experiments-with-cesium-the-most-active-metal-on-earth#@dragonfruit/re-logic-re-dragonfruit-amazing-experiments-with-cesium-the-most-active

After I asked blocktrades why he upvoted, he ignored my comment (ignores all comments or msgs) and next day upvoted at least 3 such posts.
This behaviour incentives users to trash Steemit with more junk content. It is very bad for all Steemit community. Such content deteriorates the total quality of the content on the platform. It also frustrates users with quality content.

I have been actively fighting plagiarism, every day for steemcleaners for last 3 weeks.
No other whale has this pattern of voting.
blocktrades votes seem to be divided to:
-upvoting other whales or trending content. About 20-40% of votes
-upvoting junk content including plag. About 10-20% of votes
-other content. About 40-70%

$0.04

ats-david (74) 8 years ago

Sure - a lot of users upvote garbage content. A lot of users also upvote plagiarized content. The problem here is determining whether or not this is intentional and malicious or if it's just bad curating habits. I'm not seeing any proof of the former, yet this feels like it is an accusatory post despite the lack of evidence.

As demonstrated in another comment, the percentage of this bad curation is fairly low. And when he is reached after plagiarism is found, he appears to unvote the posts.

You know I have no problem with calling out whales, but this post is lacking anything concrete.

$12.27

6 votes

aleksandraz (61) 8 years ago (edited)

@ats-david, yes, he usually unvotes when reached, the problem is, that he upvotes plagiarized content even AFTER there were left a comment about the plagiarism from Steemcleaners.
I have no problem with unintentional upvote of plagiarism and then removal of an upvote, but if therealready was a comment from Steemcleaners, or if it's garbage content... It's at the least highly irresponsible, and with power of his that's an issue.
He had some time to find and downvote this article, why doesn't he do the same with his upvotes? Sad.

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svamiva (60) 8 years ago

No other whale has this pattern of voting.

However no other whale could manage to be equally effective in curation )

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ocrdu (71) 8 years ago (edited)

I don't understand why this is proof of abuse by @blocktrades. I'm not saying it isn't, nor that it is, just that I don't understand.
I do get that a certain percentage of @blocktrades' votes were retracted after plagiarism was shown. Isn't that the right thing to do? Is there a benefit to be had by voting for plagiarised content? Is this somehow proof that he has a bot the sole purpose of which is to get curation rewards?
Can someone explain, please?

$0.00

3 votes

ats-david (74) 8 years ago

I do get that a certain percentage of @blocktrades' votes were retracted after plagiarism was shown. Isn't that the right thing to do?

I would imagine so. I don't understand this either. We're talking about a relatively small number of overall votes. When asked to remove his vote because the content is discovered to be plagiarized, he does it. For all of the cries about "witch hunting" that I've seen, this actually seems to be exactly that. But this actual witch hunt is being rewarded. Funny how things work out like that.

$11.48

5 votes

nextgencrypto (65) 8 years ago

Funny how you whine whenever you're not being rewarded and someone else is...seems to be a pattern.

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ocrdu (71) 8 years ago

Red herrings and ad hominems also don't explain the situation well.

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bacchist (69) 8 years ago

Flagged for witch hunting.

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whatsup (75) 8 years ago

What is happening here is that someone has found some information they think "means" something.

They made a post about it. Amazingly the post didn't get flagged. @blocktrades didn't reply, but he had the opportunity.

The rest of the community can look up these transactions and determine what they believe.

Personally, I might be missing something, but I don't see a huge problem here outside of the fact that bots are likely doing most of the voting.

Thank you for not flagging and letting the conversation move forward.

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lifeworship (66) 8 years ago

i have voted for things that turned out to be some form of abuse or other. if i find something valuable, i upvote. some of these power voting whales flag whatever they want at a whim. they have their freedom what about the rest of us? the trending page is often full of valueless crap. should i go and take away their ability to benefit from the voice of the community? someone thought it was of value. just look at what is happening to @masteryoda. he provides posts that are of value to hundreds of people every day. then he is punished by one person who thinks he is more important than a sizable chunk of the community. i think upvoting what turns out to be abuse is less harmful than flagging real solid content. i don't have time to run everything down to it's source. for instance, i upvoted one post that turned out to be ai produced. i have no idea how many times this has happened. i have been here about 2 months 20 votes per day, that's 1200 votes @blocktrades has been here at least 5 months, that's 3000 votes 45 is 1.5% of that. that is less than a margin of error in most experiments. more data please. if this is systematic and can be shown to be doing as much harm as some of the other things that are happening on this platform, i will gladly denounce it. i think we have bigger fish to fry. i have been known to be wrong, from time to time.

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logic (67) 8 years ago (edited)

This is not all junk they upvote. Please check my other comment in this thread.

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demotruk (69) 8 years ago

Did @blocktrades give any explanation for this? It would be good to include a response/comment when you post something like this (it is standard in investigative journalism).

You do make a good case. 45 is a lot of mistakes. Quick question, is this an exhaustive list? How far back through his votes did you look?

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logic (67) 8 years ago

I sent him message and comments under some of these posts with his tag but he does not respond.

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