RE: Report as Steem Representative, 04.05.2024
I'm not going to level public accusations if I can't say what the cheating mechanism is. :-(
It's difficult, and becoming increasingly so. There are often other telling signs, beyond the content, that can help to validate a suspicion. In this instance, there were 3 other factors which alone (even from an individual account perspective) could have been dismissed but combined and across multiple accounts, became more than just coincidence.
It occurs to me that we could fund a "fraud department" out of the SPS,
I think that this is what happens on Hive and they take a huge payment every day to do so. Perhaps they have more success because they have the power to deal with the biggest farmers that use upvu or tipu and the likes of trafalgar - thereby (theoretically) improving their Trending page. Their Trending page is definitely more attractive than ours. Whether it's value for money or not... It's $290 per day.
The comments underneath their proposal is eye opening though.
Money NEVER corrupts. The corrupt seek it out.
This won't be true of all Steem Watchers, but it's certainly my opinion on some / many of them. (Disclaimer: I don't look at any of their reports so can't comment on whether the work that they do is genuine or beneficial.)
This relates to a recent Netflix video that we watched about child exploitation. I said to my family that the reason we find these sorts of problems in the theme parks and schools and children's entertainment industry is simple. Predators go where the prey is.
As you note, it's probably the same concept with money & power.
On Steem Watchers, I also haven't read many of their reports, so my impression is just superficial, too. It just seems to me that if there's an easy way to game the system, then someone's going to make use of it. And that looks like an easy way to game the system.
One thing they’ve done well is to limit the number of reports to 1 per person per week so the rewards will get spread out.
True. That's a point that I hadn't really considered.