Is @msgivings A Sock Puppet Account?
The @msgivings account showed up two weeks ago, and effortlessly bagan producing daily high-earning trending posts. Since then, there has been a lot of bewilderment expressed by site users who don't understand why these very average posts are trending constantly and securing rewards most users will never come close to.
Who Is @msgivings?
Posts from the account are written from multiple perspectives. In addition to the posts clearly written from a female point of view, there are some which are written by, or at least as, a man.
In a post titled, "Six Attributes Women Find Appealing In Men," the author says:
My girlfriend tells me that whenever I am going on about some deep subject, maybe on science, politics or business, she usually just want (sic) to hold my face and ravish those sexy lips of mine!
To me, based on the quality of the content (mediocre and generic) it would seem that this content might be acquired through freelance writing websites.
It's speculation, of course... But I would suspect that somebody is farming content from one of these sites and using it to create a sock puppet account.
Who Might Be Responsible?
I think some possible answers to this question might be suggested by the early voting history of @msgivings' first couple posts... Presented without comment:
And @msgivings supporters as reported by http://steemvp.com/:
I have to respond to this post since I am mentioned.
First @msgivings does a lot of good posts with interesting topics that have a lot broad appeal. I try to support content that is going to pull in a wide audience. That's what we need here.
Also, look at the voting pattern. Other whales and some known bots are simply early voting me. I am voting very late on almost all posts these days so that no one accuses me of voting for curation rewards. I'm voting for authors almost exclusively. I am also doing all manual voting even though I am voting with about 50 accounts, one of which is @itsascam, in case people are curious why its votes correlate so highly with @steemed.
The rational response for minnows is not to get jealous of successful authors and waste a lot of time complaining. The rational response is to simply get an alert that tells you when my author list posts and then vote earlier than me and you will earn vesting rewards.
And for the moral high grounders out there, this is a decentralized system so no matter how you engineer it, there will be market inefficiencies until an equilibrium is reached. If you don't like unusually high payouts, then write a big scandalous post about how the constant influx of new rules create a constant state of disequilibrium.
Advisement: as new rules are implemented, new disequilibria arise, and smart people will find ways to capitalize on those disequilibria. Instead of complaining about free market actors, complain about the rule makers. I know that falls on deaf ears, but at least I said it. Remember: they are whales for a reason.
You mean something like this that no one even noticed?
I love complaining about rule makers!
Thanks for explaining this @steemed. Good content is subjective, and what I may love, you may not and vice versa. I like that anyone can determine what content should be well paid. I like the transparency of the blockchain allowing users to research exactly what is going on behind the scenes too.
Some thought that @msgivings was some sort of account that whales would vote on and just share their own profit. This seems like a far fetched plan, since you can see money transferred back and forth between accounts if that were the case.
I hope that instead of anyone being jealous of a successful writer, they are inspired to branch out and venture into new water and try their hand at writing a multitude of different content.
I should also point out that this very comment and voting strategy is an example of what might be going on here... You commented as @steemed and then upvoted it with @itsascam. By doing that you printed SBD for yourself, which is something that most users can't do... Most users struggle to accumulate enough voting weight in a single account to add a few cents. You apparently have 50 accounts which are worth voting with. That's pretty obscene...
Upvoted. @bacchist, your passion and integrity never ceases to impress me.
I'm glad people are watching the watchmen. I wrote about it here
Suspicious activity needs to be called out, whether it's coming from big or small accounts.
You would need to do some time/pattern analysis to really be sure.
The end result of a whale making sub accounts anonymously that they upvoted to attract band-wagoners without risking their main accounts reputation.
I see this as a net-negative for the ecosystem and would upvote anyone willing to do some voting pattern analysis to identify accounts engaging in this behavior. a) its dishonest, and b) it could potentially damage the ecosystem.
Good question, @bacchist
Here is the thing, are there any written steemit rules? If a whale creates a separate account and uses it to post, is he or she breaking any law or unwritten rules? No, not really, it's more of an ethical and moral question than anything.
I am by no means siding with that kind of behavior (if it is going on). Steemed said it well when he/she said:
In some cases, I have noticed it be annoying and obvious when just about every single post is upvoted by the same whales. It is not doing Steemit a good service as a whole by simply upvoting the same accounts over and over regardless of that posts content.
Once again, what rules are there that are being broken, though? Does it suck ass, you damn right, especially when authors feel like they have spent a great deal of time on their posts to receive nothing to very modest results in contrast to some of these accounts being upvoted daily for some pretty basic posts?
On a side note, anyone who thinks Steemit is all about uncensored free content during a time when giants like google and youtube are censoring material or limiting rewards are fooling themselves.
Right now Steemit is censored mostly by whale votes, any posts that do not receive a whale vote mostly end up in the eternal void of shit seen be very few. Simply, the system right now is a form of censorship.
It's a rough ride on Steemit right now for many, it is up to each individual creator if they want to stick it out or not. I think over time these issues will dilute themselves out, but I also believe payouts will be severely diluted and might not be worth a authors time in the future, but those are my own personal observations.
if the whales are just making multiple accounts and supporting themselves isn't that sort of like.. a cartel? luckily i've been having some good results from my posts so i'm sure there are whales out there who are genuinely trying to support new content creators ^_^
It's another Bad Whale's account. Upvoting theirselves for another profit that's why the value of the steem and sbd is decreasing because they think it will not be enough for them(the whales) to gain much profit when they cashed out steem, that's why they make another profiting scams. It sucks! They're gaming the system. Well, we can't blame them for they're the investors.
I am looking forward for the steemit to become a pot money for investors and not for all.
@bacchist
I have been bashing her shit-posting for over a week now. My guess is that whales might have found a way to recycle money back to them. If that is the case then steemit is doomed because they are cashing out their investment.
People will just leave and be discouraged by all that crap earning top spot. Same goes about all that spiritualist/positive thinking crap trending lately. Shit tier content
My other guess is that a whale has a girlfriend. either way. not good for steemit
THIS
A good catch! After all the debate regarding quality content, I have seen the trending page full of posts like these and am convinced that the page is gamed. My solution to this has been not to visit the trending page ever. I guess they will keep on gaming the system as long as there is a reward, so I just stick with the new page and do my bit.
But thanks for pointing out, users need to be aware of shit like this happening!
Yup just one of the many accounts used to cash out by the whales/insiders...
@itsascam I think the name says it all :-) @itwasalladream
I'm not convinced this account is puppet. I keep an eye out for this possibility but am impressed with Steem that there is no evidence of it. (I began with Steem about 2 months ago).
Cannot trust the parent account (reddit\FB) as it may be created just to get a SteemIt account.
The vote-order differs significantly; does not seem to indicate to me that it is a single user starting the reward upward (expecting whale bots to kick it higher). Though it is aggravating to me that the whales swim together.
Just to add...By all means, downvote bad content and do not blindly follow whale voting.