Consider the power of your flag.
https://steemit.com/@lykendream
Sorry about this post, I don't usually buy into making posts about others.... I have mixed feelings about posting it, but I need to say it once. I will shut up after that. (future blockchain regrets)
Please take a moment to review this account. This account is buying whaleshares and voting on shitposts, and withdrawing the money. His posts are mostly one photo and no text. One of them is a picture of a mug, found 2m times using google image search. He posts his crappy posts, upvotes them using Fuzzy and he then resteems a bunch of posts to bury his activities.
Meanwhile we have some talented minnows who are struggling to get views and attention. If it were pennies I wouldn't make a fuss about it.
Why do I care? It makes the site look like shit, look like a scam, and frustrates our new users who are trying, and if reward pool rape is a thing... Well this at least has to be a "Feel up". I am FOR traffic and eyes being on the site, but that is not what we are seeing here. I care because the community is not using our power to help distribute rewards.
It is up to the community to determine if this is how and who we want to reward. I've flagged the open posts on the account and reported it on the whaleshales discord, hoping maybe they would handle it. Since then, the account has posted again.
https://steemit.com/travel/@lykendream/california $50
https://steemit.com/comedy/@lykendream/lol-so-so-so-true $50
There are several more open posts.
If you take the time to browse the account you will see he has been doing this for a while and he knows exactly what he is doing
I am not opposed to the voting bots because we have the tools to fix the problems when they arise. It is a problem that the community isn't comfortable with down-voting/flagging, flag war... I know, I know, but the system IS designed to deal with it.
Consider it. The only call to action on this post is to consider what types of content we are rewarding and to consider using your stake to adjust rewards that simply do not make sense.
It's an experiment after all. You are now free to move about the blockchain.
The picture of the mug, with no text that is currently at$ 45.oo
Even after the flaggings so far he has over $340 remaining. I am going to upvote this comment to bring it up, made the list short and sweet for lazy flagging. :)
https://steemit.com/faith/@lykendream/not-matters-what-type-of-job-you-have-get-it-all-you-got-as-if-you-were-working-for-god-amen 42.56
https://steemit.com/health/@lykendream/the-food-we-eat-everyday-can-be-the-safest-and-most-powerful-medicine-or-the-slowest-form-of-poison-the-greatest-wealth-is 42.89
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@lykendream/bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies-are-off-to-a-great-start-this-morning-pie-coin-pie-is-still-winning-the-rase-up-nearly-100 42.67
https://steemit.com/travel/@lykendream/california 49.84
https://steemit.com/comedy/@lykendream/lol-so-so-so-true 42.84
https://steemit.com/love/@lykendream/don-t-judge-a-story-you-haven-t-read 49.31
https://steemit.com/travel/@lykendream/the-culture-is-in-me-not-on-me 52.92
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@lykendream/bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies-are-off-to-a-great-start-this-morning-pie-coin-pie-is-still-winning-the-rase-up-nearly-100 41.73
$364.76 since Wednesday
Thanks... that's NUTS.
Upvoted to pin this to the top....
You make it look easy!
I've blacklisted both accounts from using Hairshares.
Thank you! Much appreciated.
It's a whale using a fake account to upvote his own shitty posts.
The whales make more than that in curation rewards, they don't have to do this silly stuff.
These scams are getting out of hand. I was only just starting to recover my voting power after dealing with someone others who were abusing. I would much rather use my voting to reward good posts. Someone like @dan has more than enough power to deal with this kind of stuff if he delegated some of his SP to Steemcleaners or a similar service for helping with this kind of abuse.
I would much rather use my (quite limited) voting power to highlight the good, as well. And yes, Dan could easily delegate a million each to Steemcleaners and SadKitten and it would probably go a LONG way towards making this kind of crap unprofitable enough that the perps would take their junk elsewhere. And he's still have more than enough free spending money to fund new projects...
Yes without a doubt.
A quick check on where some of the big delegations go shows that priorities could well lay elsewhere. It feels like some of the big-walleted people stopped caring a long time ago.
Dan has no responsibility to the community in my opinion.
Yea, he is a huge stake holder, but it's not benefiting him one bit, and he isn't affiliated with steemit anymore.
Steemit inc or the "elected representatives" called witnesses have all the responsibilities to do what is right and look out for the future of the platform.
I honestly can't imagine what would happen if @dan actually delegated in this manner and his SP ended up flagging the accounts that @ned recently delegated to for self voting.
I would feel more inclined to do something about this- if indeed anyone was able to do something about the worst abuse on the top of https://steemwhales.com/trending/ without having their steemit career ruined.
I agree that is a huge problem as well, the community is going to have to address it I fear. I have a feeling my account will be ded soon. :) - Trending page
Agreed that dan is no longer a part of the community and I don't have any expectations he should try to fix anything here.
This is the first and last time I ask for help on steemit.
@whatsup flagged my post.
I am really upset!
And he doesn't want to answer my comment.
So can you, since you seem to understand the subject explain to me why is my post, with my photo flagged?
Do I look like a bot or what ever...
I write so little and earn even less, but I love steemit.
I spend hours reading posts and learning,
I don't think that's fair..
Okay, calm yourself, I did respond. Now you are just going too far 3rd comment now. I responded within a half hour. Upsets come and go, and I am sorry for the misunderstanding.
The flag has been removed and I upvoted BOTH of your other comments.
@whatsup, why you stirring up all kinds of minnow shit? much love from the @runridefly family.
Thank you.
I am sorry for the drama.
Hope to see you all in better occasions!
I followed you @tamacvet. I hope to see you post some things about the legal profession. I'm just starting my adventure into law school :)
Thank you, and sorry for all the comments.
You will see, when you finish law school you feel the need to defend yourself even more :)
I will post about it, but our law is completely different than anywhere else!
I wish you good luck, it's a hard school :)
Thanks, I'm looking forward to it!
These sorts of scams, added to the circle-jerks at the top, combined with the slack curating and voting by so-called followers, and the sycophants bending over for the big wallets, don't bode well for the future of Steemit. They also make this a less friendly place, not just less interesting financially. I am less and less sure I want to be a part of this.
So, I am also going to address that in my next post. It is time the community takes responsibility to fix these issues. If we want to fix it, we are going to have to bite the bullet and use the tools we have. THE FLAG.
Hi @thecryptofiend, The community can't have it both ways. I hate spending my voting power on the negative as well.
If we want the site to be decentralized, don't we all have a responsibility to keep the site clean?
We do but the problem is few other people seem to care which puts even more burden on those that do. Then people get exhausted and stop bothering. Some probably just leave.
It's really a nasty prisoner's dilemma. We each are incentivized to reward ourselves, whether that be by taking our time we would be flagging to curate or produce content, or more directly by vote buying. The amount you lose from flagging someone is greater than your expected gain by cleaning up the network ever-so-slightly, so only a few people spend the time to do so. Same thing with curating new/created, same problems.
Even if we were to separate voting and flagging power as I have written a post suggesting a couple months ago, we'd still be left with the problem of it failing to be a rewarding task, either internally from a mental perspective or externally from a community perspective.
Exactly and one most also consider the social cost - nobody wants to go round creating ill will and even legitimate flags can do that.
It is a major challenge. I can only think I have to use my VP to protect my investment to some degree. Those who do not see the problem, are simply not using the site.
Please post a link to your article.
PS, to put this in perspective, this post, which has highlighted a scam, and created much discussion will likely not earn what this guy got for just one of his shit posts.
Thanks for asking.
Here's a link to the article you referenced.
Unfortunately, this article "resulted in / continued a" sequence of bad blood that lead to much argument in the comments of some other users blogs and more flagging/witch-hunting later.
However, what I found much more interesting was the article I actually referenced in the above article here.
This latter article continues to be a daily problem, but I have seen no will to combat it and have decided the personal attacks and mental stress of trying to assist with it are not worthwhile. (ie, I used to flag these and post in the comments how it was an exact cut and paste with the pictures reformatted to look different from 5 days ago).
Interesting ideas and well presented.
Or at least suffer from ever increasing fed-uppedness. I know I do.
:) fed-uppedness... I have it.
I'm trying to get people motivated to fight spam with rewards. What do you think?
https://steemit.com/spam/@iamgrateful/fight-spam-earn-rewards-issue-001-8-18-17
@whatsup, I'm such an idiot. I read your post and then I accidentally upvoted him 100%. I was thinking I was flagging him, but it was a sweet ass upvote. I don't have any experience flagging, so I just burned a 100% upvote and I feel real dirty inside.
I used my flag yesterday for the first time. I was scared like a little bitch ass punk, but I had to flag the plagiarism.
Steem On!
lol, with your skills the dude is going to be rich in no time.
You crack me up. :) I hope you removed the upvote. :)
I flagged his ass 100% after I burned a 100% upvote. You crack me up more.
"and if reward pool rape is a thing... Well this at least has to be a "Feel up". "
Excellent post. I particularly chuckled at the quoted bit.
I have proposed solving this issue by having a separate flagging power, so that the opportunity cost of dealing with these issues becomes much smaller. I don't know what else to suggest, and that idea was not very popular, as it was my only post to receive a flag.
This does make me sad, I am a pensioner and really love steemit because it has made my brain a little better and every cent made here gives me a chance to live a little better. My posts might be silly, but I love kids, therefore I really work hard to do a post for todlers and small children. I never realised how difficult it is to teach them something that they would understand . I dont do to badly but not nearly that much. Thanks for this post.
I agree entirely... and there's more here than immediately meets the eye... this may be one for @sherlockholmes and fraudulent accounts crew to investigate... little poking poking about reveals a connection to this account:
https://steemit.com/@lykencrypto
Which pretty much looks like a "content mill." Look at the number of follows/following since MAY??? And some of the images from the account you're calling out here appear to have been lifted from the bigger account's YouTube channel.
SO there's some pretty large scale exploitation going on here, as far as I can tell... and that's just for 10 minutes of poking around and cross referencing language/expression similarities.
I am glad you mentioned the connection, I also noticed it. I didn't want my post to be a total tattle-tail post, so I tried to make it more about the flagging element. Thank you for your comment.
I did flag... and it's a shame we have to burn voting power on something like this. But we all have to do our bit if we still want there to BE a Steemit by this time, next year.
Thank you very much. You know how hard it was for me to go down this path. It has to be done.
You've done your homework.
Do we need to rally the troops for another @stellabelle PURGE NIGHT! ? :-)
*my vote power is still recovering at 50%, but it's worth it.
Yes, I think we do!
I could not agree with you more. This does seem like a misuse of bot voting to get some extra help on your posts. But spamming bad content and just upvoting it with bots is not good for the future of this platform. I think the users have to take more responsibility and flag those posts so it does not overrun the platform. Hopefully, in the future, Steemit management will also take action on this matter.
Thank you for pointing out this problem. Great post. :)
Have a great day. :)
Iduno what you are whining about man, that's a friggin awesome mug. No, thanks for brining this to more people's attention! You rock!
Thanks for this post @whatsup - as a minnow I find it so disheartening when i have worked for hours on a post, only for it to get not views or upvotes. Then I stumble on posts that are of one image, like you say, and it is not even an original photo. It really isn't fare (but I won't let it make me give up)! Another thing I have noticed lately is how many "intruders" are getting away with copying posts and then posting it as their own - this is definitely where i pull out the red flag! Thank you for standing up for the little minnows, I'll remember you when I am a WHALE! :)
I agree it's very disheartening putting lots of work into a post and get a couple of votes and sometimes even less views than that. Especially when you see nonsense posts getting loads of votes from bots. These issues need to be fixed on steemit or i fear a new contender will come in and take over. I haven't flagged anything yet but will reserve some of my voting power from now on to try and do my part cleaning up the system.
So interesting.
You make it look easy!
45$ for this photo? I saw another dude doing the same and he got upvotes from blocktrades and his posts where 75$ for just a photo that he copy-pasted...