The Shit Post Diaries 1/12/18 (#2)
Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner...
Well that did not take long.. I did not get a lot in the way of user submissions so I went it it alone and decided to check a couple vote sellers wallets to examine the HIGH QUALITY POSTS that have had votes purchased. In so doing I think I have found a daily shit post winner.
Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen I present...... (drum roll).... @amanat1993
Not only has he perfected the art of shit posting winners like this:
He has also loves to actively farm the rewards pool through the purchase of late term votes on 6 day old posts so as to boost the post and collect before the community can downvote accordingly.
Of interest, he is actually rather transparent about his motivations which are purely profit minded, self centered and essentially say fuck the greater steemit community. In perusing his comments he actually lodged a comment complaint against a vote seller because his earnings on a "shit post" were not up to par.
Let his own words serve to provide you insight into the mind and motivations of shit posting rewards pool farmers. They do not care about the community, the platform or anyone but themselves.. Nope, its all about the money, fuck the site, the rewards pool and every other Steemian on the platform.
So how lucrative can shit posting be? Well if you check his wallet.. He has shit posted himself $928.81 from the rewards pool thus far by posting stolen images, one liners and other garbage and then paying for votes on the 6th day; not a bad haul for no work.
In fact I invite you to check his blog: https://steemit.com/@amanat1993 where you see the next que of shit posts in que waiting for their bot purchased upvotes on the 6th day. In fact basically every post after 6 days is $20 or more so he stands to gain another couple hundred bucks over the next week.
Also while his single post totals are not in the hundreds he is averaging 4 or 5 late term shit post upvotes per day on 6 day old posts for $15.00 or more. So in reality he is pulling in $60+ SBD per day through his scheme. Lets assume he is allowed to go unchecked for a year: 365 x$60 =$21,900 SBD per year being farmed from the rewards pool and from more deserving authors that actually put in the work to produce original content that benefits the platform.
Ask yourself do you feel good about the fact that he has manipulated nearly $1000 USD away from the rewards pool and from other more worthy Steemians through his abusive practices?
What I also find to be egregious is that this dick head has been able to achieve a reputation of 59 through repetitive shit posting and abuse of the system. This tells me that the community is either not stepping up or there is an issue with the platform.
His reputation is actually higher than mine and I bust my ass putting together good content and engaging my followers. It also tells me that his assured retaliatory downvotes will hurt my rep for trying to keep the community clean by outing him and summarily downvoting him myself. Regardless I'm still going to do it as it is the right thing to do for the community and to hopefully make his scheme a less than profitable venture with the help of others.
Remember this is just one user that I found after maybe 10 minutes of looking. I am sure there are hundreds more so multiply his totals by the hundreds that are as of yet uncaught and you can begin to understand the hundreds of thousands of dollars being farmed away from the pool each year by these self centered assholes.
I think this is the bigger picture that @grumpycat is referring to when he talks about "nothing at stake pool abusers" here: https://steemit.com/steem/@grumpycat/sample-of-nothing-at-stake-peoples-empowered-on-6th-day-by-voting-bots
Related Articles:
https://steemit.com/shitpost/@pawsdog/the-shit-post-diaries-1-11-18-1
https://steemit.com/steemit/@pawsdog/please-join-me-in-flagging-a-shit-post-and-reward-pool-abuser
I read this post a few hours ago but decided to think about it before I replied. I see your point from a, for want of a better word, "moral" standpoint. However I think you may be missing the big picture here.
I don't see a way to link directly to a particular comment on this site but @valued-customer makes a very pertinent point in a comment to the post below. (It's roughly half way down the page, if you want to read the full thing, he explains himself better than I perhaps)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@themarkymark/the-future-of-steemit
He claims that 99% of the rewards from the pool go to around 1500 accounts, mainly to something like 39 whales. The remaining 1% shared among the roughly 50k minnows with <6000 Steampower. Now I have to admit, I have neither the time nor the inclination to check his numbers but even if he is off by several orders of magnitude it makes little practical difference to what I will say next.
On that basis if this "shit poster" has taken 1k USD from the reward pool as you have calculated, only around 10USD of that has come from the part of the pool available to minnows. Divide that 10USD by 30000 and you get 1/3000th of a cent being taken from each of us. The rest comes from the whales and other bigger accounts...but then it is these accounts that are both enabling him AND taking the SBD he is returning to them via their upvoting bots. Also if his complaint is accurate, they are actually screwing him in the process, at least on occasion. Have you calculated his SBD outgoings into this 1k USD figure btw?
Add to that the fact that these accounts could force a change to the rewards mechanism if they choose, so I can only assume that they feel the current system is in their best interests.
With that in mind, taking on this little pinprick is analogous to you being prepared to risk taking a bullet to throw a glass of water on a forest fire.
If you downvote, risking a mini flag war, it benefits no one but the 99%. A certain whale, who shall remain nameless, has alluded to this in comments related to a certain high profile flag war. In fact a self upvote or an upvote to another minnow is 99 times more effective at what you are trying to achieve than any downvote. I would consider letting the big accounts do their own dirty work, if I were you.
It's the system that is broken, not the shit posters imho.
I agree, with your points to a degree. That said their is no conceivable way to go after the whales or those that operate the vote bots so long as dickheads as mentioned above continue to provide them with $$$ for upvoting their content. As I have stated before the only solution at this level is to go after the individual minnows the feed the whales and dissuade them from contributing to the vote bots through negative reinforcement. Goes to what I have said before about avoiding a superior army and instead going after the farmers that grow the wheat to feed it, attack the infrastructure, the factories that refine the fuel etc. It will take time but as my influence grows over the next year or so I will be able to make a bigger and bigger difference. Also I have to consider the cumulative effect of 1000 users like the one I mentioned above over a prolonged period of time. Regardless I will due my part toward the betterment of the community regardless of the consequences.
Your work and/or investment gathered your steem power, so it is entirely up to you what you do with your voting power of course.
However a large part of my point was that you are actually benefiting the whales regardless with any down vote because for every dollar you return to the reward pool, 99c of it goes to them. Whereas as a 1 dollar upvote for a minnow pays the minnow 75c (if we ignore the value of SBD for simplicity) and 25c goes to you. Plus if you use your 25c to power up it will compound over time, allowing you to divert a larger amount of power away from the whales. So if we assume that you only use your voting power for good, then "good" is a 24.75c better off with an upvote. Whereas taking 1USD from users like the one your spoke of benefits "good" by just 0.25c. It doesn't matter whether it's 1 or 1000, you only play into the hands of the whales, especially considering their bots get the SBD anyway (at least initially) and a true scammer will just power down and change accounts and/or use multiple small accounts to stay below the radar. Deserving minnows will not do that.
Of course the whales (or at least the "bad" ones) are playing that game too but such is life.
That is the double edged sword of steemit. I think a platform change is in order, or upgrade to say the least and one that eliminates vote bots all together. However, it will never occur as the whales are essentially the once operating the bots... sigh.. best course of action in terms of long term profitability over time is to just get to whale status and start selling votes.. if you can't beat them join them.. I think that when elevating your power so as you can sell it and make more is the more profitable route, then the platform has an issue of sorts..
There is another option.
Rather than compromising your principles just so that you can profit from the system in place, adhere to your principles, form associations with like-minded folk, and be prepared for either a repaired Steemit, or the inevitable fork.
I can't guarantee this will payoff in our lifetime, but I'm not as interested in payoff as I am lifetime. I reckon payoff is inevitable. Timeline isn't in my power to either create or predict.
Thanks!
Indeed, my argument is more against what I see as ineffective down votes than anything else. If I was as pessimistic about steem as my post may sound, I would not keep reinvesting my rewards. In fact I would probably power down, 13 weeks is a very long time to keep an investment tied up in the crypto space.
True, true.. explain the ramifications of the fork?
The code that forms the blockchain is FOSS, and there have been attempts to fork the blockchain to eliminate the plutocratic stakes that centralize power, and create a truly decentralized blockchain.
So far, I haven't seen an attempt succeed, but the software is FOSS, and there will be more.
The ramifications depend on the forkers.
So essentially fork of and create a different Steemit of sorts?
I agree this platform is broken. If they don't fix it, it will go the way of myspace.
I agree and projects like synero Amp or wildspark will be the Facebook...https://www.wildspark.me/
I have no problem switching teams and will be all over synero once it goes live.. to that end AMP may be a somewhat interesting Alt to keep an eye on.. only a month till synero goes live.. just sayin..
I'll take a look :)
Probably make a post about it..
I'll give you a down payment on the time you will save my lazy ass then :)
Thanks.. here is a rebate..
Beep! Beep! This humvee will be patrolling by and assisting new veterans, retirees, and military members here on Steem. @shadow3scalpel will help by upvoting posts from a list of members maintained by @chairborne and responding to any questions replied to this comment.
Here's another candidate: @mani0005. He's posting someone else's novel a couple paragraphs at a time in 4 to 5 posts a day then buying upvotes for about $15 a post.
Really? What a dick... just saw the comment, on it... :)
Good news, after I reported him to @steemcleaners, they came in and wiped out his 14 most recent posts on which he had already spent 85 SBD on upvotes. So 85 SBD all gone, bye-bye. I'll keep checking him every couple days. But I'm guessing he'll power down and transfer to a new account and start the same routine again. And I'll find and report him again and wipe out the last of his SBD. Right now, Queen's "Another one bites the dust" is playing in my head.
I saw that.. I had just finished writing an article about him that I had yet to post when I went to do a bit more research I saw that steemcleaners had cleaned him out.. So I had to retool my article based on your other submission.. he was epic though with the bullshit he was posting...
Really the problem here isn't the shitposters. Nobody likes their content, and they rarely receive legitimate upvotes.
The problem is the automated vote bots that don't differentiate between good content and bad content. These are a massive problem with the SteemIt platform, because they basically allow anyone to self-curate and earn a profit regardless of the content of the post, rather than relying on the community to evaluate what is a good post vs what is a junk post.
If we want to fix SteemIt long-term, I think we need to re-think vote bots. They're not helping the community in any way.
I agree, and as I gain more influence I may be able to tackle the greater issues.. I feel like you in that the bots completely take away from the purist ideals of the site in that only the best content should rise to the top based on legitimate human upvotes that find value in it.. It will take some time but we can and will make a difference.. It's a slow process, but any difference for the good is a difference.. so that is what I will continue to do..
I've actually started using vote bots to gain traction with my posts. The only way I'll ever be able to become influential enough to maybe be able to influence change is if I get a lot of followers and a fair amount of SP - And the easiest way to do that is through using the bots and tools to promote myself.
Gaming the broken system in order to fight against the broken system? Yep, I'm a hypocrite.
Hate to say it but that is the attitude the allows them to operate.. It's a defeatist attitude to acquiesce that you only get ahead through their use. They are absolutely not a prerequisite for success and in the end they don't pay that well or if at all anyway.. Check around lots of tests have been done and in the end its actually a financial negative in most instances. I have never used a bot, had no other notable social media presence and started here from zero.. So to say they are needed is complete fallacy.. I do what I do by networking, responding to comments and creating good content.. You can track my progress here, or click the gif in the article for the parent article that explains my premise.. https://steemit.com/steemit/@pawsdog/steemit-quest-for-one-million-time-required-to-build-a-usd1-000-000-00-steemit-account-day-34-results
Good Dog! You found my new favorite friend. I'll be visiting @amanat1993's blog regularly from now on. I have a few presents I'd like to leave him. They look like this:
I agree, I will join you there... :) . You at least have the rep to affect his rep.. I do not think my 55 has any influence.. as he is a 58 or something.. but I can reduce .20 from a post reward...:)
Since most of his posts contain a plagiarized photo, I also reported him to @steemcleaners after dropping a few flags.
I don't even think that is the bigger issue..
"Receive 0.001 SBD from minnowbooster Your delegation request for 4 weeks 999.993 SP was processed."
I was just looking at him on https://steemd.com/@amanat1993 and noticed him self upvoting six day old posts as well which I thought was odd as he had basically no SP last time I checked his wallet.. So I am guessing he purchased SP from @minnowbooster somehow to get them to delegate SP to him so he could in turn post SHIT POSTS, BUY VOTES and NOW SELF VOTE.. I guess quality control over @minnowbooster is lacking and they are minnow boosting a plagiarizing system gaming dickhead.
Oh, of note he sent you a wallet note... might wanna check that..
I wonder if @minnowbooster is aware of this or if they give a fuck as they are basically selling votes as well by allowing their SP to be purchased.. I actually kinda wanna see what damage I could do by sending say 100 or 200 SBD for their SP and self voting the fuck out of everything I do.. No different from vote bots you just get to do it yourself with borrowed SP.. Seems to be the business model around here.
Lastly his self votes are worth about $4.00 USD I think that would be close to .87 SBD of the top of my head without going to bittrex and checking. I bet he can pile those on in a day... I also be we can make his investment in SP unprofitable.
We must have done something right, @steemcleaners hit him with several flags and now @minnowbooster is refusing his business. Hopefully he will get the message.
Really, sweet, one victory at a time.. :).. how did you find out minnowbooster is refusing?
Excerpt from his wallet
Then we have done a good thing.. :)
Yeah but he still has 1000 SP delegated from minnowbooster...
Starting out, and losing your mind over what to post, considering your comments word for word. When all you needed was to google a picture of something and post then take your savings and pay a bot.
I shall present the first part now so you do not have to go look for examples. 🙈
My dear steemit friends, good sirs and lovely ladies.
A Yellow Banana.
True,, that is essentially what many of them post.. It somewhat sad actually as it does not benefit the platform in any conceivable way.
I know everything is supposed to be all open and anyone can post without being "censored". I would prefer things be more aggressively moderated, maybe put things on a timeout and bring it back from timeout once it has been given approval, guilty until proven innocent.
Then again that is not really working for youtube and their entire algo is based on trash that people like, people being the problem, we do have the choice though to just avoid those parts of steem as it grows into new branches, 9gag style, people playing games , shitty quizzes.
Content is so broad that I just can't seem to figure out how steem even has value if they are giving money to all content but then a person probably also need to ask why to sites have ads even with most being ad blind.
all good points, and that is why I am looking at synero at the moment and wild spark as a better steemit.. steemit is like a reddit but with more problems. and is likely to be become the next myspace
There were bound to be new iterations, I just wish everything could interoperate and not get a person locked in so much, kind of like busy,steemit,dmania them all use the same underlying blockchain or multiwallet but for platforms such as this, create contents once share on all.
Ancient times now seem to have been more one world than we are in modern times. Fracturing everything we do into a million pieces so we can all be rulers of our own faction.
I agree and like..
Banana is seen I see dear..?.. Nice post dear for of. banaba.....my to you for me follow of.
(I’m something of an amateur anthropologist of the steemit comment sections and I’m still working on fully learning their method of communication, but I do believe the above comment to the banana picture is coming very close to the mark. I fear it may still be too intelligible, so I will likely be moving my field research deeper into the “aceh” tag.)
Dangerous territory since that is a cultural group is it not? Better to bag on people who should know better than those who are merely ignorant. If you want unintelligible you want fanboys of things, not any fanboys the "hype beasts".
^^^^ Just came to me but as all things, not sure where I stole it from else it is ALL MINE. Take note people.
Anyway not to be a bummer, and I appreciate the humor just thought I would write what I thought.
🤣
To be really clear, I would never, ever criticize, judge, or mistreat anyone for their membership in any ethnic or cultural group. (It makes no difference as to the principle, but for whatever it’s worth, I happen to fall into the category of what is generally understood as an “oppressed ethnicity, so I’m sensitive to being on the receiving end of that kind of nastiness).
But I’ve found that the Aceh tag, for whatever reason, happens to be inundated with hilariously nonsensical, contentless comments.
I’ve read that this is possibly because many people living in or around Aceh susbsist in a level of poverty that is so crushing that even a small amount of money made on Steemit can make a meaningful difference in their lives.
But that would be all the more reason why I don’t think it’s unethical or even mean-spirited to mine the comments section of people posting to the aceh tag for poor-quality content, because the people from aceh who are legitimately putting in the work and time and effort to provide quality content so that they can make a long-term, consistent financial difference for themselves and their families, are disproportionately affected by the low-quality posts on that tag which promote the idea that people from aceh are “just scamming.”
It’s kind of like how the email phishing spammers who were oftentimes based out of Nigeria were horrible for the majority actual Nigerian entrepreneurs and Nigerians who are working so hard to start legitimate web-based companies, only to be ignored by the rest of the world as “scammers” because of the reputation the scammers.
In that sense, I don’t think there’s any ethical or moral issues with lightn humorous criticism of the low-quality, low-content posts under a tag that is normally associated with a particular geographical location and the people that live there. (Again, not that it changes the principle of the matter, but on a practical level, this far I’ve always “paid for the privilege” to find humor in those low-content comments anyway, because I’ve always upvotes them solely because they gave me value-as-humor and I feel the obligation to remunerate them for that).
In the words of a great steemian
totally with you on that topic! as my reputation score is also pretty low (i am quite new to steemit), i cannot downvote system abusers like this one. posting a single image and maybe adding 1 simple line of text should not be worth that much money...
i hope the community steps up to issues like that.
I agree I think it is bullshit..
New to steemit and still lost to learn about the platform. I didnt even know this was possible! Im a single mum and takes me a while ro get some good content up. I spend quite a few hrs composing information with very little reward/ viewers/ followers. I share the content i do to try and educate and give insight to others. For ppl to abuse the system and get rewarded for zero effort is very disappointing
I agree, basically what they do is the wait until the last minute, purchase votes with SBD then cash out. I'm not sure what their return percentage is but I'm sure its probably a consistent 10 percent or better per post based on the invested amount.
It's insane how some of these shit posters have such a high rep, and how much money they can easily rack up because of last minute vote buying. However; I have a few tricks up my sleeve to 1 up these guys. Not only will it give me more exposure but I will find it easier to expose them as the frauds that they are. That's the beauty of this system. We have no problem showing the community who we are. They, on the other hand, must stay in what's left of the shadows.
Contributions like this that help the community long-term. This is why proper curation is so important, and why so many whales need to stop being lazy. I would like to see stricter rules set by vote sellers so that these abusers have a harder time making money. I have found quite a few lists. I've read some users have thousands of accounts. It's quite the shit show when you try to sort things out.
I agree, and I think in a year or so when I have sufficient influence I will make plenty of enemies in this regard as I am going to come after them hard more than likely. I would like to a point that I have like 200,000 Sp lying around then commission a bot that automatically downvotes based on the wallet activity of sellers. It will take some time but together we can turn this franchise around.
I'm afraid I get totally lost trying to understand the mechanics on how all this works...especially buying last minute votes? Can we create a super man bot to fight these forces of evil?
I wish we could it would take a ton of SP to make it work, but at some point we will get there.. It's like eating an elephant.. just one bite at a time.