I have just found two days ago about this topic and it seems very interesting and same time sad for the platform and the community we are trying to build here on this amazing platform.

These were the screenshots I took of their profiles while writing this post, numbers may differ right now. I am talking about @haejin and @berniesanders, I am sure that most of you know them, but in case you are just like me, finding out about this for the first time, here is the short story:

It is a war going on on Steemit (or whatever platform you are using to interact with the blockchain) between these two users and I am using the word war because there are a lot of people involved, on each side. The reason why the war started is debatable and right now I will say it is because @berniesanders doesn't consider it is fair that @haejin's posts to make it to trending and take so much from the reward pool considering that they may not bring any real value to Steem. In other words it is a war over your money not only about @haejin and @bernie which is important for everybody in my humble opinion.

I am not writing this article to defend any of them or to take anybody's side since it is pretty hard just to jump in and take a decision. I would like to let you decide where the truth is, it may be somewhere at the middle, and I think it is worth investing a bit of time to do this research. Most of the times I don't like to be involved in fights of any kind, but this time the debate between the two of them can affect the whole platform as it is spread over the trending page.

Here is a screenshot of the @berniesanders posts that reached the general trending page, requesting whales to flag @haejin in order to remove his rewards and decrease his reputation.

You can find here the links to that posts if you want to read his arguments: 1, 2.

As you can see these posts reached an astonishing number of votes (note: not only up-votes) and some huge rewards, at least compared to the post of a minnow.

@haejin answered to the attack not by requesting flags to @berniesanders, but by asking for up-votes for himself

His answer can be a form of refusing to fight back (in this case the guy is cool) or a smart move of not flagging @berniesanders because bernie can not lose anymore reputation, and increasing his own rewards which may be indeed a form of greed.

A fair comparison

Since we are here, I am going to collect and present you some information about the two of them, but I will try to keep this short because this part can be expanded forever. As a disclaimer, you will need to do your own research and not trust or accuse me if any of these are inaccurate, I will try to do my best to present you concrete and objective information.

@berniesanders

Just by opening his profile, you can remark something strange: his reputation is low, really low. This can have more reasons, he may not care about it, but it can be a sign of being flagged pretty much as a result of the fights his account went through. From the same page you can see him having over 5000 followers so there are many people supporting him, and by the number of his posts it is easily seen that he is a pretty active user. Taking it other way around, these may no be so big numbers, especially if you consider that he joined the platform almost two years ago. Same time from the number of the people he is following we can conclude we are facing a pretty picky person.

He is also following @haejin, who would have thought?

I guess it is true when they say Keep your enemies closer :)

By looking at his wallet we can conclude that this user is about to give up on his position on the platform and who knows, maybe to surrender in this war.

It seems that @berniesanders decided to take his money and leave the account (I won't say the platform because who knows, maybe he is just moving his funds to other accounts preparing for another round). That's it for bernie, let's move to the other one.

@haejin

@haejin has a reputation of 70. This reputation, at least when I see that number as a reputation, is enough to gain some trust, but not too much since it is not always a sign of a healthy account. He has over 7000 followers, pretty much more than bernie, so there may be a greater support for him. His number of posts is much bigger than the posts of bernie, in a much shorter interval of time, almost 7k posts. Judging by the fact that he only joined the platform in June this year, it seems that he is a very prolific author.

His wallet is also lacking liquidities just like @berniesanders wallet, but there is a difference between them two: he is powering up

While I have reasons to like people powering up, I don't want to rush into the same decision this time, since powering up may be a way to gain a better position into this war.

A short conclusion which could bring the end to this war

If you had asked me, when I started to write this article, I had no answer to which side is wrong or right. I still don't have that answer, but I have an option. I found it looking at haejin's comments. Especially at this one:

@haejin almost gave the solution himself in his comment, it is right there, you just have to read carefully:

I'm rich and don't care about the money but want the visibility!

...

more people can be helped by my service of FREE Technical Analysis!

Since he is rich and he does not care about the money he makes, and since the Technical Analysis is *FREE * well, the solution is quite simple - Decline Payout.

If @haejin would decline the payout of his posts and because the war is around reward pool, I guess this could bring down the war. There may be other solutions of course, and it is the right of everybody to vote as he wants, and of course it is the right of @haejin to accept payouts to his posts, but this solution focuses on stopping this war without causing any harm to the platform.

Also we can see that since @haejin is taking around 1% from the reward pool in this context, being flagged by many users, his posts having a payout and not being flagged could take much more from the reward pool so it can become a problem if you think from the perspective of a decentralized system which tends to build a central power account.

Again as a disclaimer: You can and should make your own research, before taking action into any side of this war. The information I presented here may be misinterpreted even though I made all the efforts to present it as clear and honest as I could. Also the solution that I propose can be debated and may not be seen entirely well by everybody, but I am just trying to help stop this before it can harm too many users and the reputation of Steem.

If you liked the article and find it useful, please help me with a resteem, because right now I don't have much exposure.

Thank you and take care!