RE: Suspicious activity... people are seeing it... It is like whack a mole... What can be done?
This has been going on since I been here ( more than a month now ), it just has been evolving and changing quickly. One thing I have noticed is this kind of accounts never or I haven't seen any of them actually respond and interact in their comment sections.
If I had a post hit the 1k mark, I'd piss myself with joy and be giddy as all hell responding and interacting with the people leaving me comments.
One thing I do want to point out, and maybe this is why most of my post haven't done as well as I hoped is, I am not a sock puppet account, but most of the images I have used all have come from free stock photo sites like pixaby etc.
It comes down to I prefer being a writer than a photographer. However, I did currently pick myself up a new Nikon 5330 to start taking some of my own photos to use in my posts, like I said I have a hunch stock photos may have hurt some of my earlier posts that I felt were deserving of at least some attention. The problem now for me is like I said I am not a photographer and I need to learn how in the F to use this camera
I defiantly wouldn't want to call out or accuse of any whales of creating the accounts themselves, but I could defiantly see how lucrative it would be to do so, in reality, there are no "rules" per say that they couldn't do it, it is more of a moral and ethics debate as Steemit doesn't seem to have set rules, just unwritten rules by individuals and what the community sees as fit for Steemit.
I think you could be on to something about hired individuals having friends, family etc making puppet accounts to vote on, but I would think the hiring whale would catch onto this quite quickly, though.
In reality, in platforms and systems where revenue is involved, you will always have gamers trying to game the system to their advantage, and there will always be some kind of loophole. Not saying we need accept the fact of how things currently on the platform, merely saying it will be a never ending battle for @dan and @ned and the rest of us @steemians who plan to stick around.
You can use other people's images... I do too. I make some of my own as well, but when I use someone's image I'll do like I did in my post. I'll post the image and below it I'll add a line that says "Source: what website it is from"
I am then not giving people the impression it is my image. I didn't always do this, but I do it all the time now unless it is something I made.
As to posts not doing well... it is really hard to predict what will do well. Some of my posts do pretty good, but most don't do great. I just keep on working at it, and writing things I am interested in.
Some posts of mine I don't expect to do well do good.
Some posts I am really proud of and worked really hard on don't do well at all. One of my personal favorite posts I made I think earned $0.58.
EDIT: It made $0.39, but it is still one of my favorite posts that I've made.