While I can't say I 100% agree with Cheetah, I do think it does more good than harm. The bot on its own does not start flagging, there is human guidance and in most cases a good bit of due diligence.
This article provides more detail on the andrianna situation for instance. It appears the claims against her do not center around plagiarism, but ties to a known scammer.
This can be the case with other blacklisted users as well, where withdrawal addresses and other information may reveal networks of accounts that may be targeted together by Cheetah.
We have some users feeling that cheetah does more harm than good, others saying it does more good than harm, and without a way to verify it's work using some lovely blockchain technology in some way, why is it still running in it's current form? Is there a way for Steemit users are able to vote on how or why it functions? With the cheetah off in the wild by itself is this the start of the WWIII Elon is warning us about?
The original poster made some really good suggestions that if majority feel this bot needs to run, it can be held accountable for it's actions at the very least. That link you provided was great, very interesting situations with andrianna in particular, hope Sherlock goes into the links in the post here. I have been here just about a year and seen that cheetah go through positive changes and still the results are pretty shitty imo, I've requested it be renamed at the least, but I'm sure the amount of money that account in particular earns why change it. I mean, as much as I see people complain about it, I also see users who thank it after it comments on posts lol.
I saw your mention of renaming it, and it's funny... I'd never once thought of the Cheetah-Cheater connection! I'd only assumed it to be named for the speed it scans/indexes web content so never got that negative connotation.
And no, there's no way for users to vote on the functioning of Cheetah because it is a private user itself. We have the same options we always do, upvoting and downvoting. Andrianna has been getting better payouts since being blacklisted it seems! The community is supporting her to negate Cheetahs flags. The community can in turn flag Cheetah at will if it's felt it is having a negative impact.
I do believe the intent and motivation behind Cheetah is good, because it would certainly be more profitable for its owner if it did not flag at all.
Great link to the post abou @andrianna's account there @bryan-imhoff - very curious indeed. But I think I rather side with the comment on it by @sminchow which says "She should be un-banned, innocent until proven guilty".