A Steemit Journey Ending!

As I approach the end of my first year on Steemit and as I look at my account, I have accumulated $993 Steem Power and 992 Followers. It has been a journey of sorts... reading, learning, posting, commenting, and making friends. The idea of trying to establish a niche on Steemit has long since vanished (I've kept my real Blog for that). My commitment to Steemit in the beginning was as a staunch supporter and promoter but lately that level of devotion has not been entirely exclusive; meaning, I have not been spending inordinate amounts of time on Steemit lately. I do usually show up for commenting on my feed though. I have to remind myself often that I am supposed to be retired and I refuse to let my computer (or any social media) consume my valuable time. Lately, my valuable time has been spent trying to defend myself from "Nothing" against some bad players on the Steemit Front. The good content creators on Steemit are having a tougher time these days... their work is just not generating what they deserve. Instead their seems to be a big rewards imbalance, with much of the rewards pool going to the "circle jerkers" and the "whale class," and more recently, automated accounts. There are way too many undesireable accounts being created and many bad actors have taken foothold. Like many bad actors elsewhere, they came for the easy money. Their place on Steemit has nothing to do with creating good content or "blogging." Newcomers to Steemit have no choice but to "purchase" their way up the reputation ladder and in most cases simply drop out. But I dirgress. As I looked at my aformentioned two numbers, I am was curious as to which number would arrive at the 1,000 pinnacle first. Would I get 1,000 followers or 1,000SP first?

Well Guess What?... neither one will happen! Keep reading to find out why.

First, What I Learned Along the Way I Will Share.

What I have noticed on Steemit is that while I might have 992 followers, according to Steemit's own statistics, only about 6% of those (derived from 1 million accounts/60k active users) are active accounts and only a portion of those actually read my posts and leave comments. While these numbers do not serve Steemit well, in retrospect what mattered to me was that I usually interacted and reciprocated with those in my feed and those others who interacted with my posts. I followed my "Feed" (those whom I follow) most days that I'm online. I would share my voting power with those in my feed and sometimes I would search for new content that interested me. I rarely visited the "Trending" or "Hot" pages anymore as I've learned that many of those posts are there only because of purchased and manipulated voting. Some that make the Trending Page are nothing more than obfuscated content. In other words, many posts do not deserve to be there. Besides, curating posts looking for the big-winner is akin to shooting at anything in the dark - rarely does it payout. Repeat after me... "Curation Sucks!" and repeat as many times as necessary in order to let that sink in. There is NO real reward in trying to timely identify the most popular posts on Steemit as the "Bots" have screwed all that up!

My advice to newcomers is that you should learn to keep your "feed" size manageble unless you want to spend (waste) much of your precious time on the platform. You should follow only those creators that interest you and or who share like interests. Give your followers what they need and they will give back. I never wasted my time with the follow-for-follow or upvote for upvote accounts - That is a real waste of time. Basically one should find ways to attract followers while at the same time being careful about choosing those you follow (the "Tribe").

How I Achieved My Steem Power.

As I previously mentioned, I arrived here as a blogger and early on, I built my account by submitting blog-styled posts. Because I came to Steemit with a real blog, I shared and even re-wrote some of my material from there. I also spent hours creating new and original content. After a couple months, I felt comfortable enough to invest some of my own money and I powered up. In the beginning, I was earning modest rewards (not getting rich for sure), even when my voting strength was pennies at most. After powering up, and accumulating some more Steem Power through rewards, my vote strenth steadily increased and I learned to share that with my "tribe". But something else was happening! About that same time, many new accounts were arriving on the platform and I noticed upvotes were declining. Even with a well constructed post, it was hard to attract upvotes. I began to expand my blogging to include posting memes, photos, and funny stuff. I competed in a few Steemit contests. Overall, my posting quality became diminished as a result. Earnings began to stagnate. I was still creating good content (IMO) but my rewards were lethargic at best. I was still growing, but at a much slower rate of growth. With the steadily declining price of Steem, I was working hard and earning a pauper's fare.

I used to be a Blogger.

I began noticing that many other Steemians upvoted themselves. At first I thought this was a rather narcissistic but soon realized that this is how many Steemians built their wealth. So I too practiced self-upvoting soon after I invested my own money into the system. Now when I would post, I would give that post some time to age, then I would upvote it myself. When engaged with other Steemians in comment conversations, I would also upvote my comment (if it was worthy) and I always shared my voting power with those who I interacted with. If somebody left me a thoughtful comment, I would reward them with an upvote (depending on my voting strength) that was consistent with their effort. I did pay hommage to those faithful with generous upvotes. My policy was to never reward myself with more than I was willing to reward others. Of course I wouldn't upvote someone for a lazy comment such as "Great Post" and only those that submitted thoughtful or constructive comments would earn my vote. I also voted my own comments for ranking purposes. During the last 30 days, 62.7% of all my votes were self-votes (source- Steem Reports). Note that many other Steemians have much higher numbers! Also know that the comments heirarchy on any given post is based upon the amount rewarded for that comment and if you want to highlight (lift) any comment higher up the thread for more visibility, you simply upvote it. This is how I learned to gain followers and how I earned and survived on Steemit.

Things Have Changed!

It is no longer a surprise to me why over 90% of all Steemit accounts are inactive. Many come with the "get-rich-quick" idea and are gone quickly. Many others who want to contribute good content do not stay around long enough to learn how to gain the visibility needed to grow. They simply leave and never come back. Those that understand that it takes a lot of serious work to make it on Steemit are still here and growing. A big part of the problem here is that Steemit was promoted early on as the "Social Media that Pays" and when new arrivals realize it is not easy money, they vanish. Others leave after realizing that the rewards system is stacked. Steemit is nothing like social media.

Like me, most of the successful minnows on Steemit have employed their own survival strategies which ensure they earn (at least a little) something for their efforts. Many newcomers are led to believe that you can earn by curating high value posts, but that is simply not true. I've tried every which way there is to curate posts and in one year, I have earned the substantial total amount of $9.03. That does not even come close to a computational fraction of a minimum wage earned in a developing country. I received that rather demeaning amount for reading many, many posts and upvoting those I thought were well-constructed and or good content. Suffice to say, commenting earns the real rewards on Steemit, not curation (rinse and repeat: "Curation Sucks!"). Curation has been a point of contention with many on the platform recently as it has all been manipulated by Bots working the system.

In this case... Fraud!

While there might be a few good Bots, most Bots DO NOT provide for the good of ecosystem. Then there are the many, many accounts set up as resteeemers, spammers, and leachers. There are many operators with multiple accounts with the goal to suck up a minnows hard earned SBD, most times a poor or NO return on their investment. Now there is a "Dust Collector" that consumes dust rewards, mostly from minnows! Learn about how your hard earned rewards disappear in this post by gduran. There are players on Steemit now with multitudes of accounts who cumulatively upvote themselves. Then there are the scammers looking to steal rewards through somewhat illicit actions. I won't even talk about hackers here. There are literally thousands of accounts run by nefarious actors that TAKE away from the rewards pool and hard working Steemians. Okay, let's call it what it really is - "Stealing" from the rewards pool and the unknowing!

Hiding behind the Bot!

In my personal non-technical opinion, any one individual who devises a way, through software applications or any other means, to extract rewards from hard working Steemians and the rewards pool, WITHOUT actually creating good content (or any content) as Steemit originally intended, are nothing but low-life thieves. Human originality and creativity are what built Steemit, and all that was once good, is now being destroyed. And they [the bad players] abound here on the Steemit Platform. They are thriving here! I could spend another two hours writing another post identifying all the nefarious characters and describing the ways they do their nasty, but what would be the point? But it's easy enough to check out for yourself how many other Steemians feel the same way - check out some similar thoughts in posts by @navala, and @bitcoinflood, to name just a couple. All you have to do is search for "Bots Destroying Steemit" or "why Steemit is dying"and there will be plenty to wet anyone's appetite for a better understanding of the overall degradation of Steemit.

Where Am I Going With This?

Well, I'm glad you stuck around for the main course! While I am approaching my first anniversary on Steemit, it will likely be my last anniversary. As of yesterday, I have become so dismayed with how Steemit continues to unfold, I feel it is just not worth the effort or headache any longer. I have become a target of a bad Bot, or more accurately, the dark shadows hiding behind the Bot. A definite nefarious Bot that has imposed it's own rule of law (under the complete non-automated control of certain account holders) that identifies and "shames" fellow Steemians as [they] see fit, in order to take advantage of the rewards pool themselves (keep reading!)

@abusereports... Bad Bot!

The Bot account I am referring to is @abusereports created by @nextgencrypto and @berniesanders and I'm almost certain there are other accounts supporting this bad actor. The service itself claims to identify spammers and scammers and thieves, with its main purpose of "protecting and preserving" the Steemit rewards pool. That alone would be commendable! But there is a dark side. The service also identifies (subjectively) large account holders (Whales) here on Steemit who upvote themselves with HUGE amounts of rewards, who might otherwise be considered unfairly draining rewards pool. I with that goal if it were so truely deserved. Here is where my issue lies; While it is downright wrong to spam and scam (illicit), there is nothing listed in the Steemit "Terms and Conditions" that applies to the act of self-upvoting. I believe the original intent of Steemit was for this to be a built-in benefactor to the early Steemians. Is it okay to do so? Apparently Yes. It is an accepted practice on Steemit? Absolutely. Is it ethical? Now that is the big question that causes and stirs up all the controversy here on Steemit, but until steemit addresses this issue with new self-voting rules with a Hardfork, it will continue. It's as simple as that. What is absolutely unethical is how @abusereports is actually doing much of the thieving, hiding behind their good intentions. If they operated this service and declined all rewards, I would not have an issue and I wouldn't be sitting here typing this post. And unless something changes, those shady characters hiding under the cloak of @abusereports will continue to prosper while account holders like me are unfairly targeted (keep reading, it gets better... the proof is in the pudding!).

Yes, I've Been Unfarily Targeted!

A couple of days ago, one of my followers left me a message (in disbelief) that my comment was flagged. It was a comment I made to him where I simply mentioned that I was an "Anti-Bot kind of guy." That is all that I said. One of my most recent posts was also flagged around the same time, likely because I added a footer statement that read "BAN the BOTS!" Or it could have been my post 11 days earlier (Pot/Kettle Black link below) where I identified the theft of $7,869.52 from the rewards pool over a 25 day period by @abusereports. It surely should not have been my other post that was also flagged which gave absolutely no reason worth flagging! You can visit that post and read it for yourself (proof of targeting). I also happened to resteem an apparently unpopular post by @jerrybanfield (who is unpopular with @berniesanders), but with rightful intentions. I just wanted to expose all the post comments to my "Tribe." The above events seemed to be enough to cause someone at @abusereports to poop their pants and WHEW... they did not like their own smell apparently and decided to take it out on me. Here is another kicker - not only was that single comment and two my most recent posts (both pending payouts) flagged, over 22 other comments connected to various other posts were flagged. All for no reason other than the fact he [they] could do it and get away with it. In any case, it was a few little straws broke the weak camel's back.

What it all boils down to is this: an animosity driven, guilt-motivated attack on my reputation and this is where I am drawing the line. Not only have they have taken payout from me for NO GOOD REASON, they have violated Steemit's own Terms of Service under Section 15 as follows:

15. User Conduct
15.1. When accessing or using the Services, you agree that you will not commit any unlawful act, and that you are solely responsible for your conduct while using our Services. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you agree that you will not:
15.1.1. Use of our Services in any manner that could interfere with, disrupt, negatively affect or inhibit other users from fully enjoying our Services, or that could damage, disable, overburden or impair the functioning of our Services in any manner;

It is so clearly obvious in my opinion that their actions are in flagrant violation of para 15.1.1, and while they throw their flagging weight around and operate without discretion, they continue to violate Steemit's TOS. At this point in my Steemit experience, I'm convinced the powers that be at Steemit will NOT intervene and will do very little to put a stop to these abusive actions.

In Summary.

While this Bot service is operated under the guise of "helping" or "The Preservation of" Steemit, this is what I see: Multiple account holders in cahoots with each other to operate a service called @abusereports that directs attention to users that are scamming, spamming, and upvoting, all the while they use this same collective information to build a simple automated report (no real creativity involved) that generates huge payouts for them. One recent @abusereports post claims to have saved the rewards pool $3.09 while @abusereports extracted $98.00 as an author reward from the very rewards pool they claim they are preserving. Can you see what is happening here? Multiple accounts are all upvoting @abusereports (as is @abusereports is self-upvoting), claiming the very rewards they are shaming others for taking (has that $7,869.52 in 25 days sunk in yet?). If this is not the Pot Calling the Steemit Kettle Black, then Steemit has a real problem. Actually, I might be easily convinced now that would be the very post that prompted these hypocritical jerks to direct their Steemit assasination efforts at me.

So Where Do I Go From Here?

I will return to my Blog and Vlog. I might even spend more time on SteemThat where I can earn free STISH (crypotocurrency) for my contributions. Today, I began my Power Down. I will leave the good people of Steemit to fare both the good and the bad. Steemit is a great concept and there are definitly some great content creators here, and it is unfortunate that they are getting buried amongst an increasing number of bad players. I for one choose not to participate in a so-called "decentralized" blogging platform when in actuality, it has evolved into the contrary. When a few individuals can stymie the words spoken on this platform, it amounts to control and censorship in my opinion. While I feel like we all should have equal rights to our freedom of expression and free speech, and to call-out things the way we see it, there are those few thin-skinned and nefarious others who are easily offended and will do what they can to silence you - akin to a certain American politician we all know. And that is unfortunate... for me, you, and for Steemit.

Thanks to all those who supported me over the last year and I wish you the best of success. I can only hope now that someone else will step up and take a stand against these same shady characters. That is of course if you are not afraid of a little red flag. Sometimes you have to fight for justice. And, if good things happen for the better here on Steemit, I might visit now and then. I'll be watching!

And this post will likely also get flagged by those that think their shady little operation might be exposed for what it really is... a Scam! And that in itself will be a testament to the truth!

Don't Forget to Resteem for Widest Dissemination

I have declined any payout!

For now.

Retired in Samar-