Investigating the whale scam - Assumptions above knowledge.
Are the upper rank whales just a bunch of scammers? I got involved in a debate yesterday with a user who believes they are.
Let me break down just why he thinks they are, and how easy it is to assume this when following his logic.
Statement 1: Having multiple accounts is considered scammy.
"Big whales have created many alt accounts to suck the rewards away from the system"
In fact, having multiple accounts was a requirement in the beginning of Steem. Way before the majority of us even knew what steem was. Most of the upper ranks have multiple accounts for obvious reasons; A witness account, a miner account, a blog account, and maybe some more accounts for whatever purposes.
Did they create multiple accounts for fraudulent purposes? Simply put: No.
Statement 2: Stealing rewards from the platform.
"Upvoting your own alt account with super whale powers is stealing money from steemit"
We need to stop for a moment and look at what makes someone a whale. Those users are the very same users who invested their own time, money and resources in making steemit as we know today. Their investment is what most of us are chasing, the monetary reward by their huge balances. There is no such thing as stealing on steemit. Most of us joined here to make some rewards, just like the early investors did. Sure, having millions of SP on your account may be impressive, but it won't pay your bills.
Yet we assume whales are only here to share the rewards with any john doe making some introduction on steemit, however, if they upvote themselves, we start screaming it has to be a scam! Don't we all check the 'upvote post' check box upon submitting? Don't we all pray for a big whale to vote our content?
How do you justify the expectation of those guys investing everything they had, pouring money in a new platform, sharing everything with us, yet not receiving anything in return themselves but greed and envy? If some day, an anonymous person builds you a castle, just like that, for free, would you close the door on him if he asks you to have a coffee with you ?
From my perspective, if a whale upvotes his own alt account, they are only rewarding themselves instead of you.
Statement 3: Voting patterns reveal scammy accounts.
"Account X upvotes a post and within seconds 40 others do! SCAAAAAAAMMMMMM!!!"
Steem is a wonderful platform and blockchain. It even has this cool thing called "proxified voting." Let me explain you some of the basics.
Every user can authorize another user to cast votes using his keys. We have a main curator, lets just call him @maincurator. All that @maincurator does, is scan steemit for new and good content. Now i don't have the time to scan 24/7 on new potential trending content, for whatever reasons. But i really like what @maincurator is doing, and his upvotes are mostly inline with what i like. I can authorize @maincurator to vote with my account using nothing but our own blockchain. Nothing scammy, no hocus-pocus. Just code.
Now let's extend this, and 50 other users love what @maincurator does. This would mean, by every vote @maincurator makes, a total of 50 other users will cast their vote within the same second. What if @maincurator follows me, loves my posts, and upvotes every single post I make? It would show that all my posts are getting the same votes within the same time span.
Does this imply my account is a 'fake, scammy' account? No. Does this mean many of those accounts got created just to suck away rewards and upvoting my own posts? No.
It is my belief this community is being poisoned by greed, hatred and envy from the new userbase towards the old userbase.
People are actually accusing and investigating such simple actions like proxified voting because they rather believe in conspiracy theories and assumptions than taking a look at steemd and acting with knowledge. Even worse is that those users are assuming they have the knowledge.
At a slow pace, we'll see the intellect and childish behavior of bitcointalk appearing on steemit.
If anyone ever has doubts about anything, talk to this community instead of spreading rumors around.
Maybe this analogy will help the complainers:
I have a business. Through my hard work, effort and brains the business takes off and I have to employ people, many of whom who have never been employed and it is their first chance at earning an income. They see me buying a new expensive car with the proceeds of my hard work, and decide to strike as they do not have enough money to buy the same car.
I joined this platform 5 weeks ago. I have no knowledge of computer programming or cryptocurrency. All that is expected of me is to blog and network. I am rewarded for my efforts. I am happy. Why would I expect to earn the same rewards as the founders (hard work and brains)?
The petty jealousy defies all common sense, but money is involved, and money makes many people lose their minds!
I agree with @onetree: I have no knowledge of computer programming, little experience with cryptocurrency. All I do is write and curate and help build up the community. And I get paid for it! I am rewarded for my efforts. I am happy. I'm not going to expect to earn the same rewards as the founders. Neither should anyone else.
HOWEVER, people coming on here DON'T KNOW that the majority of the trending posts are essentially founder-written and/or founder-curated. It's a raw deal if you think about it that way. It's all about expectations.
Maybe a little shifting of those expectations would help mitigate some of the sour grapes going on.
This goes well beyond mere "jealousy." And it isn't just a problem with the vote timing. Steve appears to be arguing about something that he is completely unaware of. There is a pattern of what seem to be sock puppet accounts (plural) created by whales, voted by the same whales, curated by their other sock puppet accounts, sharing similar features and styles, etc.
There's no reason to assume that someone noticing these things is "jealous." It represents a serious problem for the platform if the system can be abused this way - especially by the most influential people on it. The issues with @mrron and @msgivings are only two examples (there are others) and we will likely learn about new ones soon enough. Please don't dismiss the questions or criticisms so easily. There is legitimacy to the concerns.
This analogy...... it's centralized employment. People get upset I think largely because it is promoted as decentralized... open... all of that. I am sure a lot are upset by the money part, it's easy to be.
I think a good portion of the others are upset though because it seems to take away from growing the site. Direct the rewards where you want sure.... absolutely. It's just how it can appear at times, not saying that is what it is.
Biggest part though is the decentralized theme and having it not represented as easily or visually. Everyone wants the site to grow, but to a new user seeing a founder post about the status of the site who is making $1500 for reporting the status of the site. It looks and feels off, I understand currently there is no other way to make the post visible without trending it.
They could do like the MySpace guy and @dan and the crew are everybody's first feed I guess?
There is nothing much to add ! I agree with you 100% @onetree I would not be here without those investors and I plan to keep my little bit of steempower I collect with very hard work , I do enjoy. Sometimes I feel to quit but why would I give up on myself and my efforts to contribute. I have learnt NOT to look for approval but so grateful for recognition. Your #namesinlight post about me yesterday still makes me smile and wanna make me stay for longer and see where this project leads up to. I wish it will survive and for more fairness and balancing in voting! I'm a bit worried about the upcoming hard fork because I still do not understand much to be honest.
This is clearly a subject that invokes strong emotions. Steemit is first and foremost, an experiment, and we should be able to voice our opinions as we, as the users have a vested (ha!) interest in the continuation of the platform Clearly there is going to be abuse of the system, as it is too young for it to have a pre-solution for every issue that occurs.
It is our responsibility, as members with an interest in the continuation of this platform, that we address the often complex matters that arise in a cool, calm reasonable manner. The amount of whining here at the moment is off-putting.
I agree with @ats-david that this a decentralized platform, but it started from a centralized point, and it is only natural that the income will be concentrated there, initially, but may spread over TIME!
Clearly the "whales" (I actually loathe the ecosystem terms) will have a vested (another ha!) interest in growing Steemit, considering time and money they spent. Perhaps we need a forum to discuss issues in a MATURE way.
YES,ok we are jealus of the group of whales and their clones,thats my answer to what you say
https://steemit.com/scam/@stell/i-am-happy-that-people-have-started-to-understand-what-is-going-on-here-thanks-to-me
This is a good post but let me add a few amplifications and one minor correction:
In addition to what @steve-walschot wrote, the system is carefully designed so that having multiple accounts does not give you any advatange. This is different from other systems like reddit where having a bunch of sock puppet accounts means you can manipulate the voting and with upvotes and downvotes. When you see someone voting with 100 accounts because he was or is a miner and has stake split up across accounts (which can't be combined for two years), realize that those votes have no more influence (and in some ways slightly less) then if the same SP were combined into a single account.
Authors are allowed (even encouraged!) to upvote their own posts. There is an option in the UI to automatically do it. One of the benefits to owning SP is influence over the posts (including your own) that get visibility and rewards, and this is supposed to be one of the reasons for people to buy SP! Do you (not you, @steve-walschot, the ones criticizing it) really want to advocate a position that means people have no reason to buy SP because it doesn't give them any influence they are allowed to use without being called manipulators or scammers or thieves? If so, what good is it? Why should it trade for more than zero? If you think it matters whether this is done with the same account or some number of different accounts, see #1 above.
Technically speaking the proxy voting feature works only for witness votes, but generally speaking the point is still valid and there is even a service that will do this trail voting for you. It doesn't indicate anything improper. People are allowed to use their votes as they see fit including copying how someone else votes. If you think the number of accounts you see voting matters, see #1 above.
@smooth
What is your take on accounts like @msgivings (or @mrron), where it was created and hit the trending page from day one, because of the influence of whales? Their votes created the popularity of that account, which was a sock puppet. The only reason it isn't active today is due to the fact that whoever ran that account screwed up and directly copy-pasted some content, which then drew over one hundred flags.
Now, what if this was happening across numerous sock puppet accounts, all being run by the same person/people, who happen to be a whale/whales? Would that not be a problem? Isn't that distinctly different from proxy votes? In that case, we're talking about both author and curation rewards going to the same person/people and the only reason they're getting those rewards is because the creators of the accounts are whales and can vote for them out of the gate. Multiple accounts, multiple rewards - all being influenced and paid out from the limited daily pool.
I haven't seen any evidence of that. I saw a bit of 'plagiarism' (one line, perhaps there was more) by @msgivings but to me that whole incident regarding that account, including the extreme effort people put into looking for even one line of possible plagiarism from an obscure source looked very much like a witch hunt fueled by jealousy.
Do you have actual evidence that whale votes 'created the popularity' and that the account was a 'sock puppet' because I strongly suspect you are making unsupportable claims based on your own bias (and more than likely a bit of jealousy). That is exactly what this post is about.
In the case of @mrron, I never saw any misconduct at all other than possibly reposting pictures without a source, which is hardly an unusual practice on this platform (though certainly not encouraged). Did you? Again, it looked very witch-hunt to me.
I personally rarely if ever voted for @msgivings posts, but I actually liked the content, a lot. (I didn't vote for it because usually by the time I saw it, it was already well-rewarded. I think I may have once or twice and then removed the vote once the reward got very high.) From my perspective, the posts were reasonably well-written and had the right balance of being provocative without being clearly offensive. They indeed provoked a large volume of comment and discussion, with a mix between agreement and disagreement, mostly on the substance of what she was writing (with some hate against her mixed in but that wasn't the bulk of it). I guess 'quality' is always subjective but to me that the ability to spark that sort of engagement and active discussion is exactly what we want, and it brings value to the platform.
Did you actually read my comment? 'Multiple accounts' is completely irrelevant. People are allowed to have multiple accounts and allowed to vote for themselves or their favored writers or content. That is absolutely part of the value of SP as an influence token. If others disagree about the content adding value they should downvote the posts and this results in the original voter having wasted their vote power.
This system operates on a consensus vote system. I could certainly have downvoted every single one of @msgivings posts if I thought they were poor quality and not bringing value, and they would have earned relatively little (or nothing if others did this as well). I didn't because I didn't think they were poor quality. What (some) SP holders give, others can take away. If people holding SP disagree strongly about the value of a post, it doesn't get paid.
Yes. Within the first 3 minutes of posting, @msgiving's very first post received three whale votes. After 23 minutes, it picked up another two. It snowballed from there and repeated on each of her follow-up posts. If you look at the main whale votes on her posts, there is a voting correlation around 98% - over the course of 16 posts. I'd say that's a pretty obvious sign that her popularity and payouts were whale-driven. Either that, or she just had some spectacular luck. But don't just take my word for it - see the votes for yourself:
https://steemd.com/love/@msgivings/my-ideal-proposal
Well, it's convenient to dismiss actual concerns about the credibility of the platform as "jealousy," but no - my claims are not unsupportable. The great thing about this platform is that everything is visible. You just have to know what to look for. And I not only know what to look for - I have found what I'm looking for. Those findings will likely be known to everyone soon enough...that is, if certain involved whales don't flag it into oblivion.
No, it really isn't. Not when these accounts are being created to purposely manipulate the daily rewards payouts and not when those payouts are being determined by the same whales who created the multiple puppet accounts. It is completely relevant to how the system is gamed by those who actually have the influence to game it with impunity. It's also completely relevant when the platform already has a credibility issue.
Sure. We'll just have a group of minnows downvote a post that has been upvoted by a group of whales. That will certainly even things out. Maybe you're not understanding that this is a problem with whales. Only other whales can actually do anything about it. So, if I see a sock puppet account making $1000 on their posts, I can downvote all I want. But then my vote isn't going to do anything except maybe draw attention from the whales that are profiting from the account and the rewards. I can risk my reputation by doing this, but I'd rather see other highly-influential investors/users actually care that it's happening.
See my previous response. It's the same situation. Only whales can counteract whales. If a group of them are behaving badly, then only another group of them can counteract it. Instead of calling everyone jealous, why not address the issue?
Okay that is interesting and I wasn't aware of it. Yesterday someone made the same claim to me about @mrron and I looked and there was no early whale voting (nor much early voting at all) on his first post. So forgive me for being skeptical about these sorts of accusations.
As for the rest of your post, you still aren't getting that 'SP holders' make the decisions in this system, and that may include voting in ways that you don't agree with. Whether that happens to be split up into different accounts or not makes no real difference. That is largely whales, yes. 95% of the SP is very concentrated with a few owners, and with that degree of concentration absolutely nothing you say or do is going to make a difference, except make this a less pleasant environment due to constant complaining. Maybe this system can succeed given that reality, maybe it can't. I'm not really decided on that point. But if you think that is unacceptable, you should just leave. Whining about it won't change anything. It is changing over time, due to selling in the market, but slowly.
Because there is no "addressing the issue" when 95% of the SP is owned by a few people. You either make the best of it, try to improve things around the edges given that reality, or you whine and complain and accuse all day long, making the platform worse and reducing whatever chance it has to succeed (constant bitterness and jealousy does not attract new users). I suggest their former, but I can't control what you do. I indeed would not blame anyone who started flagging you though, because voting is about what is bringing value to the platform, and your approach is not doing that.
To your response to me (thread limit)...
Except that's not accurate. There was early voting from silver and silversteem after only five minutes. After another 30 minutes or so, another three whale votes added to it. Again, this was his very first post and his subsequent posts garnered the same attention, only faster. Here's the link for his first post:
https://steemd.com/travel/@mrron/why-should-you-visit-pakistan
So, we have @mrron and @msgivings - two accounts that received early whale votes and received relatively large payouts over all of their posts. When they were challenged on their credibility, they just cashed out and left. They haven't been heard from since. It may be nothing - or it may be a serious abuse of the system that needs to be explored further. Either way, it's worth finding out for the credibility of the platform, isn't it?
As to the rest of your comment - it doesn't deserve a response. Coming from someone with your influence on this site, it's just disappointing and shameful.
It absolutely is accurate and I'm mildly flagging your post because you are lying and engaging in a continued witch hunt.
The claim that was made to me was "within seconds". I looked yesterday and I saw what you saw. The first major vote within 5 minutes, then nothing (major) for 30 minutes and then most other large votes hours later.
There is absolutely nothing whatsoever about this record indicating any form of abuse and you are misrepresenting it and are making false accusations based on it. Five minutes for the first major vote is hardly right away. This is exactly the sort of timeline that is consistent what I've done nearly every day for the past five months in curation. I look at New, see posts that are quite new, say 0-5 minutes, sometimes voting them up after giving them a look. I look in Hot, and see posts that are a bit older (say 30 minutes), but have been gaining votes (this gives them a high ranking in Hot), and finally I look in Trending and see posts that have gotten a lot of votes (say in the past few hours) but I still consider worth additional votes.
Yes most likely because you and people like you engaged in a witch hunt based on no real evidence, and they either quit or signed up under new accounts to escape the harassment (and I wouldn't blame them for doing either).
I'm sorry, but you are not adding value to the platform with this kind of abusive and hostile behavior toward new users, nor by constantly making false and misleading claims about some alleged abuse. It is more than anything a version of trolling and it has to stop.
@smooth
OK. How am I supposed to know what the claim to you was? I was responding to you when you said:
There was in fact "early" whale voting. I'm not aware of every discussion you have on this platform, so sure - go ahead and flag my comment for that.
Well, no, I'm actually not. It really isn't a "witch hunt" if it was demonstrated that there were in fact problems with those accounts. And, by the way, I didn't engage in anything of the sort while it was happening. I was aware of it, certainly, but it was not my doing.
Well, I'll just go ahead and let all of the other evidence do the talking once it's presented.
I'm sorry that you see it this way. There are a lot of others who do not, including some very big whales. You'd be surprised by the support and what has already been turned up. It's undeniable at this point, and I really don't know why you wouldn't want to know about these things. But it's fine. I'll be sure not to engage with you any longer. You seem to be far more "abusive" and "hostile" than I've ever been - especially to you.
Good day.
@ats-david
I do not consider 5 minutes, 30 minutes, and hours later to constitue "early voting" in any meaningful way. That is entirely typical voting for an active curator who closely follows New (which is hardly unusual) or for a voter who has delegated his voting to someone else (who follows New) and is mirroring their vote (common, but I didn't see obvious evidence of that here).
You are taking perfectly normal, common behavior, and spinning it into abuse, which it is not, selling it on the basis of jealousy and harassment of whales, and trying to impose your ideas of how others should vote. That is absolutely the definition of witch hunting.
That would be a good idea, but then why are these accusations being made and why has this harassment occurred and continues to occur place before, as you acknowledge, the evidence is presented?
When and if you do present this evidence, it better be more solid than someone voting after five minutes.
These sock puppet accounts (misgivings, hanai, mrron are only few exposed from at least a dozen). All these accounts have been instantly upvoted by the same 3 ultra whales within seconds of their very first post ever on Steemit. Then same pattern continued with their every next post. You can clearly see it in steemstats. That is self evident that these whales exactly knew in advance when these very first posts are going to be created. Also, it is obvious that they have not even read those first posts.
Now they try different technique since few days ago after we exposed this. They create sock puppet account and let it post 2-3 posts with no upvoting by them. Then they suddenly jump from 3-4th post and repeat similar pattern.
One of those whales even admitted to create some of these accounts in chatroom, defending that there is nothing suspicious behind them! We have screenshots of that conversation.
That's what I kept on trying to explain to Steve in conversation but he kept refusing to recognise this observation and kept talking about something else - changing subject to his defense of multiple accounts. There is nothing wrong with having multiple accounts. What matters is what you use them for.
This is an example of the kinds of lies that are being spread as harmful and ignorant trolls like you continue to engage in a witch hunt. I'm not going to overlook it any longer and you are being flagged. See my response to @ats-david, which breaks down precisely the timeline of @mrron's first post and clearly demonstrates with objective facts that you are lying and spreading FUD.
If you are going to spew this venom, you're not going to do it without consequences on a platform where I have a vote, and I have one here. Troll elsewhere.
^ yup. Lot's of envy and jealousy over what the first-timers have that the rest of us don't, and then it breeds into expectations and demands to take what they have. Lots of socialist communist psychosis going on.
Or just bad design with little or no decentralized governance ... oligarchs are not good stewards.
If anyone asks me my answer is always the same.
1.) I was paid to join!
2.) I'm having fun reading, learning, writing and earning!
3.) Where else do you have an opportunity like this? Facebook? No! Instagram? No! You spend time there too, their founders are super wealthy and you get nothing. Yet no complaining!
4.) I am determined to improve my writing and presentations, stay for the long term and see where it takes me.
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)
lol It's funny how people call scam when everything has been given to them for free. In fact, Steemit has given each new user about $7 for their account just for signing up. The only other thing they need to invest is time, energy, and good content. $7 (at least) is much more than Facebook or Twitter or Reddit has ever given us.
Scam is when somebody took something from them. I dont think accusing the whales of scamming is a good idea because even if they voted themselves or their accounts, we have no right to question it.
Yep, exactly. Especially when the questioning is coming from new users who have not taken the time to research or learn about the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, or have even read the white paper. They have also not built up a following of people who like their content.
This platform is built FOR us, not AGAINST us. The entire premise of @ned and @dan creating this social network is to give back to the writers and artists. The whales were here first. They have invested time and money into an unproved experiment. I am grateful for their work and their resources and they have every right to benefit from it.
Right @mscleverclocks, who are we to question them, we came here for free and had given a chance to earn money by posting content and now that they are not earning, they will question the whales who did not vote their content?
Me, myself is longing to be voted by the whales but that doesn't mean I have the rights to question them if their not voting me.
While the small fry ranting where ours upvote ? Sorry they all went to their own bosses lol
I see this article and the whales that upvoted it as :
"When a bunch of blowhards - usually politicians - get together for a debate but usually end up agreeing with each other's viewpoints to the point of redundancy, stroking each other's egos as if they were extensions of their genitals (ergo, the mastubatory insinuation). Basically, it's what happens when the choir preaches to itself. "
AKA Circlejerk
Yeah, that's how I'm reading it too. His title says "investigating" and he talks about knowledge being power, but there doesn't appear to be any "investigation" and there appears to be a complete lack of knowledge about sock puppets and collusive voting.
Let's throw out the bot issue for a moment. Instead, let's focus on these sock puppets that have been likely created by whales, upvoted by whales from their initial posting, continually trending from whale votes, gaining popularity from that trending, and then cashing out once the accounts have been identified. And let's talk about the fact that this is currently happening across multiple accounts. Scroll through the trending page and see if you can identify them. It's not hard to do. They're all alike in a variety of ways. This needs to be publicly addressed at some point. Thousands of SBD per week are being funneled into these accounts.
It isn't cute. It isn't funny. It's going to do real damage to the credibility of this platform - and the longer it continues, the worse it will get.
Circlejerk with a following herd of minnow compulsive sycophants
If I am an investor, I don't really care what work the founders of the company have done before I come in. I care about my ability to either A. Make Money, or B. A great Social Media site.
I don't care how or why the whales have the power they do, and I am all about people making money.
When you can't find a win/win situation, everyone loses. If the whales eat the whole pie, they will be eating it alone.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@whatsup/fighting-over-that-big-steemy-piece-of-pie-while-the-new-users-and-steem-prices-die
This "When you can't find a win/win situation, everyone loses. If the whales eat the whole pie, they will be eating it alone." is my whole 40minute rant in one sentence.
I love your rant!
But what about RHW? It will continue?
Yes, it will whatever happens.
Here, here.
The real problem we are dealing with is jealousy. Instead of people being happy with a few dollars they'v made, that unless they are incredibly famous elsewhere is more than they've made on all other social media accounts, they complain that others are making too much money.
Steemit doesn't even need to be monetized to be better than most other social media sites. It's great that @ned and @dan are sharing anything at all.
We are happy with the nice car we have until we see that someone else has a flashy new convertible. Instead of working to get that car most have come to the assumption that it's just not fair and that they should be entitled to their own flashy car.
The problem is not steemit at all. The problem is people's perception of "fairness." Notice that minnows that see the value of continued hard work tend to be far more successful than those who have early success and then instead of ramping up their content, keep it the same.
Hopefully people understand that hard work needs to be put in at some point, whether on steemit or another site to gain a following. Great content by itself will only be found slowly here. You are the brand and you need to advertise yourself.
Steemit is not get rich quick, it allows you to get rewarded for the amount of work you put in. I came in with no blogging experience, 0 followers on social media, few facebook friends and no idea how steemit worked.
All people have to do is get to know other people here and slowly craft unique content that engages people in some way. Repeat those steps and respond to comments and you will see success sooner or later.
You have no actual clue what we are talking about here.
The issue is about sock puppet accounts created by few whales to multiply profits.
Yes I know that. But I doubt you would care about this if you did not know about it, since you have $500 more than you did when you started.
I believe you are concerned with someone else's accounts because you feel it is unfair that they are voting the way they wish to.
All whales could only upvote their own content if they wish. It would be quite foolish, because without a sharing of wealth, steemit would quickly die and new users would not join if they were not able to make money.
I believe the heart of the issue is jealousy. You can disagree with me on that, but that is completely up to you.
To claim
is foolish. I have no problem with whales receiving more profits as long as everyone still has a chance to make money. Since steemit does not need to be monetized at all, I feel any rewards are simply a bonus.
It is like saying that it is fine for corporations to become sickly rich and powerful as long as they give us jobs.
These specific whales need minnows on this platform only to cover up their scheme. If there were no minnows, it would be plain obvious what they do.
That is exactly what I'm saying. How do you think facebook works? Or Google? The Wealthy investors make a lot of money and then hire people to take over certain aspects and then the majority of other people are putting in work for free.
Nobody is forcing anyone to stay on this platform though. If people are unhappy with it, they are free to go. I came in with 0 interest in blogging and have done pretty well for myself. I've made far more in my 2 months here than in ten years of all other social media combined.
There are flaws in all platforms, but if I could choose for there to be only one social media site, hands down I'd pick steemit. I'd dedicate more time to writing unique content and less on what whales do. But that is how I want to handle my time and you are free to continuing to go after whales that you feel are abusing their power. Human greed will always play a part any time money is involved. That is still the reason for my original comment.
I think steemit has done a pretty good job quelling to much vote gaming for the most part. I have plaenty of ideas that I'm sure would work far better than making a few sock puppet accounts.