Fraud: SteemIt opportunities

in #steemit8 years ago (edited)

Hi, community. Later on we were discussing possibilities of SteamIt being hacked. Now I want to discuss fraud schemes and grey businesses using SteemIt that we may see tomorrow.


 I value your time and really think that large posts are no good. The goodness is in the ideas and in talent to write concisely and meaningful. Brevity is the soul of wit.

So let's get straight to the SteemIt fraud cases.

  • First grey scheme that recently visited my mind requires one to have a decent Steem Power on account. Does not matter how he got it: earned posting or bought. So this Powered-Up man has his vote-up cost in say 30$. He creates an online service where SteemIt user sends him a payout in say 10$ with link to post for upvote. In Bitcoin equivalent and to Bitcoin wallet. Powered-Up man sees the transaction and link to post and upvotes it with his 30$ vote. This scheme can be easily automated, more accounts with different Steem Power added for smaller or larger tips and so forth. Let’s call this “the Payvote”.
  • Next dark scheme requires no starting fees but some programming experience. One can also use real money to buy a freelancer to do the programming job. Rogue makes list of top bloggers and programs an automated parser with the ability to upvote just in time when needed. So when a new post of top blogger arrives the parser part does it’s thing and the program automatically upvotes when needed depending on it’s configuration. I call this “the Autocurator”.


One can say: “Hey but you just gave fraudsters a guide to action!” That’s true. But now that the community knows this we can find out ways to prevent such frauds or at least minimize the effects. If not me then someone else would’ve guessed these schemes but did not tell you and just used them secretly. And it is so much better for SteemIt to go through these things as early as possible.


I would be very glad if I am wrong and these are just my tales that can’t be applied to SteemIt. But my experience and knowledge says me that I am not wrong. Hope this post helps. I ask you, community, for you opinion how to prevent this. Please vote up so everybody can know this and be aware of. Write your own posts on the subject and solutions! I am already preparing next post in which I will try to understand SteemIt roots that make possible “the Payvote” and “the Autocurator” schemes. So stay tuned.


We live in imperfect world where there is money there surely will be users of dark schemes. So we must predict the future and find ways to protect the community from such grey and fraud schemes. 

At the end I say great thanks to creators of SteemIt. CEO @ned and others. I am excited and really enjoy posting and learning SteemIt, cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Special thanks to @on0tole and Russian SteemIt Telegram community for their great support. What is Telegram and links to the communities Russian and English are in my previous post

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I don't think, that "Autocurator" is a bad thing. If something can be done properly in an automated why... then this should be automated.

BTW, this is your second post which I like. Subscribed :)

On the current moment you're right that "Autocurator" isn't bad. But is it good? -- the question is open for community to resolve. The community is growing and this matter is not solved whether it is good or bad.
I plan to dig deeper into this in my next post.

the problem with autocurator is... that it can mislead people. If there will be 100 autocurator, which will vote up "good author", which this time posted bullshit, that will end up with situation, where specific author will be favored for old contributions.

Maybe there should be a mechanism which punishes in long term those kind of mistakes... where lets say, 50% voters says that article is bad but you voted up anyway.

But.... what if "up vote" would be replaced by:

  • grade (from 1 to 10)
  • additional requirement for writing a summary or a reasons why something is good according to you

This cannot be so easily automated... and that gives the author so much more feedback.

Maybe all options should be available: upvote, summary, detail grade - and summary will be worth more.

I agree. Spamers can also use payvote scheme with autocurator to post their spam messages.
We have to think a way to do not let such things possible.
Different upvote? Maybe

in fact, if every role in steemit could be automated, which i think would be very hard, it would be a good thing

yeah and will this automated system need new original content? I guess no

Feel free to post your suggestions

and you can also see my post where a whale of steem is doing your first exact scheme :) the only difference is that he is paying himself :)

You should post a link it is interesting

auto-voting bad content would ultimately kill someone investment in SP.

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